Publication rules

Who can rate and review

A course can be rated and reviewed by anyone who has an activated account, created at least seven days ago, and has completed at least five lessons of that course. To rate a lesson you must have completed it, with the same account age. It makes no difference whether the account is free, paid or has gift access.

How this is checked: the lessons that count are those you marked as completed after spending on them, one after another, a minimum reading time that depends on the length of each lesson; and, for lessons that require an account or a subscription, after opening them while signed in. A lesson you mark as completed a few seconds after opening it, or several marked at once, do not count towards reviewing. It is a check of the progress recorded in your account: we do not verify anyone’s identity or whether they paid. That is why reviews are presented as what they are: reviews by students who completed at least five lessons of the course.

Each account has a single rating and a single review per course, and a single rating per lesson. You can change your stars whenever you like.

Accounts of people who work for Topos Uranos, and of their immediate family members, do not rate or review. If one of those accounts did so earlier, its ratings and reviews are removed.

When your account is one month old and you have completed five lessons of a course, you receive in «My account» a single invitation to review that course. It goes to every account that meets those two conditions, without our first asking anyone whether they are happy with the course, and it is not sent by email. You can review without waiting for it.

What is published

We publish every review that complies with these rules, positive or negative. No review is rejected, hidden or delayed for being negative or because of its rating.

Stars are published instantly, with or without a written review, and are not moderated. The space for writing the review is empty: we do not suggest what to say.

The stars of a course or a lesson are shown once there are at least three ratings, and the list of reviews of a course, once there are at least three published reviews. Before that nothing is shown, not even a zero. The threshold is the same whatever the rating.

Reviews appear by date, most recent first, each with its day, its stars and the signature chosen by whoever wrote it. Those written in the language of the page are shown, with a selector to see those in other languages. They are not edited or translated: they are published in full, in their language, or not at all.

How reviews are checked

Written reviews are checked before they are published. Only the reviews of authors who meet three conditions at once are published instantly and checked afterwards: their last three reviews were approved by a person; they have had no rejection or removal in the last thirty days; and they have, in those thirty days, no other instantly published review that has not yet been checked.

Even so, the following are always checked before publication: reviews that contain links, email addresses, phone numbers or other contact details, or code; reviews signed in a way different from the one already approved; reviews that rewrite a review deleted for the same course in the last thirty days; and reviews from an account that has already had two published instantly in the last twenty-four hours.

All checking is done by a person, who sees the text and the signature but not the stars: that way the decision cannot depend on the rating. Reviews published instantly are also read afterwards. Software applies only the rules in the two paragraphs above, which decide whether or not a review waits to be checked: no software approves, rejects or removes a review, and no rule looks at the rating.

A review is plain text, without formatting, of up to 2000 characters and 30 lines. Each account can submit up to five a day.

Why a review is rejected or removed

A review is rejected or removed only on one of these criteria, set in advance and applied equally to every review, whatever its rating or its tenor: defamatory content; harassing or abusive content; obscene or sexually explicit content; vulgar content; discriminatory content; personal data or the image of another person; sensitive data about the author (for example, about their health); trade secrets; clearly false or misleading content; a review that we reasonably believe to be fake; a review wholly unrelated to the courses; and links or code.

Checking decides on the text. If a review is rejected, its stars still count towards the average, unless the criterion is that we believe it to be fake: in that case the stars are removed too.

If there are signs of fraud (for example, accounts created to raise or lower a course’s rating), we may remove all the ratings of an account, without looking at what ratings they gave. A removed rating cannot be restored by deleting it and rating again: it is restored only if you appeal and we find in your favour.

We never ask anyone to change the tenor of their review, and we do not use legal threats or pressure to make anyone withdraw theirs.

How the average is calculated

The figure next to the stars is the simple average of the published ratings of that course or lesson, rounded to one decimal place, and it always comes with the number of ratings. All ratings carry the same weight. There is a single average per course, with the ratings given from any language; next to the reviews we show how many there are in each language.

The average includes the stars of people who did not write a review and, from accounts already deleted, the stars that were at least thirty days old when the account was deleted, which are kept with no link to it. It does not include removed ratings. We do not use ratings to order the courses.

