Our nick policy is pretty simple. First though, we should get some of the basics out of the way.
- Nicks should not contain anything deeply disrespectful or offensive to others.
- Avatars should also not contain anything deeply disrespectful of offensive to others.
- Character names should not be part of ones nick unless only playing one character.
Contents of a Nick / Avatar
This should all go without saying, however, it has recently become necessary to specify some things.
A nick and avatar are your public face that everyone see's whether they talk to you or not online. As such if someone willfully chooses to have something on either that is deeply offensive or divisive in some way it communicates this intent to the world. The intent that one is trying to cause a problem, like going around a Jewish community wearing an "I <3 Hitler" t-shirt, it says more about you at that point than anything you're going to ever say.
Avatars and Nicks should not be vulgar (swearing, names of various genital areas, offensive terms for various races / sexual orientations / genders / life style choices). Most everyone knows what is in bad taste for a nick or an avatar. However, if it is unclear our staff will be happy to enlighten anyone who needs advise about a particular nick or avatar. This also includes reference to common triggers for people, such as references to suicide, murder, rape, and other violent and distasteful crimes. There is no reasonable explination for having a nick saying Kill Yourself or Rape the Bitches except to cause problems and offend people, in other words; trolling. This will not be tolerated.
Staff will change your nick for you if it violates policy and you do not change it yourself. Avatars you will be asked to change the Avatar, you will be reported if you do not and are subject to being kicked or banned from the server.
Character Names / Nicks
Character names in a nick can be helpful, however, is also confusing when playing more than one character. As such when a single character is play the nick can contain the character name but when multiple characters are being played, it should contain only the user who is playing. See our Role Playing Guide for more information about how to differentiate for multiple characters in play at the same time.
When playing a single character, a person may add that character name to the front of their nick as such:
Billy Joe (CyberMan)
This is not the only format, of course. Generally speaking it goes character name and then username in parenthesis, brackets, or some other delimiter.
Another bonus to not using character names in nicks is that it doesn't become habit to refer to people, OOC, as their characters. This promotes a clear separation between OOC and IC chatter and thus between players / characters.