WikiChristian:Privacy policy
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This page is an official policy on WikiChristian. It has wide acceptance among editors. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects community consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
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WikiChristian believes in protecting your online privacy as much as it is possible to do so in a wiki environment. If you read Wikichristian articles, there is no more information collected about you than is normally collected by web sites in general in their server logs.
If you contribute to Wikichristian.org, you are publishing every word you post publicly. If you write something, assume that it will be kept forever. This includes articles, user pages and talk pages. Some limited exceptions are described below.
Publishing on the wiki and public data
Simply visiting the web site does not expose your identity publicly. When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document. This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit as its author.
Identification of an author
When you publish a page in the wiki, you may be logged in or not.
If you are logged in, you will be identified by your user name. This may be your real name if you so choose, or you may choose to publish under a pseudonym, whatever user name you selected when you created your account.
If you have not logged in, you will be identified by your network IP address. If you use a company mail server from home or telecommute and use a DSL or cable internet connection, it is likely to be very easy for your employer to identify your IP address and find all of your IP based Wikichristian contributions. Using a user name is a better way of preserving your privacy in this situation. However, remember to disconnect yourself after using a pseudonym to avoid allowing others to use your identity.
Cookies
The wiki will set a temporary session cookie (PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. If you do not intend to ever log in, you may deny this cookie, but you cannot log in without it. It will be deleted when you close your browser session.
More cookies may be set when you log in, to avoid typing in your user name (or optionally password) on your next visit. These last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and don't wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. (If so, clear the browser cache as well.)
Passwords
Many aspects of Wikichristian projects community interactions depend on the reputation and respect that is built up through a history of valued contributions. User passwords are the only guarantee of the integrity of a user's edit history. All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them. No one shall knowingly expose the password of another user to public release either directly or indirectly.
Private logging
Every time you visit a web page, you send a lot of information to the web server. Most web servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information, which can be used to get an overall picture of what pages are popular, what other sites link to this one, and what web browsers people are using. It is not the intention of Wikichristian to use this information to keep track of legitimate users.
Policy on release of data derived from page logs
It is the policy of Wikichristian that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs will not be released by the sysops who have access to it, except as follows:
- In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement
- With permission of the affected user
- To Jimbo Wales, his legal counsel, or his designee, 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 vandalising articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released 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 Wikichristian, its users or the public.
Wikichristian policy does not permit public distribution of such information under any circumstances, except as described above.
Sharing information with third parties
Except where otherwise specified, all text added to Wikichristian projects is available for reuse under the terms of the GFDL, except for Wikinews, where the text is available under a Creative Commons License.
Wikichristian will not sell or share private information, such as email addresses, with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is required by law to release the information.
Security of information
Wikichristian makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. This information will be available to all sysops with access to the servers.
You may provide your e-mail address in your Preferences. This allows other logged-in users may send email to you through the wiki (unless you disable this in your preferences). Your address will not be revealed to them unless you respond, or possibly if the email bounces. The email address may be used by Wikichristian to communicate with users on a wider scale.
If you do not provide an email address, you will not be able to reset your password if you forget it. However, you may contact one of Wikichristian sysop to enter a new mail address in your preferences.
You can remove your email address from your preferences at any time to prevent it being used.
User data
Data on users, such as the times at which they edited and the number of edits they have made are publicly available via "user contributions" lists, and occasionally in aggregated forms published by other users.
Removal of user accounts
Once created, user accounts can not be removed. It may be possible for a sysop to change the username on an account, but you will need to request this yourself. Wikichristian does not guarantee that a name will be changed on request.
Whether specific user information is deleted is dependant on the deletion policies of the project that contains the information.
Deletion of content
Deleting text from Wikichristian projects does not really delete them. In normal articles, anyone can look at a previous version and see what was there. If an article is "deleted", any sysop/administrator, meaning almost anyone trusted not to abuse the deletion capability, can see what was deleted. Only a sysop can permanently delete information from Wikichristian projects and there is no guarantee this will happen except in response to legal action. If you need any assistance, you may contact one of the sysops.
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