Nutzungsbedingungen für LEOs Forum
Content and use of the forums
The forums (links: German-English, German-French, German-Spanish, German-Italian, German-Chinese, German-Russian, German-Portuguese, German-Polish, English-Spanish, English-French, English-Russian, Spanish-Portuguese) are intended to give you the opportunity to ask questions, provide information, make comments and to publish your views on other matters related to the subject of languages and to discuss these with other users. Participation in the forums is subject to the following conditions of use:
Registration
Participation in the forums must be preceded by Registration, for which a valid email address must be provided. You may, of course, participate in discussions under a pseudonym (nick/alias). Accordingly, registration requires you to choose a login identity as well as a nick/alias. In principle, you can select the same sequence of characters for your nick as for your login. However, for security reasons you are advised to choose a different sequence of characters for your login to avoid giving third parties an easy way of hacking into your account. You are not permitted to take part in the forums using a number of different nicks and thus to appear in seemingly different identities.
Forum policy
Every user who posts a contribution in our forums agrees irrevocably to the publication of this contribution in the forum concerned. However, the user has no entitlement to force LEO to publish their contributions in a forum.
Contributions must be pertinent, in other words, they must refer to the subject of language. LEO is entitled to erase contributions that are not related to the subject of language. The different sections (sub-forums) are arranged into various topics. Before you use a section for the first time, you are asked to read the notes provided about that section (info link just to the right of the section title). This explains the features of this section and gives instructions about how to start a new thread (discussion). Before initiating a new discussion, you should in any case check whether a corresponding discussion has already been launched on the topic in question by using the forum search. If this is not the case, go to the forum start page (Forum home) and click on the heading of the appropriate section. You can then click the “Start new thread” button to start a new discussion.
Discussions in the forums should be conducted in a courteous and objective manner. Substantive criticism, even if it is quite forceful, is of course permitted. However, defamatory criticism and disparaging personal comments or other remarks that contravene applicable German law are not permitted. Insofar as LEO is aware of forum contributions that contravene German law, LEO reserves the right to inform the public prosecutor accordingly.
For more information on how we would like interaction among participants to be, please read our Netiquette
We explicitly do not allow the following types of posts:
- Advertising (e.g. by placing links), spam (promoting fake passports, etc.), cheat sheets;
- Comments that violate German law, including copyright law;
- posts that expose private information of other users;
- medical advice/recommendations
If any content in a forum appears to a user to be illegal or dubious, we ask the user to inform us immediately and send an e-mail to the LEO team If any content in a forum appears to a user to be illegal or questionable, we ask the user to inform us immediately by sending an email to the LEO team. Please indicate the reason(s) that the contribution is considered to be illegal or at least questionable, so that we can investigate the matter. Please also send us the URL (address of the contribution in question, shown in the browser's address bar), to enable us to locate the contribution.
Citations
In principle, contributors to LEO's forums are permitted to include citations from third-party sources, for example to provide evidence in support of a new entry. However, to avoid any breach of copyright laws, such citations must fulfil the following conditions:
- Citations must be formatted in a way that lets the reader know it is a citation (e.g. set in italics).
- The content of the citation is discussed
As a rule, citations included in the sections “Wrong entry in LEO?” and “New entry for LEO” are therefore permissible.
By contrast, a kind of "press review" (collection of press extracts which include citations) or any similar contribution summarising third-party views but devoid of any commentary by the user is not permissible. - The citation shall not be longer than the discussion of its content requires.
- The source must be given and (if possible) a corresponding link provided.
The LEO Team reserves the right – without giving reasons – to shorten or to delete any citation which could breach copyright law. It also retains the right to close the accounts of users who repeatedly breach these rules.
