Community Guidelines

In short

• Be kind and stay on topic. Harassment, hate and anything illegal in India come down.
• No promotions of real-money games, betting, crypto or token sales, lending, investment schemes, adult content, weapons, drugs or multi-level marketing.
• Do not trade, buy or arrange votes, and do not use more than one account to vote.
• Breaking the rules earns a strike: a warning first, a 7-day posting pause second, and posting closed to the account third. You can appeal within 30 days.

These Guidelines are part of the rules of Namestead, with the Terms of Service. A community can add its own rules on its page; they apply on top of these, never instead of them.

What you post is public

What you post here is public. In a public community anyone, signed in or not, can read it, and people can copy it or take a screenshot. Your handle and your public profile show beside it. Deleting a post removes its words from the page but cannot take back copies other people have made.

• A members-only community is visible to its members only. Everything in a public community is visible to anyone.
• When you delete a post or a comment, its words go and the thread shows “[deleted]”, so replies keep their place.
• Content we take down for breaking a rule is kept privately for 180 days, so that you can appeal and so that we can answer a lawful request. It is not shown to anyone else. Where the law requires us to keep it longer, such as for an offence we must report, we keep it under a legal hold until the authorities no longer need it.

The rules

Do not post, and do not link to, content that:

• harasses, threatens or abuses a person, or attacks people for who they are;
• shares another person’s private details, or private or intimate images of them, without their consent;
• pretends to be another person or organisation;
• endangers or sexualises a child;
• is illegal in India, including everything listed in the Terms of Service;
• is spam: adverts, link farms, or the same post made again and again;
• spreads malware, or imitates a brand or a login to get passwords;
• copies work you do not have the right to share;
• is an image, video or audio made or changed with AI or other tools to look real and show a real person saying or doing something they did not, or a real event that did not happen, unless it is clearly labelled and is not used to deceive.

An image made or changed with AI keeps its label here. When you upload one, tick “This image was made or changed with AI”. If the file itself says so, we keep that label too and show “Made or changed with AI” under the image.

Stay on topic for the community you are in, say who you are only as yourself, and keep to one account. Some posts wait for a person to look at them first: those from accounts under a day old and from new accounts, and the first few posts that carry links. That is not a judgement about you.

Promotions that are not allowed

These are banned in posts and comments, in Showcase listings, and in Sponsored slots, whoever pays:

• Real-money games
• Betting
• Crypto or token sales
• Lending or credit
• Investment schemes
• Adult content
• Weapons
• Drugs
• Multi-level marketing

Promoting your own work is welcome in Showcase and where a community’s rules allow it, if it is not one of the above and you say plainly that it is yours.

Votes

A vote says that a post, a comment or a Showcase listing is worth a look. Do not trade, swap, buy or sell votes, do not ask a group to vote together, and do not use more than one account, or other people’s accounts, to vote. Sponsored content is always marked “Sponsored” and is kept apart from ranked lists.

If we find votes were arranged this way we may remove the posts or comments they lifted, limit the posting of whoever arranged them, or close the account.

Reporting

Every post, comment, community and public profile has a Report button. A report names a reason: spam, harassment, hate, illegal content, private images, impersonation, a child at risk, personal details, copyright, something else. A person reads every report. We acknowledge it at once and decide within 36 hours.

A report of private images, impersonation, a child at risk is different: the post, comment, listing or profile is hidden at once, before anyone has judged it, and so are a community’s description and rules, and we aim to decide within 2 hours. If the report is wrong it goes back. Reports made in bad faith cost the reporter Trust Points.

You do not need an account to make these three reports: use the Report button and leave an email for our reply. We use the email only to reply, and delete it when the report is closed. If we decide a report was made in bad faith, we keep a scrambled (hashed) copy of the email and the connection address for 12 months, so that the same person cannot use the “hide at once” step again, and then delete them; you can contest that through the grievance officer. Without an account, up to 2 reports in 30 days hide something at once; after that a report still reaches a person at once but hides nothing until they decide, and a report found to be made in bad faith ends it.

Where the law requires an offence to be reported, such as sexual material involving a child, we take the content down, keep the evidence for the authorities, and report it to them.

Reports about a name, an order from a court or an authority, and complaints about how we handled something are in the Abuse policy and on the Contact page.

Automated screening

Automated tools (AI classifiers) read new and changed posts, comments, communities, profiles, listings and reports to sort them and flag what looks serious. They may publish a post held for review when every check calls it clean, hold a post that is very likely spam, harassment or hate until a person looks at it, and mark something urgent. A person makes every removal and every strike, and decides every report and appeal. How moderation works explains what they read and what they never see.

Strikes

When we take something down for breaking a rule, we email you the reason and the rule. A community’s moderators can take down posts in their community; only Namestead gives a strike. Strikes go in this order:

• First strike: a warning.
• Second strike: your posting and commenting are paused for 7 days.
• Third strike: posting and commenting are closed to the account.

A strike counts for 12 months, or until it is lifted on appeal. Strikes are separate from Trust Points. Removing spam, harassment, hate or illegal content also takes away 25 Trust Points, which you can appeal in the same way.

Some things do not wait for the ladder. We may close an account at once for child safety, intimate images shared without consent, or malware and phishing.

Appeals

The email says what was taken down, why, and the rule. You can appeal within 30 days from the page “Your removals” in your dashboard, or by writing to the grievance officer. A person reads every appeal once, and we answer within 7 days. If the appeal succeeds the content goes back and any strike it carried is lifted. We acknowledge a complaint within 24 hours.

If you still disagree with a decision about your content, you can appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee (gac.gov.in) within 30 days of our decision. The grievance officer is Sushil Kumar, sushil.dev.in@gmail.com.