Class Regions Rules

Class Regions: Class regions are special regions that exist for educational purposes. Unless you are an invited member of that class, you should not move to a class region.

Customizable Field Violations: Using offensive terms and language in a nation's motto, currency, national animal, demonym and/or national title. Also applies to using offensive and/or pornographic imagery in a national flag or banner (For more information on this decision, go here). Note that malicious use of any human or racial terms as national animals is expressly forbidden.

Ex-Nation Flag - Don't use it. It's a moderation tool, and is meant solely to designate ex-nations.
Commend/Condemn icons - only the WA gets to hand these out. Don't use them.
Game Moderator/Forum Moderator/Administrator/Issues Editor/Roleplay Mentor badges - don't use them. See "Impersonating a moderator" below.
Animated flags are subject to removal as well if they're overly flashy or disruptive to the eyes.

English Language: NationStates is an English language website. We ask that posts on the official forums be made in English, outside of the dedicated specific language threads in the General forum. We do not normally enforce an English language requirement on other areas of the site (e.g. Regional Message Boards), with the exception of all communication with site staff, which must be made in English.

Flame/Threats: Personal attacks against other players, expressed via OOC (out-of-character) comments; insults, swearing and anything posted with intent to offend. In-character remarks can be interpreted this way as well; watch what you post if other posters are unaware you're not serious. Erudite slams while maintaining a veneer of politeness can also be considered flaming. Repeated instances of flaming directed at the same player can be considered harassment, a more serious offense.

Flamebaiting: Posts that are made with the aim of angering someone indirectly. Not outright flame, but still liable to bring angry replies. Flame baiting is a far more subtle and covert action; it is an underhanded tactic that is designed to provoke a response from another player. It's in the same context of trolling but with flamebaiting it's just the one person. Also included under flamebaiting is malicious quote editing, changing the contents of a quoted post without showing the original text, either through color changes or strike-out.

Forbidden Links/QR Codes: We prohibit links to websites and webpages that are built around content that is prohibited on NationStates (e.g. Adult-Only Content, Trolling, Malicious Content), and you should therefore use discretion when linking to other websites. Certain sites are expressly prohibited under this policy, and are noted here:

4chan
Encyclopaedia Dramatic
Stormfront

The following policies also apply to other forms of links:

Referral links: where you derive some sort of financial or other benefit from another person clicking them and signing up, are not permitted.
QR codes: are not permitted to be posted anywhere across the site, including flags, banners, dispatches, and forum or RMB posts. Use text links instead.
Editable files: note that if you post a link to an editable file (e.g. a Google Doc), you remain responsible for the content of that file, including if someone else edits content into it (e.g. pornography) that would cause it to become a forbidden link. We therefore do not recommend linking to editable files.
Auto-download links: that automatically initiate a download via your browser, are not permitted.

Garish Posts: We like fonts and colors, really we do, but anything used in excess becomes annoying. Think twice about posts that make other users cringe... especially if you've been repeatedly asked to refrain by players and mods alike.

Gravedigging: Posting a reply on a long unused thread. Adding legitimate new material is permitted, but the acceptable age varies from forum to forum. Check the stickies in each forum to determine the standard for what constitutes gravedigging.

Harassment/Griefing: Harassing/griefing a nation or region because of their words or actions is forbidden regardless - in telegrams, Regional Message board (RMB) posts, and on the forums.
*Accusations of misconduct that may bring real world repercussions outside of NationStates do not belong in public spaces on NationStates and will be punished as harassment. Players may post, in general terms, about factual repercussions taken in response (I.e. removal from a region or regional position), but may not go into details or link to material that does.

Homework: Requests for assistance with homework in any forum are forbidden.

Illegal Activities: Don't promote illegal activities or start threads describing the best way to get away with them.

There are nearly 200 nations in the (real) world with different and often contradictory laws. We judge what is "illegal" based off the countries that are most significant to us in terms of traffic to the site and hosting: primarily the US, Canada, UK and Australia. Facilitating (i.e. posting instructions on how to break the law) or encouraging others to commit illegal activites are considered to be "promoting" them. Admitting to a crime can also often be seen as promoting, unless expressing regret; posts admitting to committing a crime must be clear that they are neither endorsing it nor contain information that facilitates committing that crime.

