GermanCarForum.com Terms
The providers ("we", "us", "our") of the service provided by this web site ("Service") are not responsible for any user-generated content and accounts. Content submitted express the views of their author only.
This Service is only available to users who are at least 13 years old. If you are younger than this, please do not register for this Service. If you register for this Service, you represent that you are this age or older.
All content you submit, upload, or otherwise make available to the Service ("Content") may be reviewed by staff members. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). Do not submit any Content that you consider to be private or confidential.
You agree to not use the Service to submit or link to any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content, contains personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws. You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content or your conduct.
We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We may terminate your access to all or any part of the Service at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice.
You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.
You may only use or reproduce the Content for your own personal and non-commercial use. The framing, scraping, data-mining, extraction, or collection of the Content in any form and by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited.
These terms may be changed at any time without notice.
If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or use the Service. Use of the Service constitutes acceptance of these terms. If you wish to delete your account, please contact the administrator(s) of the site via private messaging with said request.
GermanCarForum.com Rules
As with any community, Terms and rules are important to keep the community running smoothly. Please keep in mind our rules whenever posting to keep our community pleasant for members and guests alike. Note that the list below is not exhaustive, so use common sense for anything that is not specifically detailed here.
- Please be courteous and respect your fellow members. Do not make personal attacks anywhere on our site. We do not tolerate rude, aggressive, vitriolic, and/or contemptuous behavior toward an individual or group. Comment on the content, not on the individual. Derogatory comments about others may be removed by any moderator and/or editor. Repeated or egregious personal attacks will lead to sanctions including blocks or even bans.
- Spamming and trolling is not allowed. This includes using the forum's e-mail, conversations (AKA: private messaging or PM), and site Reactions to spam other members.
- Commercial promotion of goods and services is strictly prohibited without a Business account and/or prior consent from the site administrators.
- Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.
- Start your new threads in the most relevant forum nodes.
- No link dumping. Do not create empty posts with a single link and/or a couple of words and a link. For example, if you are going to link to a news article, add an image and/or provide a decent summary of it to give some context to the reader. Abusing this will get hyperlinking permissions removed from your account, all posting permissions removed, and/or spam banned from the site.
- You are allowed to post embedded content in thread discussions, however, use moderation when it comes to loosely relevant images and videos. Do not flood official threads. Such actions may be considered spamming. Instead, we encourage you to create new threads (and use prefixes such as Videos, Video Reviews, Pictures, Reviews, Comparison Tests, Photos, etc.), or post your content in existing media-related threads.
- When quoting comments, please only quote the relevant part and not the entire message. Wherever possible, avoid quoting large posts in full or posts immediately preceding your own.
- When responding to multiple posts in a thread, do so in a single post, rather than posting two or more times in succession (use multi-quote instead).
- Do not copy and paste large sections of text from other sources, claiming it as your own work, otherwise known as plagiarism.
- Use self-moderation when posting content that contains more than one link. Excessive postings of remote articles that do not enhance ongoing conversations may be considered spamming and as such, you may get certain access permissions removed and/or your account permanently banned.
- Encouraging respectful behavior. People come from all over the world to share their experiences and knowledge and to raise awareness about issues that are important to them. This means that you may encounter opinions that are different from yours, which we believe can lead to important conversations about difficult topics. To help balance the needs, safety, and interests of a diverse community, however, we may remove certain kinds of sensitive content, move them to a different section, and/or limit the audience that sees it. With all that said, should you have an issue(s) with member(s) on the site, you must discuss and resolve it/them amongst yourselves. The staff won't take any part or sides in member vs member discussions.
- No Flaming. A "flame" is when you insult someone. Don’t use insults, swear or use any words that are deemed inappropriate, anywhere in the forum. If you flame someone, you are risking being banned. The staff can’t read every single post on the forum; however, in the event that an inappropriate post is overlooked, there is a strong chance that someone will report it. Any threads/posts of this type may be deleted and/or blocked from view, which may also lead to member sanctions, including temporary and permanent bans.
