This policy is based on the Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy.

Welcome to Appropedia, a public wiki where users contribute knowledge to help create a more sustainable world. As a user of Appropedia, it is essential to understand how your privacy is protected, and this policy is designed to help you do just that.

When you visit Appropedia, no more information is collected than is usually collected in server logs by websites in general. However, if you contribute to the wiki, every word you post is public. You are publishing content that may be retained forever, including articles, user pages, and talk pages. Please keep this in mind while posting, and note the limited exceptions described below.

Publishing on the wiki and public data

Your identity is not revealed to the public when you visit a website. However, if you change any page on a wiki, you are essentially publishing a document. This means that your edit becomes a public record, and your identity as the author of the edit is made known to the public. So, remember that your edits on a wiki are not anonymous and will be associated with your name.

Author identification

When you create a page on a "wiki," you can either be logged in or not. If you are logged in, you will be recognized by your user name, either your real name or a made-up name you picked when you signed up.

However, if you are not logged in, your identity will be traced by your network IP address, a series of four numbers that identifies the Internet address you are using. Depending on your connection, this number can only be traced to a large Internet Service Provider or specifically to your school, work, or home. This means someone could use your IP address to determine who you are and your interest based on what you write on the wiki.

If you are worried about privacy, you can log in and use a pseudonym instead of your real name. If you use a pseudonym, your IP address won't be visible to the public unless you vandalize a page on the wiki. However, your IP address will still be stored on the website's servers, which can be seen by administrators or users with special access. Your IP address and username can even be released to the public in certain situations.

If you use a work email server or telecommute and use an Internet connection like DSL or cable, it's easy for your employer to track your IP address and see what you've contributed to the wiki. To protect your privacy, it's best to use a pseudonym instead of your real name. And if you use a shared computer, log out or disconnect yourself after each session so that others don't accidentally use your identity.

Cookies

Appropedia 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

Building a good reputation and earning respect within the Appropedia community relies heavily on consistently making valuable contributions. Users need to safeguard their passwords to ensure the accuracy and integrity of a user's editing history. It's strongly encouraged that users create unique and strong passwords, which should be at least eight characters long and contain a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

For maximum security, it's recommended that users change their passwords regularly and use different passwords for each account. It's also important to never share passwords with anyone and to avoid knowingly disclosing another user's password to the public, directly or indirectly.

Information security

While we strive to protect all information in our servers, the Appropedia Foundation makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide.

This information may be available to anyone with access to the servers. A partial list of those people can be found in the developers list.

Email and mailing lists

Email

You can choose to share your email address on the wiki by adding it to your Preferences. This allows other logged-in users to send you emails through the site, but your email address won't be revealed unless you reply or if there's a problem with the email.

Sometimes, the Appropedia Foundation might need to contact users via email, but this won't happen very often.

It's important to note that if you forget your password, you'll need an email address associated with your account to reset it. If you don't provide an email address, you can still contact one of the Appropedia server administrators to add one to your Preferences.

And don't worry, if you ever change your mind about sharing your email address, you can remove it from your Preferences at any time.

Mailing lists

When you create an account on Appropedia, you may be asked to provide your email address as part of the registration process. Appropedia may use your email address to send you newsletters or updates about the platform, including new features, relevant content, and community events. This type of communication can help keep you informed about the latest developments on Appropedia and provide you with useful information to enhance your experience on the platform. If you no longer wish to receive these newsletters, you can usually unsubscribe by following the instructions included in the email.

Support email addresses

If you need help using our service, you can reach out to us via email at support@appropedia.org. Our team of trusted volunteers will receive your email and work together to give you the best possible answer. Don't worry, your email will only be visible to this group of volunteers, and we'll keep your contact information private. Just keep in mind that if you send an email to one of our support addresses, our volunteers may discuss the contents with each other to make sure they give you the best response.

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 in aggregated forms published by other users.

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 Appropedia to use this information to keep track of legitimate users.

User logs

MediaWiki creates logs of user contributions, which are public. These logs are used to produce the statistics pages; the raw log data is not made public, and is normally discarded after about two weeks.

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 addresses of users, derived either from those logs or from records in the database are frequently used to correlate usernames and network addresses of edits in investigating abuse of the wiki, including the suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of the wiki.

Release of data derived from page logs

Personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or users with CheckUser access, in 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. To the chair of The Appropedia Foundation, his/her legal counsel, or his/her designee, 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 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.
  6. Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Appropedia Foundation, its users or the public.

Appropedia 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 Appropedia projects is available for reuse under the terms of the GFDL.

Appropedia 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.

User account removal

Our servers do not allow the removal of user accounts. However, users can delete personal information, such as photos or user information on pages, either by themselves or with the assistance of administrators upon request. Changing a username is also possible, but the Appropedia Foundation cannot guarantee that a name change will be granted.

Content deletion

When text is removed from Appropedia, it is important to note that it is not permanently deleted. Even though it's no longer visible to the public, it can still be retrieved by administrators or by checking the article's previous versions. However, if you want to completely erase information from the servers, only a select few with access to the servers can do so, and even then, it's not guaranteed unless there's legal action involved.

Notes


FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors Curt Beckmann, Chris Watkins
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 21 pages link here
Impact 210 page views (more)
Created February 1, 2007 by Anonymous1
Last modified June 13, 2024 by Kathy Nativi
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