No payments or rewards

Topos Uranos does not pay for or reward reviews, and gives nothing in exchange for reviewing or for reviewing in a particular way. Gift codes and gift access never depend on your reviewing.

Signature and deletion

When you publish you choose how to sign: with no identification (which applies unless you choose otherwise), with your initials, with your name, or with your name and the photo of your Gravatar account. To sign in any of these last three ways you must declare that you are 16 or older; anyone aged 14 or 15 always publishes with no identification. The signature may not contain digits or impersonate Topos Uranos or its staff.

If you choose the photo, the one from your Gravatar account is shown, and only if it is rated as suitable for all audiences; our server requests it from Gravatar with a fingerprint of your email address, as the Privacy policy explains. Anyone can report an inappropriate photo, and we may hide it on a particular post.

From «My account» you can, at any time, delete each rating, delete your review (with the stars for that course) and withdraw the testimonial permission. You cannot edit a review: you can delete it and write another, which for thirty days will always be checked before publication.

Testimonials

If you give a separate permission when you write your review, we may feature it in the «Selected testimonials» block on the course page. That block is a selection made by Topos Uranos: it is labelled as such and appears next to the average, the total number of reviews and a link to all of them. The text is shown unchanged.

Without that permission no review is used as a testimonial. You can withdraw it whenever you like from «My account», and your review then stops being featured. We do not feature reviews that claim a result (for example, having passed an exam) that is not representative of what can generally be expected.

Questions and published exchanges

In every lesson you have access to, you can send us a question about its content, with an optional reference to the paragraph or the exercise. The exchange is private: a person reads and answers it, in order of arrival and with no promised deadline, and the answers reach you as notices in «My account». Each account can open up to five questions a day and have ten open at once. An answered question to which you do not reply within thirty days is closed; if you want to continue, you open another.

When you mark «My question is resolved» you can offer to have the exchange published under «Questions about this lesson» and choose how to sign it, or not publish it. If you offer it, we decide whether it is published. Your messages are published exactly as you wrote them, except that we may strike out personal data in them; we may add a closing note summarising the answer, which is Topos Uranos text and may be translated. The exchange stays in its language, untranslated.

The same criteria apply to a published exchange as to reviews, and it can be reported and removed like them. You can unpublish it whenever you like from «My account»: your messages and your signature are erased, and the closing note may remain published on its own. Every exchange carries its date; if the lesson changes and the exchange no longer makes sense, we archive it and let you know.

Reporting content

Next to every review and every published exchange there is a «Report» link. Anyone, with or without an account, can use it to notify us of illegal content, a fake review, published personal data, an inappropriate photo, a threat to someone’s life or safety, or for another reason they explain.

The report asks for your name, your email address, the reason, an explanation and a declaration that you act in good faith. We send you an acknowledgement of receipt, a person examines it without undue delay, and we tell you by email what was decided: to keep the content, to remove it or to hide the photo. If you disagree with the decision, you can write to the contact point. Whoever published the content does not get to know who reported it.

Threats to a person’s life or safety are dealt with first and, if they give rise to a suspicion of a criminal offence, are reported to the authorities immediately.

If we reject or remove something of yours

You receive in «My account» a notice with the decision, the criterion applied and, if there is one, a note; and an email that says only that you have a notice, without its content.

You can appeal with the «Appeal» button in the notice, during the six months following the decision, explaining why you disagree. A person decides the appeal. If we find in your favour, your text is published and, if your stars had been removed, you can rate again; if not, the decision stands and we tell you so. Appealing does not count against you in any way.

The only decision that cannot be appealed through this channel is the removal of the ratings of an account belonging to someone who works for Topos Uranos or to their immediate family. Nothing above limits your right to go to the courts or the authorities of your country.

Contact for authorities and users

For any matter concerning reviews, ratings, questions or these rules, users and authorities can write to contacto@toposuranos.com. It is the single point of contact of Topos Uranos for these matters.

Messages are read and answered by a person, not by an automated system. You can write in any of the site’s languages; we reply in Spanish or English, which are also the languages in which authorities may address us.

To exercise your rights over your personal data, write to the address given in the Privacy policy.