Community Guidelines

1. The short version

Nandonia is a game about building a world with other people in it. Almost everything you write is seen by strangers: a city name sits on the map, an envoy name turns up in other players' events, an inscription on a wonder is read by whoever comes along next. So the standard for anything you write is simple.

Would this be fine in a game a child is playing? That is the whole test. If you are not sure, picking something else takes a few seconds.

One thing worth explaining, because otherwise our own documents look like they contradict each other. You have to be at least 13 to have a Nandonia account. But the standard for content is all ages, which is stricter. That is deliberate. The age minimum is about who signs up; the content standard is about who has to look at what you wrote, and nobody chooses which city names they walk past on the map. So: 13 and over to play, all ages for what you write.

In four lines, everything below this point:

• Names, yours and your envoys' and your cities', should be something you would be happy to see on a shared screen.
• Writing in the world should read as though it belongs in the world.
• Treat other players the way you would want to be treated by a stranger.
• Play the game rather than the bugs.

These Guidelines form part of our Terms of Use, at nandonia.com/terms, so breaking them is breaking the Terms. That is the only sentence on this page written for a lawyer.

2. Naming envoys, cities and yourself

If you were sent here because a name of yours was rejected or reset, you are in the right place but not at the right part of it. Section 6 explains what actually happened, and it is usually not what it looks like: names are checked by an automatic filter that regularly catches innocent ones. Section 7 tells you what to do next. Neither of them is a telling-off, and neither is the list below.

This section covers your display name, the names of your cities, and the names of your envoys. They are all treated the same way, because they are all public: they appear on the map, in rankings, in other players' event feeds, and next to anything you do. The test is the same one as section 1: would this be fine in a game a child is playing?

A name should not:

• Contain slurs, or attack or demean people for who they are. Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, disability: none of it is material for a name.
• Harass, threaten or single out another person, in the game or outside it.
• Impersonate another player, a real person, or a public figure.
• Be sexual, crude, or about bodily functions.
• Reference real-world violence, terrorism, extremist groups or symbols, or real atrocities.
• Advertise anything, or contain a web address, a social handle, or a referral code.
• Suggest you are Nandonia staff, a moderator, an administrator, or an official account.
• Be a deliberate dodge around the filter: the same blocked word with a letter swapped, spaced out, or spelled creatively is still that word.
• Be keyboard mash or filler used to claim a spot, such as a long run of repeated characters. This is about spam, not about unusual names.

Now the much longer list of what is absolutely fine, since the rules above can read as though we are hard to please. Invented words are fine. Names in any language are fine. Names with accents and non-Latin characters are fine. Jokes are fine. Names that have nothing to do with the medieval setting are fine. Naming a city after your cat is fine. We are not judging your taste, and there is no hidden requirement that a name sound serious or lore-appropriate.

The mechanical rules

Separately from all of the above, a name has to fit a shape, and a good number of rejections are really about this rather than about content. A name is between 2 and 24 characters. It can use letters from any alphabet, numbers, spaces, hyphens, underscores, apostrophes and full stops. It cannot use emoji, symbols, or invisible characters.

An honest caveat on that 24, because it will bite some players and not others. For envoy names the length is currently measured in storage rather than in letters, and letters outside the basic Latin alphabet take up more room. In practice that means a name in Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Japanese or Chinese can be refused as too long while still looking short on screen. If that happens to you, a shorter version of the same name will go through. It is a limitation on our side rather than anything to do with your name, we know it is unfair, and we would like to hear about it when it happens.

One more rule surprises people, so it is worth explaining rather than just stating. A name cannot mix certain alphabets together, most commonly Latin letters inside an otherwise Cyrillic or Greek name. Written entirely in one of them, that same name is fine, and the combinations that occur naturally in a language, such as Japanese mixing its scripts, are allowed. The restriction is narrow on purpose: swapping in a letter that looks identical but is not is the standard way to disguise a blocked word or to impersonate another player, and nothing can tell that apart from an ordinary name automatically.

3. Writing in the world

Some parts of Nandonia let you write properly: diary fragments from an expedition, notes left for the scholars, inscriptions carved into a wonder, the custom lore choices that shape your own story, and anywhere else the game invites you to write something. This is the best writing in the game and most of it comes from players, so thank you.

Everything in section 2 applies here too, for the same reason: another player reads it, and they did not choose what it would say. Beyond that, there are two things specific to writing.

Write in the world

Someone finds your account of a ruin long after you wrote it, and for a moment they are standing in the same place you were. Real-world references break that: brand names, memes, politics, current events, references to other games, or anything that reminds the reader they are looking at a browser tab. Please keep them out. Nobody is marking your prose, and a plain sentence written in-world is worth far more than an elaborate one that is not.

Write your own words

Submit writing that is yours to submit. Do not paste in someone else's work, and do not put anything in it that identifies a real person, including yourself. Anything you write here is public and permanent as far as you should be concerned, and other players can quote or screenshot it.

