Community Guidelines

At Yask, we believe that practicing languages is more fun when done with others, and that feedback from each other is the best way to learn and improve.

Whether you come to practice and get feedback or to generously help others, join us in building a community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise or identity.

These Community Guidelines help us build a community that is rooted in kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect.

We commit to enforcing and improving these Community Guidelines. They apply to everyone using Yask, including our team.

Expected Behavior

If you’re here to get help, be grateful.

Remember that our community is made possible by language learners like you, who voluntarily help each other.

If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming.

Learning a language is hard and takes a lot of courage and dedication. If someone uses incorrect grammar or has a question you think has an obvious answer, kindly and calmly help them out. Heckling and being straight up mean doesn’t help anyone learn.

Be clear and constructive when giving feedback, and be open when receiving it.

Feedback is in Yask's heart and should therefore always be welcome and well-intentioned.

Always be Respectful.

We come together from across the world at varying language levels with the same goal in mind - to improve. Curiosity, questioning, and cultural understanding are something we celebrate. Be respectful of others and where they’re coming from.

Be kind and friendly.

Avoid sarcasm and be careful with jokes — tone is hard to decipher online. If a situation makes it hard to be friendly, stop participating and move on.

Embrace and share regional language differences.

A language can have many words, accents and ways to say the same thing. We think that’s one of the wonders of languages. Approach all conversations with an open mind and attitude.

Think before you share.

We care about your safety. Practicing another language is inherently social, but please beware of swapping or posting any private information that could be misused. That includes your phone number, age, address, what time you’ll be at home, school name, email, or other personal information that could put your privacy at risk. Sharing and encouraging others to share personal data might get your content, and possibly your account, removed.

Unacceptable Behavior

No subtle put-downs or unfriendly language.

Even if you don’t intend it, this can have a negative impact on others.

No name-calling or personal attacks.

Focus on the content, not the person. This includes terms that feel personal even when they're applied to content (e.g. “lazy”).

No bigotry.

We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion — and those are just a few examples.

No harassment.

This includes, but isn’t limited to: bullying, intimidation, vulgar language, direct or indirect threats, sexually suggestive remarks and patterns of inappropriate social contact. The same goes for nudity and disturbing profile pictures and usernames. Yask reserves the right to replace images or remove these accounts at its sole discretion. Rule of thumb: if you are making someone feel attacked or hurt, then you shouldn’t be doing it. We take these reports seriously and may delete your account without previous notice if such activity is verified by our team.

No inflammatory comments.

Hateful, obscene and off-topic comments don’t contribute to learning. Cursing doesn’t either (let people discover those words in the wild). Leave them out of the language discussions.

No spam.

Posting a trail of irrelevant requests or comments on people’s requests may get your account deleted. This includes not only creating requests or posting comments without substance, but also any other type of spamming.

No script or cheat maliciously.

We believe in honest learning. If you are scripting for the purposes of cheating or sharing information and instructions about using Yask in a way that may impact the system, community, learning, data or experience in a negative or significant manner, your account, requests and comments may be removed.

Reporting

Every person contributes to building a kind, respectful community. If you find unacceptable behavior directed at yourself or others, you can:

Flag the harmful content.

Depending on the content, flagging will alert our moderators or trigger an automatic deletion.

Contact us.

You can contact us directly from the application or write to our email hello@yask.app. We’ll respond as quickly as we can.

Enforcement

We take your reports seriously. Those who don’t follow the Community Guidelines in good faith may face repercussions deemed appropriate by our moderation team. This is how we generally handle misconduct:

All actions will be taken on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of our moderation team. If you have concerns about how a we handled a situation, please contact us.

We created these Community Guidelines because they reinforce the respect that we, as a community, expect from one another. Having guidelines also provides us with clear avenues to correct our culture should it stray off-course.

We welcome your feedback on this and every other aspect of what we do at Yask. Thank you for helping us to build a kind, collaborative, and respectful community.

The above text is CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted from the Stack Overflow Code of Conduct and the Duolingo Community Guidelines.