Alleypedia:Privacy policy

From Alleypedia

writeralley™ designed Alleypedia to make it easy to share information about the publishing industry with your friends, colleagues and people around you. By allowing everyone to participate in the Alleypedia project, we believe that a sense of community spirit will prevail and the resource will become a practicable and useful reference for the publishing industry and all related parties.

General Scope

Alleypedia follows two core principles:

1. That there should be a central, open encyclopedic reference on all publishers, literary agents, printing companies and allied parties that is easily accessible to everyone. We want to help you easily get that information, as well as be a reliable, accurate resource for the english-language publishing industry.

2. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that 'everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.'

Children Under Age 13

Alleypedia does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register.

If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for Alleypedia or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on Alleypedia. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us through our helpdesk.

Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18

Alleypedia recommends that minors 13 years of age or older ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.

The public and collaborative nature of Alleypedia

All material found on Alleypedia is collaboratively developed by its users using the MediaWiki software. Anyone with Internet access (and not otherwise restricted from doing so) may edit the publicly editable pages of these sites with or without logging in as a registered user. By doing this, editors create a published document, and a public record of every word added, subtracted, or changed. This is a public act, and editors are identified publicly as the author of such changes. All contributions made to a Project, and all publicly available information about those contributions, are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, quoted, reused and adapted by third parties with few restrictions.

Alleypedia's Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect and use the personal information you decide to share, and help you make informed decisions when using Alleypedia, located at www.writeralley.org and its directly associated domains (collectively, "Alleypedia" or "Website")

By using or accessing Alleypedia, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

Activities on Alleypedia projects

In general, this Policy only applies to private information stored or held by Alleypedia which is not publicly available.

Interactions with the Projects not covered by this Policy include, but are not limited to, aspects of browsing and editing pages, use of the wiki "email user" function, and corresponding with volunteers via the Community Portals. These interactions may reveal a contributor's IP address, and possibly other personal information, indiscriminately to the general public, or to specific groups of volunteers acting independently of Alleypedia.

User accounts and authorship

Alleypedia does not require editors to register with a project. Anyone can edit without logging in with a username, in which case they will be identified by network IP address. Users that do register are identified by their chosen username. Users select a password, which is confidential and used to verify the integrity of their account.

Except insofar as it may be required by law, no person should disclose, or knowingly expose, either user passwords and/or cookies generated to identify a user. Once created, user accounts will not be removed. It may be possible for a username to be changed, depending on the policies of individual projects. Alleypedia does not guarantee that a username will be changed on request.

The Information Alleypedia Collects

When you visit Alleypedia you provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected by us and Web Site use information collected by us as you interact with our Web Site.

When you register with Alleypedia, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, your telephone number, your address, your gender, schools attended and any other personal or preference information that you provide to us.

When you enter Alleypedia, we collect your browser type and IP address. This information is gathered for all Alleypedia visitors. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use session ID cookies to confirm that users are logged in. These cookies terminate once the user closes the browser. By default, we use a persistent cookie that stores your login ID (but not your password) to make it easier for you to login when you come back to Alleypedia. You can remove or block this cookie using the settings in your browser if you want to disable this convenience feature.

When you use Alleypedia, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can return to view prior messages you have sent or easily see your friend list. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.

You post your content on Alleypedia at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.

Any improper collection or misuse of information provided on Alleypedia is a violation of the Alleypedia Terms of Service and should be reported through Alleypedia's helpdesk.

Alleypedia may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Alleypedia service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.

By using Alleypedia, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

Purpose of the collection of private information

Alleypedia limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the well-being of its community projects, including but not limited to the following:

To enhance the public accountability of the projects. Alleypedia recognizes that any system that is open enough to allow the greatest possible participation of the general public will also be vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse and counterproductive behavior. Alleypedia and the project communities have established a number of mechanisms to prevent or remedy abusive activities. For example, when investigating abuse on a project, including the suspected use of malicious “sockpuppets” (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruptive behavior, the IP addresses of users (derived either from those logs or from records in the database) may be used to identify the source(s) of the abusive behavior. This information may be shared by users with administrative authority who are charged by their communities with protecting the projects.

To provide site statistics. Alleypedia statistically samples raw log data from users' visits. These logs are used to produce the site statistics pages; the raw log data is not made public.

To solve technical problems. Log data may be examined by developers in the course of solving technical problems and in tracking down badly-behaved web spiders that overwhelm the site.