One practical difference from names, which section 6 goes into properly: written submissions do not appear in the game straight away. The same automatic filter that checks names checks your text as you send it, and if it objects the submission is refused there and then. Anything that gets past it goes into a queue, where a person reads every one before it goes live. That is not a punishment and it is not aimed at you, it is simply how this part of the game works for everybody.

4. Other players

Nandonia has no chat. There is no direct messaging between players, and that is not an oversight. It means most of the ways people are unpleasant to each other in games are not available here, and we would like to keep it that way.

What is left is still visible to other people: your names, your writing, and how you play alongside everyone else. So:

• Do not use a name or a piece of writing to get at a specific player.
• Do not impersonate another player, or pretend to speak for us.
• Do not organise or encourage other people to pile onto someone.
• Do not report a player you simply lost to. Section 8 covers what reports are for.

Competition is entirely welcome. Outbuilding someone, beating them to a wonder, or sitting above them in the rankings is the game working as intended. The line is between playing hard and going after the person.

And a note for the veterans. New players will make choices you would not make, and working that out for themselves is most of the fun.

5. Fair play

Nandonia is a shared world with rankings in it, so an advantage the game did not intend to give you is taken from everybody else. Please do not:

• Cheat, or use any tool, script or modification to get an advantage the game does not offer you.
• Use bots, macros or automation to play for you. Play it yourself.
• Run extra accounts to get around a limit or a cooldown, or to funnel resources into your main one. One person, one account.
• Buy, sell or trade accounts, Gold, diamonds or items for real money outside the game.
• Attack, overload or probe the servers, or scrape the site beyond ordinary play.

Bugs

Finding a bug is not against the rules and never will be. The game is built by one person, and players find things we never would. Tell us and we will fix it, and we are genuinely grateful when you do.

The line is between finding one and farming one. Stumbling into a bug that hands you free resources is not your fault. Going back to it forty times once you know what it is, is a decision, and if it gave you an advantage we will usually just reverse the advantage. Reporting it costs you nothing and we would much rather have the report.

Bugs and security problems both go to [email protected]. If you find a security issue, please send it there rather than posting it publicly or testing how far it goes. We will not take action against anyone who reports something in good faith.

6. How moderation works

This is the section most people come here for, so it is the most detailed. There are two separate systems and they behave completely differently, which is usually the source of the confusion.

Names: checked by a filter, live immediately

When you name an envoy, a city, or yourself, the name is checked against an automatic filter as you submit it. If it passes, the name is live right away. Nobody reads it first. A person only looks at a name afterwards if another player reports it, or if we change the filter and re-check the names already out in the world.

Those two safety nets cover your display name, your city names and your envoy names. They do not cover everything. When you suggest a name for something shared, such as an organisation, it is checked against the same blocked-word list as you submit it and that is the end of it: there is no report button for it and it is not swept up when we re-check names later. So a suggestion of that kind is effectively published on your judgement alone. We would rather tell you that than let you assume someone is checking behind you.

The filter is a list of words and patterns to block, plus some handling for the obvious ways people disguise them. It is useful and it is not clever. It does not know what your name means, what language it is in, or that it is your grandmother's. It matches text.

Which means it gets things wrong, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise. Ordinary words contain blocked words inside them. Place names and surnames from all over the world collide with English profanity by pure accident. A perfectly innocent name can be caught for a reason that would look ridiculous if we explained it. We have put work into reducing these false matches and we have not eliminated them, because nobody has.

So please read a rejection or a reset as what it is: a filter matched some text. It is not a judgement about you, it is not an accusation, and it is not a warning. Nothing is counted against your account, there is no strike system for it to feed, and no person has concluded anything about you. Choosing another name is the entire fix. If yours was reset and you have no idea why, the most likely answer is that the filter was wrong, and section 7 tells you how to tell us so.

Written submissions: read by a person before they appear

The in-world writing in section 3 works the other way round. Diary fragments, scholar's notes, inscriptions and custom lore options pass the same filter first, and are refused on the spot if it objects. Everything that gets through then goes into a queue, and a person reads every single one before it appears in the game. Not just the flagged ones. All of them.

So a submission sitting there unapproved does not mean anything is wrong with it. It means it is in the queue. Nandonia is run by one person, so this can take a little while, and we would rather be slow than let the game fill up with things nobody checked.

What we keep

We keep the original wording of anything you submit, including text that was rejected and text you later changed. That record is what makes it possible to review a decision and to handle an appeal, and it is also how we spot someone submitting abuse over and over. The Privacy Policy at nandonia.com/privacy says the same thing.

We will get moderation wrong in both directions. Something will be rejected that should have been fine, and something will slip through that should not have. Both are worth telling us about.

7. If a name or a submission is rejected

First: nothing has happened to your account. Your cities, your envoys, your Gold and your progress are exactly where you left them. This is a name or a piece of text, and nothing more than that.