Note that this applies to "real world" crime and is not intended to prohibit how people play their nations (e.g. through issues or roleplay) unless such behaviour crosses over into promotion of RL illegal activities.

Impersonation: Any attempt to maliciously impersonate another nation or region, including employing a similar name is illegal according to the FAQ. Note that the impersonation must be "malicious" to be a prohibited action, and we generally require the report to come from the impersonated party. We do not normally consider impersonating another nation or region for gameplay advantage to be inherently malicious (e.g. "false flag" operations), but malicious impersonation of specific players remains prohibited. (i.e. you can create a nation named "Testregionia Security Officer" in an attempt to impersonate the Testregionia government, but you may not create a nation named Examp13stan, and pretend to be the player Examplestan.)

Impersonation of Moderators or Administrators can lead to immediate deletion. Note that using Moderation's Custom Warning Tags in your posts is deemed impersonating a moderator.

Don't use the moderation red-text warning tags Similarly, do not impersonate any other staff members such as Issues Editors, and do not use the WA ruling code

Mods as a Weapon: Threatening another nation with moderation action if they don't do "action" is not allowed. Representing yourself as a moderator is considered impersonation, and is not allowed. This includes using the moderator's warning code. (See also "Impersonation", above)

Nation Hijacking: Stealing someone else's nation by gaining their password is a very serious offense and likely to result in a permanent ban from the site. Note the section on shared accounts for when an account is shared.

Privacy Violation: Players on NationStates have a reasonable expectation that their privacy will be respected. It is not permitted to post or otherwise share another player's personally-identifying information (i.e. social media accounts, IP addresses, postal addresses, E-mail addresses, telephone numbers, or other real-world identifying information).

Puppet Flooding: Any player or group of players creating large numbers of puppets for the purpose of spamming, harassing, or annoying a region, be they invaders, defenders, or natives, may find all such puppets ... and their main nations ... deleted without warning. Note that Moderators do not enforce regional bans unless a player has a significant record of harassing members of the region (i.e. prior rule-breaking). In other circumstances, it should be handled by the Regional Officers.

Regional Passwords: Attempting to hack, crack or guess a region's password is prohibited. Note that using deception to gain a region's password through someone giving it to you willingly is not prohibited, so long as other rules (e.g. on Malicious Impersonation) are not violated in the process.

Reposting Locked Threads: Do not repost a locked thread unless you have first asked for, and receieved, permission from a Moderator.

Selling Nationstates Accounts: Strictly prohibited. Under no circumstances are you allowed to sell nations/regions for any form financial (or items with financial value) compensation.

Spam, and the different types of it

There are many types of spam, but the general definition is making a post that doesn't have any sort of use. Excessive bumping, tagging, and random posts with irrelevant information are all examples of spam. The same applies to in-game posts on regional message boards and telegrams.

Excessive Bumping: Bumping is adding a meaningless (*bump*) post to a thread to push it back to the top of the list. Bump rates vary between forums, but as a rule, once every 24 hours is the maximum outside General or II where it may be acceptable to bump any thread that has fallen past the first two pages. If the bulk of your posts, or posts in the thread are bumps, you should take it to mean that there is not enough in your topic, and let it end.

Forum Spam: Off-topic, irrelevant and multi-posts that do not belong, such as smiley spam, meme spam, linkspam, and attempting to increase your post count.
-- Fishing for attention can be distracting, even upsetting to other players. Your Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites are more appropriate places for it. This especially applies to unnecessary drama. Please, do not drop a drama bomb on a chat as a way of getting a response.
-- Greeter Spam is only posting a 'hi' or 'hello', especially in the chat threads. Please add something to the ongoing conversations, even if you're introducing something new.
-- Trollnaming is a post made only to call out a player suspected of trolling. This can also be considered flaming. Report trolls in Moderation. Don't name them in-thread, and if found, do not feed.
-- Tagging is considered spam as well, since we have the "bookmark topic" feature (it's in your Profile and a menu option on every thread).

Regional Advertising Spam: Regions can advertise themselves either via Telegrams, or in the Gameplay forum as per the requirements in the Guide to the Gameplay forum.

