PageLab is a place to keep track of what you read and talk about it with other readers. This page is about conduct — how the service may and may not be used, and what happens when someone misuses it. What may be posted is a separate question, covered by the Content Policy.
Things you may do, said out loud
Policies of this kind tend to forbid so broadly that ordinary use looks like a violation. These are all fine, and none of them will be treated as abuse:
- Take your data with you. Export your library from Settings whenever you like, as often as you like. It is yours.
- Import a library from somewhere else — a Goodreads or StoryGraph CSV is a supported input, not a suspicious one.
- Disagree, in public, at length. Negative reviews, unpopular opinions about beloved books, and arguments about them are the point of a reading community. A review being harsh is not a reason to report it.
- Keep to yourself. Use a private profile, block anyone you like, refuse follow requests, and never post at all. Reading without participating is a legitimate way to use PageLab.
- Use a name that is not the one on your passport. We do not require legal names. Pen names and pseudonyms are fine, as long as you are not pretending to be a specific real person.
Things you may not do
To other people.
- Harass, threaten, or intimidate anyone, including by encouraging others to do it.
- Impersonate a specific real person, or claim to be a writer you are not.
- Contact someone who has blocked you, by any route, including a new account.
- Publish private information about someone without their agreement.
To the service.
- Scrape or bulk-collect other readers' data, whether by script, by automation, or by hand. Your own data is yours; theirs is not.
- Circumvent, probe or interfere with the technical limits described below, or attempt to reach data you are not entitled to.
- Upload anything designed to damage a device or a system.
- Run automated accounts, mass-register, or use PageLab to send unsolicited commercial messages.
- Resell or redistribute access to the service.
Around enforcement.
- Do not evade a suspension. If your account is suspended or banned, making another one to get around it is a separate violation in itself, and we retain information specifically to detect it.
- Do not file reports in bad faith. The report queue is how genuine harm reaches us, and using it as a weapon against someone you disagree with degrades it for everyone.
The limits that are actually enforced
These are technical caps, not policy aspirations — the server refuses anything past them. They are published so that hitting one reads as a limit rather than a fault.
- Uploads: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, MP4, QuickTime and WebM only, up to 50 MB per file and 10 files per request.
- Posts: up to 5,000 characters, 10 attachments and 5 tagged books.
- Writing actions are rate-limited, and repeated sign-in and registration attempts are limited more tightly than ordinary use.
What happens when someone breaks these rules
There are exactly four sanctions, and no others: a warning, a seven-day suspension, a six-month suspension, and a permanent ban. A suspension ends by itself when its time is up; nobody has to remember to lift it.
A person decides, every time. Nothing here escalates automatically. A moderator sees an account's prior sanctions before acting and chooses what the situation warrants, which means a first mistake and a fifth are not treated the same way — and also that there is no counter quietly moving you towards a ban.
Bans need a second pair of eyes unless a senior moderator acts. A moderator below our senior level cannot ban anyone on their own: a second moderator has to agree. A senior moderator can act alone. This applies to every length of ban, including a permanent one. An unsigned proposal lapses after seven days rather than sitting open indefinitely.
Every action is recorded. Each sanction writes a permanent entry naming who acted, what role they held at the time, and why. Nothing in that record is edited or deleted; reversing a decision adds a new entry rather than removing the old one.
If we act against your account
You will be told: what was done, why, when it ends, and how to appeal. The appeal link in that notice works without signing in — deliberately, because an account that has been banned cannot sign in, and an appeal you can only file from inside the thing you have been locked out of is not an appeal. The link is good for 180 days and for one appeal against that sanction.
A granted appeal lifts the sanction. If what you want to challenge is a piece of content being removed rather than a sanction against your account, the appeal link does not cover it — write to support@orbytgames.com and say what was removed.
We do not commit to a response time we cannot keep. PageLab is operated by a very small team, and an appeal is read by a person rather than a queue-clearing script.
Reporting misuse
Use the report control in the app or on the site — it is on posts, comments, profiles, messages and groups. That route reaches the review queue directly; an email does not. You do not need a verified email address to file one, and reporting is available whatever state your own account is in.
Anything involving a child goes through the same control and is handled under our Child Safety standards, which take precedence over everything on this page.
An intimate image of you, posted without your consent, does not need the report control and does not need an account. Email official@orbytgames.com with the subject Intimate image removal request. We remove it within 48 hours. What to include, and what happens next, is on Intimate Image Removal — that page also covers images generated or altered to look like you.
Changes
When these rules change we update the date on this page. The Terms of Service are the agreement itself; this page and the Content Policy set out what living up to it looks like.