If a name was rejected as you typed it

Try a different name. That is genuinely the fastest route back into the game, and for most people it is the end of the story. If you think the filter was simply wrong about an ordinary name, tell us, because a false match we do not hear about is one we cannot fix.

If a name you were already using was reset

This happens when another player reports a name, or when we change the filter and re-check the names already in the world. You get a message in the game telling you which name was reset, with a button to choose a new one. Nothing else changes, and again, this is not a warning and not a strike.

That message will not tell you which part of the name caused it, and we know that is unsatisfying. It is honestly because the filter often cannot say anything useful: the match may be a fragment inside a longer word. If it makes no sense to you, that is a good reason to appeal rather than a reason to assume you did something wrong.

If a written submission was rejected

Which of two things happened depends on when it was rejected. If the filter objected as you sent it, you will have been told immediately and nothing was saved: edit the wording and send it again. If it was accepted at the time and turned down later, a person read it, and you can see that on your submissions page at nandonia.com/submissions, which lists what you have sent in with its status and shows the reason the moderator gave. From there you can revise it and send it back once. If the revised version is also turned down, that is the end of the road for that particular piece of text, though it does not affect anything else you write.

How to appeal

Email [email protected]. A person reads it, not a script. Please include:

• Your display name, so we can find the account.
• The exact name or text that was rejected.
• Anything that would not be obvious to a stranger, such as the language it is in, or that it is a real place or a family name.

If we agree the filter was wrong, we fix the filter, so the next player with a name like yours never runs into it. If we do not agree, we will tell you why in plain words rather than quoting a rule at you. Either way you get an answer from a person, and we will reply within 30 days.

You are not in trouble for appealing, and asking us to look again is never held against you. We would rather hear from you than have you leave assuming we thought the worst of you.

8. Reporting another player

Names are the thing the filter is worst at, so this is where we rely on players. On another player's profile and city pages, and on their envoy rows, you will find a report option. Use it if the name breaks section 2. You can add a short reason, and please do, because it is often the only thing that explains why the name is a problem at all.

Those are the only places the button appears at the moment, and it is worth knowing that, because it is not where most people notice a bad name. If you saw one on the map, in a ranking, on a wonder, or anywhere else without a report option, email [email protected] instead. Do the same for writing in the world that breaks section 3, which cannot be reported from inside the game at all. What helps most is:

• What you saw, quoted exactly. The precise spelling is what lets us find it and fix the filter.
• Where you saw it: on the map, in a ranking, on a wonder, and so on.
• Why it is a problem, if that would not be obvious. A word that is offensive in your language may mean nothing in ours, and we would rather be told than miss it.

What happens next. A person reads every report. If it breaks the Guidelines we act, usually by resetting the name or removing the content, and often by updating the filter so the same thing does not get through again. Be aware that we will not come back to you with the outcome. There is no notification for that, and we would not discuss your account with another player either. Silence is not the report being ignored.

Please report things because they break the Guidelines, not because you are losing to the person. Deliberately false reports are themselves a breach, and every one of them takes time away from a real one. An honest report that turns out to be nothing is completely fine and always will be.

9. What happens if the Guidelines are broken

We try to match the response to what actually happened. This is the same ladder as section 10 of the Terms of Use, written for a player rather than for a court. Roughly in order of severity, we may:

• Send you a message explaining what the problem is.
• Reject a submission, or remove content that breaks these Guidelines.
• Reset a name, so you are asked to pick a new one.
• Reverse an advantage that came from a bug or from cheating.
• Restrict your access to particular features.
• Suspend the account for a period.
• Close the account permanently.

Some honesty about that list, because a ladder like it usually implies more machinery than actually exists. In practice, two things happen: a name is refused as you type it, or a name you were using is reset and you get a message about it. That is the whole of what the software does on its own. Everything further down the list is a decision a person would have to make, on one account, deliberately. There is no system counting strikes against you, no automatic ban, and nothing on this page fires by itself.

We normally start at the lowest step that fits, and for a first mistake that is usually a reset or a message and nothing else. We do not have to work through the steps in order, though. Something serious, such as fraud, an attack on the service, or content that puts someone at risk, can go straight to the account being closed. That is set out in the Terms and it is not a step that is reached by accident.

One consequence has real money attached to it and should not be left in the small print. If an account is closed for a serious breach, any unspent Gold on it and everything bought with it are forfeited and are not refunded. Section 10 of the Terms sets out when that applies, and it is the serious cases only: fraud, chargeback abuse, or cheating that affected other players. Nothing in this document leads there by degrees, and an account in good standing is never closed in order to take its Gold.

You can appeal any of it, the same way as in section 7: email [email protected] and a person will read it. We make mistakes, the filter certainly does, and we would rather hear about it than have you assume it was deliberate.

The whole point of this page is that hardly any of it should ever apply to you. Name your cities, write your fragments, build something worth looking at, and we will never need to have this conversation.