Rules

Here are the rules of the contest. Please read them carefully!

Members

 * 1) Every real person can participate, from any part of the planet.
 * 2) To join the contest you must have a facebook profile (or at least to be registered on song contest forum.
 * 3) To be able to join, you must sign up for the waiting list. You can just contact the admin to be added.
 * 4) The only requirement is to be a quite active member. In case you don't give a sign in the contest for at least two consecutive editions (confirmation, sending entries, etc) you can be replaced with another person from waiting list and therefore you will have to sign up for waiting list again if you want to return.

Participation

 * 1) Once you are part of the contest, you are able to chose one of the available free countries.
 * 2) Everyone must participate just with one country. Cheating will result in permament ban from the contest.
 * 3) You are required to participate at least three editions with the same country. You cannot change it if you don't have at least three participations with it (the only exception is when your native country becomes free meanwhile).
 * 4) Everyone should confirm the participation or the withdrawal in the upcoming edition within the deadline, otherwise you'll get one strike.
 * 5) Once you confirmed the participation, you are required to submit an entry before the deadline, otherwise your country will be eliminated (or/and replaced with another country if necessary) and you will get one strike.
 * 6) If the song has been officially submitted, it cannot be changed (unless it doesn't follows some rules and you'll be asked to change).
 * 7) Entries can be chosen internally or with national selections.

Countries/Songs

 * 1) The singer should be from the selected country or have strong connection with the country they represent.
 * 2) A band can represent the country if at least one of members is from the selected country.
 * 3) Singers can represent a country if at least one of their parents is from selected country. Exceptions are made if the singer is not living in Europe, being quite popular and it would be unrealistic to sign for an European country.
 * 4) Singers from United States can represent a country only if both of their parents are from selected country and the singer has a strong connection with the country, or in case if they are featuring another european singer.
 * 5) The songs can't be older than 2005.
 * 6) The song can be any lenght.
 * 7) The singer must be at least 16 years old to participate.
 * 8) Songs which took part in (J)ESC are not allowed.
 * 9) Songs from the national finals of Eurovision are allowed to participate only if they ended already.
 * 10) To prevent the unoriginality, the same singer can't participate more than three times in ten editions.
 * 11) Covers of the songs are accepted in case if they are official single of the certain artist.
 * 12) Parodies, Mash-ups and non-official remixes are not allowed.
 * 13) It's not necessary for a song to have an official music video. You can make your own, or submit an alternative video to be used for your entry.
 * 14) Make sure the song you submit has a studio version.
 * 15) Some countries can share songs between them because of their strong cultural and language connection. Following this rule, Albania and Kosovo, Greece and Cyprus, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Serbia and Montenegro, England with Scotland and Wales can share their songs between them if the borrowed songs are not in top 100 charts of the respective country and if the HoD of the country you borrow from agrees.
 * 16) Microstates such as Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco and San Marino are no longer allowed to borrow songs. They can take part in the contest only with a native singer.

Voting

 * 1) Voting system is similar with all online song contests. Voting for top 10 songs and awarding points (12 points for the favorite song, 10 points for the second favorite, then 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point respectively).
 * 2) The non-participants are able to vote in the contest. Their votes are combined and counted as one set of votes (also known as Rest of the World).
 * 3) The automatic qualifiers are required to vote in semi-final they are supposed to vote.
 * 4) Anyone who fails to vote before deadline receives a strike. Exceptions are made if there are trustable reasons of your failure to vote, such as health problem, or internet connection.
 * 5) If you fail to vote in semi-final and final although you are participating, you'll be forced to withdraw for one edition.
 * 6) Songs and countries are not disqualified. In case of non-voting of a certain country, there will be used replacer voters.

Overused rule
This rule was added to prevent the overused and unoriginal songs to participate and do extremelly well just because they are well-known.

If the song that you sent participated in 3 or more contests, that means that song can't participate in OESC. The following contests histories will be checked to find out if the song participated there (I've chosen these contests because the admins are OESC players and their history is updated and easy to check). The rule counts at the moment when the song is submitted:


 * Diamond Online Song Contest
 * Elegance Music Song Contest
 * Fantasia Contest
 * Grandvision Song Contest
 * International Music Festival
 * Lyrical Song Contest
 * Music World Cup
 * North Vision Song Contest
 * Paradise Music Festival
 * Songs For Europe
 * WWW Song Contest

Final results

 * 1) The winner is the country achieving the most points.
 * 2) If the countries are tied, the one which received points from the most countries will be the winner (or the best placed). If there will be the same number of voters, the country which received the most 12 points is the winner (and then 10, 8, 7, etc.). If there is still tie, the country performing earlier in recap gets the advantage and is placed higher.
 * 3) The countries which ended top 6 are directly qualified for next edition. If one of them is withdrawing for different reasons, the place is given to country on 7th place, and so on.

Limit of participation

 * 1) Every member can participate just with one country.
 * 2) Each edition there are just 48 available places. As the number of taken countries and participating users is higher than the limit, a rule has been created. The countries (together with the HoD's) who finished in bottom 3 in semi-finals, are eliminated from the next edition, giving their place to other players who were previously eliminated.
 * 3) If less than 46 countries confirm for upcoming edition, the remaining places will be given to people who are supposed to be eliminated. The priority have the countries which received more points in semi-final.
 * 4) The users don't lose their countries during the break.
 * 5) As the contest has 54 users, 6 of them are eliminated each edition.

Facebook group Rules

 * 1) In the Facebook group you can freely talk and publish about all things about OESC and Eurovision you want, if you stick to the rules. In the case you want to talk or publish stuffs not about OESC you must ask permission to admins first.
 * 2) Try to talk English. This is an international competition and everybody should understand what you are saying.
 * 3) This is a contest, where people should become friends. Please don't use violating or rude language. If you have to say your opinion, do it in the way to not hurt someone.
 * 4) Don't spam and don't post links to other contests/groups without admin's permission. This can disturb rest of the members.
 * 5) No political fights and discussions are allowed.

Black list
Recently a new rule has been added that songs in the competition are no longer disqualified. Instead, the players who don't stick to the deadlines are getting strikes. Once you get three strikes, you are no longer allowed to participate in the contest. If you want to return, you'll have to sign up for the waiting list. You can receive strikes if:
 * Confirm but not submit within deadline;
 * Non-voting before deadlines;
 * Friendly voting;
 * Cheating (in this case you are banned permanently);

Here is the list of users with strikes and the ones who are banned from the contest:

'''ENJOY! '''