Hi there, welcome to our community guidelines!
We have created these Guidelines to help everyone get support and share their language journey.
Your User Profile
We strongly recommend that you use your real first name or a name which identifies you, this is the only part of your name that will be visible to others (in addition to the initial of your surname) on public areas of the website (for example the Q&A Forum). For example, if your name is Thomas Jones, others will see you as "Thomas J." and you could of course prefer to be known as Tom, so if you enter Tom Smith, others will see you as "Tom J". Apart from the fact that by using Kwiziq you also agreed to our Terms and Conditions, which state that your account "must faithfully represent you, you alone and no-one else", you will find that correctly naming yourself makes your interactions with your language teachers and fellow students much more interesting, personal and engaging!
You can also choose to upload a profile picture.
If you choose a name or profile picture that is offensive/ objectionable/ obnoxious, this will exclude you from being visible on public areas of the website, including (but not limited to) the Q&A Forum, the Leaderboard and achievements.
You may also choose to make your profile private: on our site you will only be identified by your initials (so Thomas Jones will display only as T.J.) and you will not have a customized avatar image.
You may also choose whether to show or hide your achievements. Choosing not to make them visible means that no one except you and Kwiziq can see your achievements.
View and modify all of the above in your account settings.
Q&A Forum
Here we explain what the forum is for and some basic rules. If you need help with how and where to ask questions see our Q&A Forum FAQs.
What is the forum for? What kind of questions can I ask?
The Q&A Forum is for you to ask (and answer!) language questions. You can access the forum from the bottom of lessons and exercises, and from the Tools > Q&A link in the navigation bar at the top of every page.
It's also GREAT for encouraging others; when someone asks a question about something that you also find difficult, we strongly encourage you to say so (either in the text or by clicking the thumbs up). It can help not only the person who asked the question to feel they are not alone, but also lets teachers see what kind of difficulties students are having.
If you're confident you can answer another student's question, we really encourage you to do so. This is an excellent way for you to reinforce your own knowledge, and - just as importantly - if your answer could be better, someone will come along and let you know (politely), which could save you all sorts of potentially uncomfortable encounters in the future! (Let's not mention all the "préservatifs" I thought there were in some juice I found in France....)
Before asking a question, please try to check that it hasn’t already been asked by someone else!
What the forum isn't good for
Although we appreciate how handy this would be, the Q&A Forum is not a place to ask people to do your homework or translate things for you.
Also, it’s not the best way to contact us if you have a non-language question; for example a question or concern about:
- Your subscription
- Scoring
- An error on the site
- A technical problem
- Complaints (We do always want to hear these because they help us improve, but they are better managed via our helpdesk!)
For these types of communication - basically any question that another student or a non Kwiziq language expert would be unable to answer - please use the Contact Us form or the "Report Issue" link next to kwiz questions. We take great pride in our customer support and real people will deal with your enquiry promptly via our Helpdesk.
Are there any other rules?
As well as asking only language questions, we ask that you share this space in a constructive way.
- Please be respectful
When you participate in any forum, the best approach is to be kind, helpful, and respectful, not judgmental. Assume the best of people and try to help if you can.
Above all, remember you’re speaking to other real people: this includes not just fellow students, but also the teachers and the rest of the team who work creating the materials and technology for this website. They are all keen to help and should reasonably expect to be treated politely. We of course welcome strong opinions (especially those of true grammar nerds! There's nothing better than a 2 paragraph "apostrophe rant"!) But the language in all posts must remain polite and civil. That means no profanity, insulting, harassing, trolling, shaming, aggressive or threatening language. No racism, discrimination or hate speech.
- Do not spam
The forums are a venue to get help with language problems. Please refrain from using signatures or responses that promote other websites or services; this is uncool and just means we have to be stricter with link checking (people can be surprisingly naughty with their links!) If your post contains a weblink, it will be flagged for review in the first instance to ensure that it does not contravene our policies. Email addresses are prohibited purely for reasons of privacy - what goes on on the web stays on the web and all that!
What happens to people who break the rules?
Breaking these simple rules will result in posting access being restricted first by being flagged for moderation. This will require a moderator to approve the user’s posts. This restriction is meant to be temporary, and will be lifted when the moderators feel the situation has been resolved. As well as no longer being able to post on our forum, user's who have broken the rules may also find that they are no longer visible in any public spaces of our website.
For example, if you use the forum to tell us about an error, you will be notified that this will be converted to follow the same procedure as if you had used the Contact Us or "Report this Issue" form and the post will be removed from the Q&A Forum. This is just a procedural requirement so that the right people can deal with your query. However, users who post spam or use disrespectful language will be warned and/or have their account blocked.
The Kwiziq team reserve the right to edit, delete, move or close any thread or post as they see necessary, without prior warning. We'll only edit posts by users if they are really difficult to read (assuming we can work them out) and we'll only delete posts that are in breach of our rules or clearly trying to be obnoxious, which does happen, believe it or not! Comments on the internet, eh - who knew?!
So in conclusion!
Language learning is a wonderfully complex journey that is completely different for everyone, but some things we all have in common are that it's often frustrating, sometimes embarrassing, other times just hard, and we can all do with some support getting to fluency. So let's applaud the people who ask questions when they feel embarrassed, and clap doubly hard for those that try to answer when they're not sure, and triply hard for everyone who is just giving it a go and being nice to the people on our Q&A Forum!
[Updated September 2024]
