Legal Notice and Terms of Use

General Notice

This is a website of the City of Zurich. As the provider of the platform, the City of Zurich is responsible for the safe and appropriate use of the “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform. The “Legal information and terms of use” concern the content published by the neighborhood organizations, the city administration of Zurich and users on the platform “MeinQuartier.Zuerich”. The legal notices for the use of the Internet pages of the City of Zurich apply.

The users are obliged to behave conscientiously and in accordance with the terms of use. By accepting the legal notices and terms of use, you recognize them as binding.

Basic Rules

The following rules of conduct for communication apply on the platform:

• Give constructive feedback.
• Point out alternatives.
• Maintain mutual respect.
• No racist, anti-Semitic, sexist or otherwise discriminatory statements.
• No misinformation (“fake news”).

The following basic rules apply to all content:

• The platform serves to announce offers and information that serve the population and neighborhood life.
• No commercial advertising.
• Do not advertise liturgical events such as services, devotions or spiritual impulses.
• do not spread political and religious beliefs. No political agitation.

All users are responsible for the correct use of the platform and for the legality of the content and the opinions shared. All participants can report rule violations. The relevant content can be reported by selecting the small flag symbol or by email (info@meinquartier.ch). The City of Zurich will review the report and, if necessary, initiate any necessary legal steps.

The City of Zurich reserves the right to remove opinions, information, comments, suggestions or media that contradict the terms of use from the “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform. The City of Zurich also reserves the right to temporarily suspend the activities of users of the platform, in particular in the event of a violation of the applicable law and / or these terms of use, by:

• making the generated content invisible,
• deactivating the account.

Rights and Obligations for Content-Responsible Organizations

Content-Responsible Organizations publish and manage content on «MeinQuartier.Zuerich». An organization can present itself on "MeinQuartier.Zuerich", publish events, run a blog, conduct surveys or send out newsletters. Users can follow such content-responsible organizations if they are interested.

The city of Zurich, as the provider of the Platform, authorizes the Content-Responsible Organizations ...

• for the free creation and management of theire own organizational area on the test platform for exercise purposes. For this purpose, the contact person of the organization responsible for the content has access to the so-called Decidim backend system, comparable to known content management systems. Any number of tools and test content can be experimented with on the test platform. The test platform is not public and is accordingly protected. Only the contact persons receive the access data.
• for the free creation and management of your own organizational area on the productive platform.
• add further contact persons, e.g. for a substitute role.
• to use the available information and participation components for organizations.

Content-Responsible Organizations commit to:

• provide an email address when registering, to which the City of Zurich can contact if they have any questions or concerns.
• build up the necessary knowledge for implementation on the test platform. This increases the security and data integrity of the content on “MeinQuartier.Zuerich”, resp. reduces the risk of errors.
• provide and maintain attractive content in the productive environment. This includes a regular checking of the content for up-to-dateness, in particular checking links.
• comply with the above basic rules.
• Maintain copyrights.
• to assign the administration rights in their organizational area restrictively, i.e. only to people who really need access.
• to comply with data protection (privacy) in their organizational area. This is particularly relevant for surveys: if personal data such as names or e-mail addresses are collected, their use must be specified in the additional terms of use.
• control contributions from users within their own organizational area (e.g. in comment fields or when entering ideas) with regard to compliance with the terms of use and to prevent violations. Violations must be reported to the City of Zurich.
• notify the city of Zurich of errors and suggestions for improvement. The “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform can thus be continuously optimized.
• offer support for their own user community if required. The city of Zurich can only offer very limited user support.
• ensure that only media that are free from malware are uploaded to the neighborhood platform.
• ensure that linked websites are not compromised, i.e. that malicious software does not allow unauthorized intrusion into a computer system.to support the city of Zurich in identifying users who do not adhere to the terms of use.

In the event of a breach of these obligations or the terms of use, the organization responsible for the content will be contacted to clarify the problem. If the grievance is not resolved quickly enough, the City of Zurich reserves the right to hide the relevant content from the public until the grievance has been resolved. The organization is admonished and, if necessary, blocked.

The city of Zurich uses the test platform to test new software updates. The test platform can therefore change without prior notification of the contact persons of the organization responsible for the content and there can be brief interruptions during which the system is not available.

The district platform is operated in the context of the city council's strategic focus “Test smart participation” in the sense of a pilot test. If the neighborhood platform is not used sufficiently and does not meet the needs of the neighborhood organizations, the City of Zurich reserves the right to discontinue the platform after the test phase.