Details of data retention

General expectations

IP and other technical information

When a visitor requests or reads a page, or sends email to a Alleypedia server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. Alleypedia may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate users.

When a page is edited by a logged-in editor, the server confidentially stores related IP information for a limited period of time. This information is automatically deleted after a set period. For editors who do not log in, the IP address used is publicly and permanently credited as the author of the edit. It may be possible for a third party to identify the author from this IP address in conjunction with other information available. Logging in with a registered username allows for better preservation of privacy.

Cookies

The sites set a temporary session cookie on a visitor's computer whenever a Project page is visted. Readers who do not intend to log in or edit may deny this cookie; it will be deleted at the end of the browser's session. More cookies may be set when one logs in to maintain logged-in status. If one saves a user name or password in one's browser, that information will be saved for up to 30 days, and this information will be resent to the server on every visit to the same Project. Contributors using a public machine who do not wish to show their username to future users of the machine should clear these cookies after use.

Page history

Edits or other contributions to a Project on its articles, user pages and talk pages are generally retained forever. Removing text from a project does not permanently delete it. Normally, in projects, anyone can look at a previous version of an article and see what was there. Even if an article is "deleted", a user entrusted with higher level of access may still see what was removed from public view.
Information can be permanently deleted by individuals with access to Alleypedia servers, but aside from the rare circumstance when Alleypedia is required to delete editing-history material in response to a court order or equivalent legal process, there is no guarantee any permanent deletion will happen.

User contribution

User contributions are also aggregated and publicly available. User contributions are aggregated according to their registration and login status. Data on user contributions, such as the times at which users edited and the number of edits they have made, are publicly available via user contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.

Reading projects

No more information on users and other visitors reading pages is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites. Aside from the above raw log data collected for general purposes, page visits do not expose a visitor's identity publicly. Sampled raw log data may include the IP address of any user, but it is not reproduced publicly.

Editing projects

Edits to Project pages are identified with the username or network IP address of the editor, and editing history is aggregated by author in a contribution list. Such information will be available permanently on the projects.
Logged in registered users:
Logged in users do not expose their IP address to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by the user or by another user with the same IP address. A user's IP address is stored on the wiki servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by server administrators and by users who have been granted CheckUser access.
IP address information, and its connection to any usernames that share it, may be released under certain circumstances (see below).
Editors using a company mail server from home or telecommuting over a DSL or cable Internet connection, are likely to be easy to identify by their IP address; in which case it may be easy to cross-identify all contributions to various Projects made by that IP. Using a username is a better way of preserving privacy in this situation.
Unlogged-in registered users and unregistered users:
Editors who have not logged in may be identified by network IP address. Depending on one's connection, this IP address may be traceable to a large Internet service provider or more specifically to a school, place of business or home. It may be possible to use this information in combination with other information, including editing style and preferences, to identify an author completely.

Discussions

On wiki discussion pages:

Any editable page can theoretically be the location of a discussion. In general, discussions on Alleypedia occur on user talk pages (associated with particular users), on article talk pages (associated with particular articles) or in pages specially designated to function as forums (e.g., the Village Pump). Privacy expectations apply to discussion pages in the same way as they do elsewhere.

Via email:

Users are not required to list an email address when registering. Users who provide a valid email address can enable other logged-in users to send email to them through the wiki. When receiving an email from other users through this system, one's email address is not revealed to them. When choosing to send an email to other users, one's email is displayed as the sender.
The email address put into one's user preferences may be used by Alleypedia for communication. Users whose accounts do not have a valid email address will not be able to reset their password if it is lost. In such a situation, however, users may be able to contact one of the Alleypedia server administrators to enter a new e-mail address. A user can remove the account's email address from his preferences at any time to prevent it from being used. Private correspondence between users may be saved at those users' discretion and is not subject to Alleypedia policy.

On mailing lists:

The email addresses used to subscribe and post to Project mailing lists are exposed to other subscribers. The list archives of most such mailing lists are public, and searches of public archives may be performed on the Web. Subscribers' addresses may also be quoted in other users' messages. These email addresses and any messages sent to a mailing list may be archived and may remain available to the public permanently.

Access to and release of personally identifiable information

Access:

Projects are primarily run by volunteer contributors. Some dedicated users are chosen by the community to be given privileged access. For example, for a typical Alleypedia user, user access levels to Alleypedia are determined by the user's presence in various 'user groups'. User group rights and group members are reachable in every project from the Special:ListGroupRights page.