The rules on sending recruitment telegrams can be found in the FAQs. Most importantly, they must have the "recruitment" checkbox ticked before sending. Note that there are niche circumstances where a telegram encouraging a nation to move region may not require the recruitment checkbox be ticked, such as a region schism resulting in the community splitting between two regions, a telegram asking a member of your region's military to deploy to another region on a mission, a region relocating its community to another region, or a welcome telegram that encourages nations to move to another region, or a telegram that encourages nations to change their region without specifying where they should go. We strongly encourage you to seek a ruling on your situation first via GHR if you are unsure whether one of those exceptions applies to a telegram you intend to send.

Posting regional advertisements on the Regional Message Boards of other regions is not permitted. Minor violations of this should be handled by a region's Regional Officers; egregious and multi-regional violations should be reported via GHR for Moderators to handle.

Tagging nations (whether in Dispatches or RMB posts) for the purpose of regional advertising is prohibited, with the exception of the situations listed above for telegrams.

IGNORE Cannon Spam: Just posting "IGNORED" or 'Ignore Cannon Fired', with or without accompanying pictures, is spam. If you don't want to play with someone, don't. Work it out with the participating players, or withdraw from the roleplay. Add to your ignore list as you like, but don't gloat about it. If you use the Ignore Cannon as part of your IC method of explaining why $player is no longer involved, do it with some class - and do it in character.

Image Spam: Posting of images, particularly repeated or multiple images, that do not serve to help the flow of the thread. This includes images in both in-character and out-of-character posts.

Like Spamming (RMB): We all like to acknowledge posts we think worthy, and the posters appreciate the occasional thumbs up. What no one appreciates is like spamming. Be discriminating in what you chose to like. Sending excessive notifications by liking massive amounts of posts will get your likes deleted and a warning.

GHR (General Help Request) Spam: Sending (repeated) messages that are not related to either game issues or reporting rulebreaking behavior. Also included is sending repeated appeals for the same situation after you have received a final appeal on the matter as per the published procedure.

Regional Message Board Spam: Posting multiple messages on your message board within a short period of time can be considered message board spam. Founders and regional officers they designate may suppress spam (or any other messages) on the regional message board.

Signature Spam: Maximum size should never exceed eight lines, including blank lines and a quote box is four lines; signatures should not use more than two of these. Signatures exceeding eight lines will be reduced using spoiler tags. Large font sizes should be avoided and may be trimmed without warning. See Advertisements and Forbidden Links above. See also Reppy's Sig Workshop for a guide on building your signature.

WA Advertising Spam: Non-natives and region-hoppers are forbidden to post WA advertisements or requests for proposal approval outside of their native region. The game-created regions are no exception to this rule. Requests for proposal approval may be telegrammed to WA delegates, but must be tagged appropriately. More than one request per proposal may be considered spam if the telegrams are materially the same. WA campaign telegrams shouldn't be sent to non-WA members. Tagging nations (whether in Dispatches or RMB posts) for the purpose of WA proposal campaigning is prohibited.

Thread Hijacking: Appropriating a thread for a discussion totally unrelated to the original purpose of said thread. Hijacking can take the form of a single post or a long discussion. Such posts may be split or deleted, and the poster warned.

Trolling/Baiting/Gloating: Trolling is defined as posts that are made with the aim of angering people. (like 'ALL JEWS ARE [insert vile comment here]' for example). Someone disagreeing with you does not equate to trolling. Intent is incredibly important and will be judged by the moderators to the best of their abilities. Honest belief does not excuse trolling. Disagreements are expected and conducting yourself in a civil manner is ideal. Trollbaiting is the action of making posts that attract trolls. A prime example of trollbaiting would be gloating over the results of an election.

Gloating over punishments handed out to other players is not acceptable. Another form of the offense, IGNORE gloating, is typically seen in the roleplay forums, though it can appear elsewhere. Politely informing another nation that you are henceforth using the "ignore" feature is acceptable, but repeating it in different threads or over long periods is considered gloating and will be dealt with appropriately. Other cases will be considered on an ad hoc basis.

WA Multiing: A basic rule is one WA nation per person. (You may have as many non-WA nations as you like.) Any WA nations operated from the same computer will be treated as multies. If you have family or roommates who want to be in the WA too, work it out with them. It is your responsibility to make sure you have resigned from the WA before someone else joins from your computer. There is no way for us to truly know how many people are on the other side of the connection.