Rules of messaging at World of Card Games
Private messages let you say a quick word to another player away from the table, usually to arrange a game. These rules are part of our Community Guidelines, and everything in the guidelines applies to private messages too.
Where messaging lives
Open the friends icon in the top bar, on every page. It lists every player you have liked, and the speech bubble on a player's row opens your conversation with them. The one exception is a player at your own table: talk to them in the table chat. A new message shows up as an unread mark on the icon.
A message can be 140 characters long. It is built for "fancy a game of Spades?", not for long conversations.
Who you can message
- Friends. Two players who have liked each other are friends, and friends can write back and forth freely, within the limits below.
- Someone you have liked who has not liked you back. This is a one-way message. It arrives in their activity feed rather than as an unread conversation, and you can send one an hour to the same person and five a day in total. If they like you back, you are friends and the normal limits apply.
- Anyone else. You cannot message a player you have not liked. Like them first, from their seat while you play at the same table, or from their row on the game over panel. If they liked you or wrote to you first, Add friend in your activity feed likes them back.
You do not need an account to send messages. A guest can like players and message them under the same rules, up to 20 messages a day. An account lifts that cap.
The sending limits
The limits exist to keep the site free of spam. Nobody playing normally will meet them:
- 140 characters per message.
- One second between messages to the same person.
- 10 messages a minute, 30 an hour, 100 a day.
- A guest can send 20 messages a day in all, one-way messages included. Sign up to send more.
- At most 10 messages a minute to the same person.
- At most 10 new people in any five minutes.
- A message with the same text as your last one to that person, within five minutes, is treated as a duplicate and refused.
- A conversation keeps its most recent 100 messages. Older ones drop off the end.
If you cross a limit, the message is not sent and you get a short note saying why. Cross one three times within an hour and messaging is switched off for your account for an hour.
What is not allowed in a message
- Links to other sites are refused.
- Messages pass through the same automatic moderation as table chat. A message that might offend is held back and you are asked whether to send it anyway. A message that is clearly over the line is not sent at all.
- Everything the Community Guidelines rule out at a table is ruled out here as well: harassment, slurs, sexual messages, advertising, and asking other players for personal details.
If you do not want to hear from someone
Mute them. You will find Mute on their seat when you are at a table together, and you can undo it in Settings > Account > People. It works both ways: neither of you can message the other any more, and their table chat is hidden from you as well. Blocking a player, also on their seat, stops their messages too. Unliking a player ends the friendship, though it leaves them able to send the occasional one-way message if they still like you, so mute or block is the firmer answer.
A sent message is never a promise of a reply. The other player may be offline, may have muted you, or may simply not want a game right now.
Messages are not private
Private messages, like table chat, are not private from us. An administrator may read them when abuse is reported. Abuse of the messaging system can get your account banned, exactly as it can in the chat.