Terms of Use

1. Scope

These terms apply to every use of the Board. You can read without an account; by registering you accept these terms and the community guidelines in section 5. They do not apply to the website ki-einfach-verstehen.de, which has its own legal notice and privacy policy.

2. Minimum age

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. You confirm this with a checkbox when you register. Anyone may read, with or without an account.

3. Your account

• Pseudonym. You choose a display name (handle). Your real name is not required and is never shown. Your handle must not contain protected names, trademarks or terms that suggest you belong to the Operator (such as "admin" or "team").
• One account per person. Multiple accounts for the same person are not allowed, in particular not to evade a ban or to inflate votes.
• Protect your credentials. You are responsible for everything that happens through your account. Do not share your password, choose it carefully (at least 12 characters) and report any suspected misuse. The Board recommends enabling two-factor sign-in with an authenticator app (TOTP) under "Account → Security" and storing the recovery codes safely.
• Signing in with Google or GitHub is optional. An existing account is never linked to a provider automatically; you do that yourself under "Account → Security".
• Email address. You need a working address, verified before you can post. Security and moderation notices go there and cannot be switched off.

4. What you can publish

The Board is built for text and kept deliberately lean:

• Posts are written in a Markdown subset: paragraphs, bold, italic, code, lists, quotes, @mentions. HTML, images, tables and headings are not rendered.
• No uploads. Files, images, audio and video cannot be uploaded.
• No external links. You can only link to pages on ki-einfach-verstehen.de and on the Board itself. A post containing any other web address is rejected when you submit it, with the offending passage highlighted. Naming a source as plain text (for example "paper XY, 2023" or "chatgpt.com") is explicitly welcome; it just will not be clickable.
• Cite your sources. If you claim something that can be checked, say where it comes from where you can. It helps everyone judge the answer.

5. Community guidelines

These rules apply to everything you write: questions, answers, comments, your profile.

• Respect. Other people on the Board have different prior knowledge. No question is too simple. Write the way you would like to be addressed.
• No insults, no harassment. No demeaning of people or groups, no threats, no exposing, no stalking.
• No spam, no advertising. No posts whose main purpose is to point to a product, service or account; no affiliate hints; no repeated near-identical posts.
• No illegal content. Nothing that violates German or European law, such as incitement to hatred, infringement of copyright or trademark rights, or instructions for committing crimes.
• No personal data of third parties. No names, addresses, photos, chat transcripts or other details about people who do not post here themselves. This includes screenshots pasted as text and your colleagues, teachers or family members.
• No dangerous misinformation. Everyone makes mistakes and corrections are welcome. Deliberately misleading claims, especially about health, safety or money, are not.
• Right place. Questions about a lesson belong in that lesson's category; general topics go to "AI in everyday life & work" or "AI news & discussion". Change requests for the lessons themselves belong on GitHub.

6. AI-generated posts

You may use tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity to draft or translate an answer. In that case:

• You are responsible for the content, just as if you had written it yourself. Read what you paste and check whether it is correct.
• No bulk pasting. Long unedited AI output, stockpiled answers or posts that evidently exist only to generate volume are removed. The Board is for people explaining things to each other.
• A short note ("drafted with AI help") is voluntary but fair.

7. Licence for your posts

All posts on the Board (questions, answers, comments, titles) are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). This means:

• You keep your copyright. You grant everyone the right to share and adapt your post, provided your handle is credited and derivatives carry the same licence.
• Good answers may flow into lessons. The Operator may take your post, in whole or in part, into the website, the e-book, YouTube scripts or the app, and edit it for that purpose. Attribution is your handle at the time of reuse, with a link to the Board where the format allows.
• You confirm that you hold the necessary rights to what you publish and do not post other people's texts without permission. Quotations within the limits of quotation rights remain allowed.

Licence text: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

8. Moderation and sanctions

The Board is moderated by the two operators. There is no pre-moderation; posts appear immediately.

In case of violations of these terms, the Operator may, depending on severity and repetition:

• hide or remove a post (the content is replaced by a placeholder; the original is kept for the operators as evidence);
• close, move or mark a thread as a duplicate;
• warn you;
• mute you for 1, 7 or 30 days (you can read but not post, react or vote);
• ban your account, temporarily or permanently.

Every restricting measure comes with a statement of reasons, in the Board and by email. It names what was restricted, the facts, the rule or legal provision relied on, whether automated means were involved, and how you can object.

Objection: reply to the email containing the statement of reasons or write to [email protected]. A human reviews your objection and you receive an answer. Beyond that, you may turn to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body under Art. 21 DSA, and the courts remain open to you.

9. Reporting content

• As a member, you will find a "Report" button under every post. After reports from three different established accounts, a post is automatically hidden pending review by a human. Every report reaches the operators immediately.
• Illegal content can also be reported without an account via the form at https://community.ki-einfach-verstehen.de/report (Art. 16 DSA). You receive an acknowledgement and the decision. These notices never trigger automatic hiding.
• Repeated abusive reports can themselves lead to sanctions.

10. Editing, deleting, closing your account

• You can edit your posts at any time. After the first ten minutes, edits are marked and come with a public revision history.
• A post without replies can be deleted completely. If it already has replies, it is blanked and shown as "[removed by author]" so the discussion stays readable. Answers marked "helpful" can only be blanked, not deleted.
• You can delete your account at any time under "Account". Your account data is removed; your posts remain under the CC BY-SA licence and are attributed to "Deleted member". Before that, you can export all your data as a file. The Board's privacy policy explains the details.

11. Liability

• Posts on the Board come from members. The Operator does not review them in advance and gives no guarantee for their accuracy, completeness or currency. Decisions you make based on a post are your own.
• The Board is a free service. There is no entitlement to continuous availability; maintenance, outages or discontinuation are possible. The Operator tries to keep disruptions small and to announce a shutdown in good time.
• The Operator is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence and for injury to life, body or health. Otherwise it is liable only for the breach of essential contractual duties, limited to the foreseeable, typical damage.

12. Changes to these terms

These terms may be adjusted, for example for new features or legal requirements. The Board informs you of changes at least 14 days before they take effect by email to your registered address, with a new version number and a summary of what changes. If you keep using the Board afterwards, the new version applies. If you disagree, you can delete your account at any time. Older versions remain available.

13. Applicable law

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies. If you are a consumer residing in another EU member state, mandatory protective provisions of your country of residence remain unaffected.

14. Consumer dispute resolution

The Operator is neither willing nor obliged to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (§ 36 VSBG, German Consumer Dispute Resolution Act).

15. Point of contact under the Digital Services Act (Art. 11 and 12 DSA)

For member state authorities, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services, as well as for users of the Board, the single point of contact is:

Silvio Lindstedt und Maik Gräfendorf GbR
Pappelweg 27, 39576 Stendal, Germany
Email: [email protected]

Communication is possible in German and English. This point of contact also handles objections to moderation decisions (section 8) and reports (section 9).

16. Final provisions

Should any provision of these terms be invalid, the remaining provisions remain in force. The German version prevails; this English translation is provided for readability.