EXPLANATION OF NEW POLICY
The moderation team, prompted by problems in the court in working under the old guidelines, have been discussing the policy of posting private conversations and messages on the forum.
In the past the line was taken that private messages were .... well, private, and that it was wrong and rude to share them without the permission of all parties to the conversation. An exception to this was made when the information was posted in certain private areas of the forum, and the information was important to regional security etc.
In our discussions, we drew a distinction between the privacy of an in-game persona and those of a real-life person. We maintain, and will enforce, the right to privacy of a player of Nationstates or other user of this forum. Therefore personal details privately shared may not be publicly posted on this forum without permission. IP addressees, e-mail or snail mail addressees etc etc etc may not be publicly posted on this forum without permission. I hope that is clear.
However, we no longer recognise the right to privacy of an in-game persona. If you discuss your plans to coup Balder, leak NPA information, infiltrate the region using a pupet, or the fact that you have been secretly controlling GBM's account for seven years then the mods will not intervene should that conversation be leaked on the forum. So watch your words.
In cases where there is doubt whether information is in-game or real-life, the mods will make a call, and it will be final. I suspect they will err on the side of caution.
I hope the above makes sense to you. You may not agree, but the mod team have spent a lot of time thrashing this out. If you have questions, post them and I will try to clarify.
