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Community guidelines

Welcome to the Oxford Dictionaries Community, a space for you to share your views and opinions with fellow language-lovers from across the globe, and get answers to your language questions from the community.

There are five different boards, so please try to post your question, comment, or discussion topic in the right place. The five boards are:

For help with using Oxforddictionaries.com, or questions regarding our products, please see our site help pages.

Community rules

 


Behaviour

The following behaviour will not be accepted on the Oxford Dictionaries Community or on Facebook commenting on our dictionary entries:

  • any behaviour to other community members or visitors to OxfordDictionaries.com which could be deemed aggressive or abusive
  • use of vulgar or offensive language (except in the context of a scholarly discussion about such language)
  • trolling (see definition)

Topics

The Oxford Dictionaries Community and Facebook commenting on dictionary entries are forums for discussion of language-related topics. By posting in these forums you agree not to:

  • post topics unrelated to language and words
  • post materials that are unlawful, threatening, harassing, profane, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libellous, deceptive, fraudulent, contain explicit or graphic descriptions or accounts of sexual acts (including but not limited to sexual language of a violent or threatening nature directed at another individual or group of individuals), invasive of another’s privacy or hateful
  • post materials that constitute or encourage conduct that would constitute a criminal offence or give rise to civil liability
  • post materials that contain a virus, spyware, or other harmful component, advertising of any kind, or false or misleading indications of origin or statements of fact
  • deliberately post false or misleading information
  • advertise, promote, or sell products or services
  • post materials that are protected by copyright, or other proprietary or intellectual property right, without first obtaining permission from the proprietary or intellectual property rights holder
  • disclose any sensitive, personal, proprietary or confidential information about yourself or others in your comments

Content guidelines for the Oxford Dictionaries Community

Please try not to create duplicate content in the community. Search the community for relevant content before starting your own new topic thread to be sure content does not already exist. Please try to ensure that any new topic you start is in the correct subject board.

Duplicated content or content posted on the wrong board may be moved, merged into an existing thread, or deleted. We reserve the right to edit, move, or remove any boards, topics, and comments in the Oxford Dictionaries Community.

We will be monitoring all postings in the Oxford Dictionaries Community for content which contravenes our community guidelines; as a result, some topics, replies, and comments will be sent for moderation before publishing and, consequently, there may be a delay in the posting appearing on the Oxford Dictionaries Community. Oxford Dictionaries Moderators will moderate posts during office hours, Monday-Friday.

We reserve the right to block without warning or discussion any user who does not adhere to the community guidelines.

Accuracy and honesty

We ask that you do not misrepresent yourself on your profile. It is the Oxford Dictionaries Community policy that community members communicate with each other using their real name, for reasons of accountability and transparency.

We ask for you to ensure your responses within the community are as accurate as possible. However, please note that we will not remove a post simply because it is inaccurate (unless it contravenes one of guidelines in the list above). Our current dictionaries site is available for your reference at www.oxforddictionaries.com and provides help with many points of language, grammar, and translation.

For further information, please read the Oxford Dictionaries Community FAQ and the Oxford Dictionaries Terms and Conditions.