- Following the previous rule, we reserve the right to remove offensive content without notice.
- While debating and discussing is fine, we will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks, name-callings, deceitfulness, or purposeless inflammatory posts.
- No nudity, partial nudity, animal cruelty, bodily mutilation, or material that is sexually explicit, racist, or harassing.
- Do not post violent content. Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. We understand there are sometimes reasons to post violent content (e.g., educational, newsworthy, artistic, satire, documentary, etc.) so if you’re going to post something violent in nature that does not violate these terms, ensure you provide context to the viewer so the reason for posting is clear.
If your content is borderline, please use an NSFW tag. Even mild violence can be difficult for someone to explain to others if they open it unexpectedly.
- You agree not to post messages with content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights of any party. Please add a reference and/or reference link at the bottom of your post whenever you quote or paraphrase materials owned by others.
- All content must be posted in English as it is not possible for us to moderate the forums otherwise. In very specific cases, foreign languages may be used, provided an English translation is provided as well.
- Do not "bump" threads nor create duplicate threads.
- Do not revive old threads causing them to appear above newer and more active threads, also known as "necroposting". Create a new thread instead.
- Please refrain from posting meaningless threads, nonsense posts, or one-word (or short) posts.
- Multiple or repeated posting in order to increase your post count is not allowed. These posts will be deleted and the posters' privileges will be temporarily suspended.
- Discussion of illegal activities such as software and music piracy and other intellectual property violations are not allowed.
- Posts of political and/or religious nature only allowed within the In the news section of the site.
- When posting images, please upload them as attachments. This is by far the best practice. If for some reason you are not able to upload your images, please consider using a free image hosting service. Linking directly to images hosted on remote websites is not good practice; remotely linked images can be changed or removed from the host site at any time, resulting in broken links.
- Please do not discuss rule breaches or moderating decisions in public; use the Report system or contact a moderator directly via Conversation.
- Respect the role and contribution of the administrators and moderators of this forum. The moderators have been selected by virtue of their conduct, experience, knowledge, and commitment to this forum. Forum moderation is undertaken as a collective and not by individual moderators and as such is sanctioned by the owners of this site. Do not question, attempt to discredit, or harass individual members of the moderation team.
- Posts discussing or arguing about site policies or moderator actions are not allowed and will be deleted.
- Creating more than one personal account is generally not allowed, except with specific requests and/or approval by the site owner(s) or site management. Otherwise, if duplicate accounts are discovered, such account duplicates may be banned.
While these rules cover most common situations, they cannot anticipate everything. Consequently, we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way.
Any member breaking these rules may find their messages being edited or removed. Additionally, they may be issued warnings and have restrictions placed on their account. Persistent or extreme offenders may also be subject to bans, either temporary or permanent, although this would be a last resort and one which we would hope to avoid whenever possible.
If you suspect a comment of breaking the rules, do not respond publicly, just report it.
To report a message for any reason, click on the "Report" link which can be found at the bottom of all forum, conversation, and profile messages, adjacent to the date stamp. All reports are investigated by the moderating team, who are the only ones with access to the information. There is no need to be concerned about repercussions from other forum members as they will be unaware that the message has been reported, or by whom.
Finally, the staff reserves the right to ban anyone who willfully violates our site rules and, in addition to all the above rules and guidelines, the staff has the final say on what is appropriate content and what is not.
Enforcement
We have a variety of ways of enforcing our rules, including, but not limited to:
- Asking you nicely
- Asking you less nicely
- Temporary or permanent suspension of accounts
- Removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts
- Adding access restrictions to specific forums and/or threads
- Removal of content
Do not scrape our Content
As mentioned in our Terms above, you may only use or reproduce the Content for your own personal and non-commercial use. The framing, scraping, data-mining, extraction, or collection of the Content in any form and by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited.
Changes
We may change these Terms and rules from time to time. If we make a change to these rules that, in our sole discretion, is material, we will provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to our site announcements section, the front page of the site, or sending you a notification). If you continue to use our Services after the terms and rules changes go into effect, you consent to the revised terms and rules.