Community Guidelines

What Villages is for

Villages is for constructive local community — a small group of neighbours who share one village, one Town Hall, and the ordinary business of living near each other. It is not a broadcast network and it is not somewhere to build an audience.

Most of what follows is what you would expect from anyone sharing a room with you. It is written down because the app sends people to real places to meet each other, and that raises the stakes.

Villages is for people aged 16 and over. That floor is set out in the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy.

What is not allowed

Illegal material. Anything unlawful, and anything that facilitates something unlawful.

Threats and violence. Threatening someone, encouraging violence against them, or glorifying it.

Targeted harassment. Repeatedly going after a person, pile-ons, and content designed to humiliate or intimidate someone in particular. A village is small. Harassment here is felt.

Hate. Attacking or demeaning people for who they are — race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

Sexual exploitation. Any sexual content involving minors, any non-consensual sexual content, and any sexual content involving someone who cannot consent. This is reported to the authorities, not just removed.

Other people's personal information. Do not post someone's address, phone number, workplace, location or any other identifying detail without their consent. This applies to people who are not on Villages as much as to people who are.

Spam and scams. Bulk or repetitive posting, commercial spam, phishing, fraud, and anything engineered to extract money or credentials from your neighbours.

Unsafe directions. Do not send people to a place that is dangerous, that you have no right to invite them into, or that you have misrepresented. Gathering details should be true.

Using Villages to track someone. Do not use the app, or anything you learn through it, to monitor another person's movements or to work out where they live or will be. The product is built so that it cannot help you do this. Do not attempt it anyway.

Impersonation. Do not pretend to be someone else, or to hold a role in a village that you do not hold.

Meeting in person

Villages deliberately sends you to real places. Take the same care you would with any stranger: tell someone where you are going, meet somewhere public the first time, and leave if it does not feel right.

In an emergency, call the emergency services. Reporting something in Villages sends it to a queue that a human reads. It is not an emergency service, it is not watched around the clock, and it cannot bring help to you. If someone is in danger, contact the emergency services in your country directly.

Villages does not vet venues and does not verify who turns up. That is set out in more detail in the Terms of Service.

How to report something

Every post, comment, gathering and profile has a Report action. Use it. A report asks you to pick a reason — abuse, harassment, hate, sexual content, spam, or other — and lets you add details if that helps. It goes straight to the moderation queue, where a human reviews it.

Reports are not visible to the person you reported. You can see the reports you have made; you cannot see anyone else's.

Letters, and what we can do about a harmful one

We would rather be straight with you about this one. A letter's text is readable only by the person it was written to, once they collect it at the Town Hall. Our moderators cannot read it either — the database does not give them access, and that is deliberate. It is a privacy decision we stand behind, and it has a cost: a harmful letter cannot be reviewed the way a post can.

So we act on everything except the words. A letter complaint is not dismissed because we cannot read the letter. What we work from is:

• the metadata we do hold — who sent it, to whom, in which village, and when it moved between states;
• patterns — whether the same account has been reported before, by letter or otherwise, and what the shape of its behaviour looks like;
• your account of what it said, in your own words. We take that seriously as evidence.

Action can follow on that basis alone: a warning, a restriction on what an account can do, suspension, or termination.

What to do. Report the sender's profile in the app, and write to support@villages.mobile telling us what the letter said and what happened.

One thing we intend to build, and have not built yet. We intend to let a recipient voluntarily attach the text of a letter they have collected to a complaint — their copy, their choice, offered as their own evidence. That feature does not exist in the app today. Until it does, your written account to support@villages.mobile is the route, and it is enough to act on.

How to block someone

Blocking is available on another member's account. Blocking stops that account's new Town Hall items appearing in your feed. It is for you, and it does not notify them.

Blocking is not the same as reporting. If someone has broken these guidelines, please report them as well — blocking protects you, reporting protects everyone else.

What we do about it

Before content appears. Posts, comments and gatherings are screened automatically. Text the automated screen judges safe is published; images are always held for a person to look at rather than approved automatically. That means an image may take longer to appear. We think that is the right trade.

Automated screening is imperfect in both directions — it will occasionally hold something harmless and occasionally miss something it should have caught. That is why reporting matters.

After a report. A human reads it. Depending on what they find, moderators may remove or hide content, restrict what an account can do, suspend or terminate an account, preserve relevant records, and cooperate with lawful requests from authorities.

How quickly. A report is acknowledged and reviewed within 48 hours. Within that window a person has looked at it. A complicated case can take longer to resolve after that first review, and if yours is one of them we will tell you rather than leave you waiting.

Appeals. If we remove your content, restrict your account, suspend it or terminate it, you can appeal:

• email support@villages.mobile with Appeal in the subject line;
• within 30 days of the action;
• say what was done and why you think it was wrong.

The moderation owner reviews the appeal and you get one written outcome. This is deliberately a simple process for beta, and it will be formalised as Villages grows.

If you disagree with a decision

Use the appeal route above: support@villages.mobile, subject Appeal, within 30 days. Tell us what happened in your own words.

Changes

These guidelines will change as Villages grows. When they do, we will update this document and the revision date at the top.

These guidelines form part of the agreement described in the Terms of Service, so a material change is announced the same way: in the app and by email, at least 14 days before it takes effect.

Contact

support@villages.mobile
Villages Ltd (registration in progress), operated by founder Ibrahim Chaudry

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