Wiki:Privacy policy

General scope
This policy covers personally identifiable information collected or stored by The Cycle: Frontier Wiki on its servers in relation to the articles and their communities. Consistent with its Data Retention Policy, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to fulfil the site's operational needs.

The public and collaborative nature of the Wiki
All pages on The Cycle: Frontier Wiki are 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 an article, 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.

Activities on The Cycle: Frontier Wiki
In general, this Policy only applies to private information stored or held by The Cycle: Frontier Wiki which is not publicly available.

Interactions with articles 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 subscribing and posting to The Cycle: Frontier Wiki hosted email lists. 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki.

Users may also interact with one another outside of The Cycle: Frontier Wiki, via email, IRC or other chat, or independent websites, and should assess the risks involved, and their personal need for privacy, before using these methods of communication.

User accounts and authorship
The Cycle: Frontier Wiki does require editors to register with the wiki. 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.

Purpose of the collection of private information
The Cycle: Frontier Wiki limits the collection of personally identifiable user data to purposes which serve the well-being of its pages, including but not limited to the following:


 * To enhance the public accountability of the wiki. The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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. The Cycle: Frontier Wiki and its community have established a number of mechanisms to prevent or remedy abusive activities. For example, when investigating abuse on the wiki, 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 the community to protect the wiki
 * To provide site statistics. The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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.

IP and other technical information

 * When a visitor requests or reads a page, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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.

Cookies

 * The sites set a temporary session cookie on a visitor's computer whenever a page is visited. 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 site. 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 page, user pages and talk pages are generally retained forever. Removing text from a page does not permanently delete it. Normally, in pages, 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki servers, but aside from the rare circumstance when The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 pages

 * 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 pages

 * Edits to 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 page.
 * 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 pages 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki pages 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 Staff Lounge). 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki policy.
 * On IRC:
 * IRC channels are not officially part of the The Cycle: Frontier Wiki and are not operated on The Cycle: Frontier Wiki controlled servers. The IP address of users who chat over such a service may be exposed to other participants. IRC users' privacy on each channel can only be protected according to the policies of the respective service and channel. Different channels have  different policies on whether logs may be published.

Access to and release of personally identifiable information
Access:

Pages are developed by volunteer contributors. Some dedicated users are chosen by the community to be given privileged access. For example, users who actively patrol edits and clean up vandalism may be promoted with Rollback privileges or Sysop status. User group rights and group members are reachable from the Special:ListGroupRights page.

Other users who may have access to private identifiable information include, but are not limited to, users who have access to the CheckUser and Oversight functions, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki employees, and contractors and agents employed by the The Cycle: Frontier Wiki, 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki admins or staff, in any of the following situations:
 * 1) In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
 * 2) With permission of the affected user,
 * 3) When necessary for investigation of abuse complaints,
 * 4) Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues,
 * 5) 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,
 * 6) Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of The Cycle: Frontier Wiki, its users or the public.

Except as described above, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 pages should be minimal and should be used only internally to serve the well-being of the pages. Occasionally, however, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki will attempt to notify the affected user within three 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.

The Cycle: Frontier Wiki cannot advise a user receiving such a notification regarding the law or an appropriate response to a subpoena. The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki receives a court-filed motion to quash or otherwise limit the subpoena as a result of action by a user or their lawyer, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki will not disclose the requested information until it 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, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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.

Google Analytics Usage
The Cycle: Frontier Wiki makes use of Google Analytics, which uses cookies and collects information. Certain information such as your browser, and your IP address may be sent to Google Analytics but this information is always anonymized so that we don’t know which specific visitors are associated with what browser and we do not have access to any IP information in Google Analytics. Analytics may use several cookies including cookies stored for very long periods in order to determine if you have visited the site before, but Analytics never associates any identifiable information with your visit. So we may know many people visit a particular page, but we won’t know specifically who read it. For more information, please review the information on the following link:


 * Google Privacy & Terms

To opt out of being counted in Google Analytics, you can install a browser add on made by Google.

Disclaimer
The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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 The Cycle: Frontier Wiki, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki 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, The Cycle: Frontier Wiki can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in The Cycle: Frontier Wiki pages or related communities.