This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely aids to the human judgment of our community. Use these guidelines to keep this a clean, well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Please spend some time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But, remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

• Name-calling.
• Ad hominem attacks.
• Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.
• Knee-jerk contradiction.

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

ChinesePod Commenting Policy

About the ChinesePod Community

Welcome to ChinesePod! The enthusiastic, active community is one of ChinesePod’s greatest strengths. To keep it going strong, please help us out by following the guidelines below.

The ChinesePod community sections, namely ChinesePod community individual user posts and conversations, lesson discussions, group discussions, and private messages (PMs) are designed to facilitate a collaborative, open, and friendly learning environment. As such, allowed comments do not necessarily represent the views of ChinesePod. ChinesePod reserves the right to remove comments that are deemed to be in violation of specific commenting policies (see below).

Lesson Discussion Comments

For the benefit of all ChinesePod users, ChinesePod encourages focused, relevant comments in individual lesson discussions. “Relevant” generally means comments or questions about the language points or cultural points in the lesson. Comments deemed to be either unrelated to the respective lesson’s learning content or unhelpful in furthering users’ learning may be removed by ChinesePod staff.

Out of consideration for Newbie and Elementary users, please provide English translations along with any Chinese (characters or pinyin) written in Newbie and Elementary lesson discussions. Blatant disregard for this courtesy may result in your comments being removed by ChinesePod staff.

Community User Posts/Comments

ChinesePod welcomes users to post comments of a more general nature in the community sections, as an individual post or as part of an existing thread, providing their content does not violate any ChinesePod commenting policies (see below).

Specific Commenting Policies

##Technical and Content Fixes

Comments related to temporary technical glitches or problems, typos, or errors in text or audio content will be responded to by ChinesePod staff by contacting you directly. Your comment will be deleted once we have contacted you. If you have any technical problem with a lesson or your subscription, please do not post on the lesson discussion boards. This is reserved only for relevant language questions.

###Vulgar or Offensive Language

Comments containing inappropriate language will be deleted by ChinesePod staff. A warning will be issued to the user responsible for such language. If the behavior persists despite that warning, the user’s commenting privileges will be revoked indefinitely. In cases of extreme violation, the user’s commenting privileges will be immediately revoked indefinitely.

###Abusive Comments

Comments containing personal attacks directed at ChinesePod staff or other users will be removed. Normally, a warning will be issued to the user responsible for such attacks. If the behavior persists despite that warning, the user’s commenting privileges will be revoked indefinitely. In cases of extreme violation, the user’s commenting privileges will be immediately revoked indefinitely. Commenters that persistently post volatile comments that could be seen to upset other learners language goals will be removed without warning. You may also have your commenting rights removed.

##Libel

Libelous comments will be removed at the discretion of ChinesePod staff.

##Spam

Spam (advertisements) will be removed at the discretion of ChinesePod staff. Users who have created accounts solely for the posting of spam will immediately lose their commenting privileges. Promotion of commercial or unrelated products and services will also be deleted from ChinesePod websites.

##Language Partners

ChinesePod is proud to facilitate friendships and cross-cultural learning between China and the rest of the world. However, as mentioned above (see “Lesson Comment Discussions”), lesson comment discussions should focus on lesson content. If you are looking for language partners on ChinesePod, please do it through user posts in the Community section or other appropriate groups in the Community section. Language partner posts in lesson comment discussions will be immediately deleted.

##Contact

Please note that in order for the ChinesePodStaff to contact you in the event of any issues, you must make sure you have updated your profile with your current email address. “I didn’t know” is not a valid complaint if you do not provide a legitimate, regularly checked email address so that we have an open channel of communication in the event of any issues.