General Information:

Welcome to SwissStudies.org. We are a community forum dedicated to the active and lively exchange of materials, ideas, and resources for the study and teaching of Switzerland. We invite you to browse our content and use the materials assembled here freely. By becoming a member, you will be able to post to our various discussion boards and participate in the exchange of ideas. Membership is free and easy. Click here to sign up. SwissStudies.org will never sell your information or share it with third parties unless required to by law.

Membership:

Membership in our community allows you to communicate directly with other members through personal messages, contribute content to the website, and access the SwissStudies.org calendar. The calendar will keep you up-to-date with Swiss events in the entire United States. As a member, you can also start your own newsletter or subscribe to other member newsletters. You will be able to search the entire database for the specific information you need, and if it is not available, post a query to the board.

How to post:

Posting to the website or to a board is easy. Click here to find out how. Moderators are available to help you choose the correct board for your question or your post. If you come across a post, that is in the wrong place, the report function allows you to alert a moderator.

Editorial policies:

SwissStudies.org is a moderated forum. The sole aim of the moderators is to make the forum both a pleasant and a useful place for its members. To this end the following policies are followed:

1. Post Edits. Generally the contents of any post are not edited. The only grounds for editing are as follows:

1a) To fix broken links, broken images, and broken formatting code.
1b) To remove personal information about other members which was posted without consent of that member.

2. Post Deletion. Certain posts are liable for deletion. These posts include:

2a) Clear cases of spam
2b) Posts containing highly objectional material, i.e. pornography, extreme violence, extreme hate.

3. Topic title edits. The moderators retain the right to edit any topic title at any time. The main purpose of this is to make the title as helpful and as descriptive of the thread content as possible. If you chose a thread title which is accurate and helpfully descriptive of your post content then your title less likely to be changed. Swearing in titles will always be removed.

4. Thread merging, splitting, and moving. The moderators reserve the right to merge, split, or move any thread or post whenever they see fit. The purpose of this is to ensure that the threads and posts are located within the correct category, that the threads stay on topic according to the first post in the thread, and to prevent multiple threads appearing all of which discuss exactly the same topic.

5. The moderators will attempt to inform individual members via PM (personal message) if posts or threads by those members are moved or edited. This communication, however, cannot always be guaranteed due to simple time constraints. If you have a problem or query regarding acts of moderation, you should contact your preferred moderator by PM first, not post to the public forum. Remember, moderators volunteer their time for the good of the community as a whole. They never act with deliberate evil intent to persecute any one individual member.

Copyright

1. The copyright of a post belongs to the forum member who posted it. However, by making a post to SwissStudies.org (bzw. swiss.k-w-s.net) you are granting SwissStudies.org a non-exclusive, non-revocable license to use your post for purposes laid out in section 2.

2. SwissStudies.org will not deliberately repost, or otherwise reuse any post content to any website outside of the domain: swissstudies.org (bzw. swiss.k-w-s.net). We reserve the right to reuse your forum content on other parts of the website. If a post of yours is reused on the website, we reserve the right to edit your text as we see fit although we will do our best to preserve your original contribution. If substantial portions of text from your post are used on the website then you will be given credit for this by way of your forum username and a link to your SwissStudies.org forum profile.

E-Mail Protection

SwissStudies.org takes the protection of your e-mail address against spam extremely seriously. SwissStudies.org will never divulge your e-mail address to anyone. Also, SwissStudies.org will not send you any e-mail to your registered address other than for the following reasons:

a) For membership sign up and validation.
b) To inform you of changes to the Terms and Conditions of Membership (e-mail from Administrator).
c) To alert you to an incoming private message.
d) Forwarded e-mails from other SwissStudies.org members sent via the forum e-mail feature.
e) To alert you to replies to a topic for which you have requested response alerts.

Features c, d, and e are options which may be switched off in your control panel.

Policy Updates

SwissStudies.org reserves the right to update these guidelines as required; it is your obligation as a registered member/user to review these guidelines from time to time.