Other users who may have access to private identifiable information include users elected by project communities to serve as stewards or Arbitrators, Alleypedia employees, trustees, appointees, and contractors and agents employed by Alleypedia, and developers and others with high levels of server access.

Access to and publication of this information is governed by the Access to nonpublic data policy, as well as specific policies covering some of the functions in question. Sharing information with other privileged users is not considered "distribution."

Release: Policy on Release of Data

It is the policy of Alleypedia that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by Alleypedia volunteers or staff, in any of the following situations:

In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
With permission of the affected user,
When necessary for investigation of abuse complaints,
Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues,
Where the user has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to a service provider, carrier, or other third-party entity to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers,
Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Alleypedia, its users or the public.

Except as described above, Alleypedia policy does not permit distribution of personally identifiable information under any circumstances.

Third-party access and notifying registered users when receiving legal process:

As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used only internally to serve the well-being of the projects. Occasionally, however, Alleypedia may receive a subpoena or other compulsory request from a law-enforcement agency or a court or equivalent government body that requests the disclosure of information about a registered user, and may be compelled by law to comply with the request. In the event of such a legally compulsory request, Alleypedia will attempt to notify the affected user within ten business days after the arrival of such subpoena by sending a notice by email to the email address (if any) that the affected user has listed in his or her user preferences.

Alleypedia cannot advise a user receiving such a notification regarding the law or an appropriate response to a subpoena. Alleypedia does note, however, that such users may have the legal right to resist or limit that information in court by filing a motion to quash the subpoena. Users who wish to oppose a subpoena or other compulsory request should seek legal advice concerning applicable rights and procedures that may be available.

If Alleypedia receives a court-filed motion to quash or otherwise limit the subpoena as a result of action by a user or their lawyer, Alleypedia will not disclose the requested information until Alleypedia receives an order from the court to do so.

Registered users are not required to provide an email address. However, when an affected registered user does not provide an email address, Alleypedia will not be able to notify the affected user in private email messages when it receives requests from law enforcement to disclose personally identifiable information about the user.

Disclaimer of Warranties

YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR THE CONTENT IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM THE DOWNLOAD OF FILES, SOFTWARE, SERVICES AND/OR ANY GRAPHICS OR OTHER CONTENT. THE SITE, THE SERVICE AND THE CONTENT ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS. ALLEYPEDIA AND WRITERALLEY™, ITS LICENSORS AND SUPPLIERS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

NEITHER ALLEYPEDIA, NOR ITS LICENSORS OR SUPPLIERS MAKE ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR THE CONTENT WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, OR THAT THE SITE OR THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR FREE; NOR DOES ALLEYPEDIA ITS LICENSORS OR SUPPLIERS MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SERVICE OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, TRUTHFULNESS OR RELIABILITY OF ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED THROUGH THE SERVICE OR THAT DEFECTS IN THE SITE WILL BE CORRECTED. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN WARRANTIES, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

Limitations on liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL ALLEYPEDIA OR WRITERALLEY™, THEIR LICENSORS OR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, RESULTING FROM THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR THE CONTENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, DATE OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, EVEN IF ALLEYPEDIA AND WRITERALLEY™ HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

FURTHER, ALLEYPEDIA AND WRITERALLEY™ SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY TO YOU OR OTHER THIRD PARTIES FOR ANY THIRD PARTY CONTENT UPLOADED ONTO OR DOWNLOADED FROM THE SITE. YOU AGREE THAT THE AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF ALLEYPEDIA AND WRITERALLEY™ TO YOU FOR ANY AND ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM THE USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR THE CONTENT IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNTS YOU HAVE PAID TO ALLEYPEDIA AND WRITERALLEY™, IF ANY, FOR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR THE CONTENT. THE LIMITATIONS OF DAMAGES SET FORTH HEREIN ARE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS OF THE BASIS OF THE BARGAIN BETWEEN ALLEYPEDIA AND WRITERALLEY™ AND YOU. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES SO SOME OF THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

Disclaimer

Alleypedia believes that maintaining and preserving the privacy of user data is an important value. This Privacy Policy, together with other policies, resolutions, and actions by Alleypedia, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, Alleypedia cannot guarantee that user information will remain private.
We acknowledge that, in spite of our committed effort to protect private user information, determined individuals may still develop data-mining and other methods to uncover such information and disclose it. For this reason, Alleypedia can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in Alleypedia projects or related communities.