Community Guidelines

Someone is going to read your road report at the edge of a gravel track with one bar of signal and decide whether to carry on. Someone is going to read your review and spend money on it. Write with that person in mind.

These guidelines explain what good looks like. The hard prohibitions live in the Acceptable Use Policy, and breaking those has consequences.

Reviews

Do

• Write about a stay or service you actually had. You can only review a completed booking.
• Be specific. "The generator runs until 22:00 and then it is properly dark" helps more than "great vibes".
• Say what would have helped you know beforehand — the road in, the water situation, whether a 4×4 is genuinely needed, how far the nearest fuel is.
• Be fair about things outside the host's control, like weather or a national power cut.
• Update or edit a review if the business fixed the problem.

Do not

• Review your own business, a competitor, or a friend's place as if you were a guest.
• Use a review to threaten a host into a refund, or to punish them for a policy you agreed to.
• Name individual staff members in a way that exposes them.
• Include personal contact details, booking references or other people's information.
• Post promotional content or links.

Road reports

This is the feature people rely on most, and the one where a careless post does the most damage.

• Report only what you saw yourself, and say when you saw it. Second-hand information gets stale fast.
• Be precise about location — the road number, the nearest settlement, the direction you were travelling.
• Describe the condition, not just a verdict."Deep corrugation and loose sand for ~20 km north of the turn-off; fine at 60 km/h in a 2WD bakkie" is useful. "Bad road" is not.
• Photos help enormously. One picture of the surface tells the whole story.
• Do not guess and do not exaggerate. Someone may turn back — or not turn back — because of you.
• Do not report while driving. Stop first.

Road reports are community information, not official guidance. Everyone reading them should still check with the Roads Authority or local sources before committing to a remote route.

Photos

• Post photos you took yourself.
• Do not post identifiable pictures of other people without their agreement.
• Do not post images that reveal the exact location of a private residence.
• Do not post photos of wildlife taken by baiting, harassing or approaching animals unlawfully closely.

Messages with hosts

• Keep booking conversations in the app. It is the record we look at if something goes wrong.
• Be direct and polite. Hosts in remote areas may only get signal once a day.
• Never send payment details, ID documents or passwords in a message. No host and no member of the NamibiaGo team will ever ask for them there.

Respect for Namibia

Much of what makes this country worth travelling is fragile — the desert crust, the wildlife, the communities living alongside both. Content that encourages driving off designated tracks, approaching or feeding wild animals, entering conservancies or communal land without permission, or removing plants, fossils or artefacts is not welcome here and will be removed.

How we moderate

• Report it. Every review and road report can be reported from the app. You can also email support@namibiago.com.
• We review reports by hand. We are a small team; we aim to look at reports quickly and we prioritise anything involving safety.
• We remove content that breaks the rules, and we tell the person who posted it why.
• We do not remove a review for being negative. An honest bad review is the system working. We remove reviews that are fake, abusive, off-topic or extortionate.
• You can appeal. If we removed something of yours and you disagree, email support@namibiago.com within 30 days and a person will look again.
• You can leave. Delete your own content any time, or delete your account — your reviews and road reports are then anonymised, so the information survives but your name does not.

If someone is in danger

Do not report it to us and wait. Call the emergency services — the app's Helplines screen lists Namibian emergency numbers. Contact us afterwards at support@namibiago.com so we can act on the account or content involved.