Data Storage

The City of Zurich operates the “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform on the “Swiss Container Platform APPUiO” by Puzzle ITC GmbH and VSHN AG on servers in Switzerland and in accordance with Swiss law. The data centers in which the data are stored are operated by cloudscale.ch AG (provider) and are located in the e-shelter data center in Rümlang ZH.

All data recorded via the “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform is stored in this data center. However, this is not the case for embedded content.

The platform allows the embedding of additional software and services from third parties. Content and data that are transmitted via embedding are not stored on the above-mentioned servers of this platform, but are recorded directly by the third-party providers. The provisions of the respective provider apply there.

E-mails from and to the e-mail address info[at]meinquartier.zuerich and kontakt[at]meinquartier.zuerich are processed and stored by the Swiss hosting partner Metanet AG on Swiss servers in accordance with Swiss law. For details see https://www.metanet.ch/. The following data is processed:

• E-mail address
• Content of your email
• Subject of your email
• Date
• Provided contact details (e.g. name, surname, possibly telephone number, address)

Your details will be stored for the purpose of processing the request and in case of follow-up questions.

Automatic language translation using Microsoft Translator (Azure Cognitive Services Translator) is connected to the "MeinQuartier.Zuerich" platform. For the purpose of translation, newly created text contributions are sent once to an Azure Cognitive Services server, translated and sent back. For this purpose, a transmission abroad takes place, whereby this can also take place in countries that do not guarantee adequate protection of personal data. There is no data storage on these external servers.

User: account, data, content

Users are natural and legal persons who are interested in content on "MeinQuartier.Zuerich", who read, comment on, like or write their own articles. The City of Zurich distinguishes between three levels of users:

1. Without registration: users can freely and anonymously access the “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform and move around it while reading. All public content on the platform can be read by everyone. In principle, it is possible to post anonymous contributions as a guest.
2. In order to be able to comment or like contributions from others, registration is always required. In addition, there are participation processes that require registration; participation as a guest is not possible in these cases.
3. For certain functions such as Voting in ideas competitions, it may be necessary that the user identity must first be verified once.

Account

Anyone who registers on the platform receives an account. A name / pseudonym, an abbreviation, an email address and a password are required for this.

Registration takes place via double opt-in: after completing the registration form, users receive a confirmation email for verification and must accept the “Legal information and terms of use”. Only then is the account active.

A profile picture and other information can be added to the account, which are then visible to all users. The email address used for registration is not visible on the platform.

An account can be deleted independently at any time in the profile settings. This will irrevocably delete all stored personal data, including profile picture and other information in the profile. The content generated through the use of the platform (comments, suggestions, answers to surveys, etc.) remains anonymous for the purpose of transparency and traceability of the participation processes. This data is assigned to an anonymous account.

Participation on the platform again is only possible after a new registration

Personal Data

The personal data is recorded in your own account and can be edited via the profile settings. This data includes information such as e-mail address or password. This data is stored in encrypted form. They are never visible from the outside.

Generated Content

Users generate content on “MeinQuartier.Zuerich”. This content includes comments, suggestions, responses to surveys, etc. The following conditions apply to this content:

• Public: Basically, this content relates to public topics and is therefore publicly available. Closed processes, which are only created and viewed upon invitation, are an exception.
• Publication or dissemination of the content: The content created by users may be used by the City of Zurich on the "MeinQuartier.Zuerich" platform as well as by other means that the City of Zurich deems appropriate to publicize this platform (e.g. in a media release) , to be published.Content generated by users is not deleted, but rather assigned to an anonymous account (see above).
• Intellectual property: Unless otherwise stated, the content protected by intellectual property rights is subject to the Creative Commons - Recommendation - Share Alike (CC-BY-SA 4.0) license.

Insight into your own data

Users can have their data exported in their account at any time. The export includes all data linked to an account (personal data and generated content). This serves to provide transparency about which data is recorded and saved by the platform.

A password-protected compressed file is created for downloading for the data export. The users receive the download link and password by email. Since the data is sensitive, the data is encrypted and can only be opened with open source compression software (7-Zip (Windows), KUKA (Mac OS) or PeaZip (Linux)).

Privacy

The processing of personal data recorded in connection with the operation of the “MeinQuartier.Zuerich” platform is subject to the information and data protection law of the Canton of Zurich (IDG, LS 170.4) and the cantonal information and data protection ordinance Zurich (IDV, LS 170.41).

Contact

Stadt Zürich
Stadtentwicklung
Stadthausquai 18
8021 Zürich

Telefon +41 44 412 36 68
stadt-zuerich.ch/stadtentwicklung
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