KDE Wiki Sandbox:Privacy policy
The Scope of this Document
This document addresses the use and retention of personally identifiable information on the UserBase website.
On the Nature of the UserBase Wiki
Any registered user gains the right to edit content, discussion pages, and user pages, including those of other users. It is expected that those rights will not be abused, and any such abuse will lead to the perpetrator losing all edit rights.
UserBase is a public wiki. Any content submitted to UserBase is subject to the Creative Commons Share-Alike license, and the Gnu Free Document License. Links are provided on each page to the full text of the licenses. The authors of any edit, contribution, correction etc. are publicly identifiable and may be contacted by any other registered user.
User Accounts
UserBase may be read by any member of the public, without the creation of a registered account. Contribution in any form does, however, require the user to have a registered account. Registered users have a sidebar link to several Preferences pages. On the first page there is a field for entering an email address. This is optional, but it is recommended that you do enter one, as it is impossible for us to help with a lost password if you do not. Your email address is not publicly viewable. Pages other than the first one are mainly for display preferences and should be browsed at your leisure.
In order to contact another user you should user their Talk page. This ensures that both of you are addressed only by your UserBase username.
From time to time users will be granted extra rights by associating them with a user group. As an example, a potential translator needs to request to be added to the Translator group. Without that he cannot access the translation system.
Collection and Retention of Personally Identifiable Information
The Purpose of Collecting Personally Identifiable Information
Personally Identifiable Information is collected for the security and smooth running of UserBase. Examples of the use of this information includes, but is not limited to
- Public Accountability. When a user registers an account, no check is made regarding the identity of the user. In the case of a serious abuse occurring it is necessary that mechanisms exist for the investigation of the event.
- To provide statistics. In order to ensure smooth running mechanisms exist for statistics to be gathered from the raw logs of accesses. Information from those logs is not made public.
- To investigate technical problems. Raw logs may be examined by the system administrators when investigating any technical problem, including tracking down badly-behaved web-spiders.
Every effort is made protect personal information, but it is the user's responsibility to consider any possible consequence of information entered on the site. It should also be noted that before the introduction of the requirement to register in order to edit, any user editing without logging in was identified by his IP address, which is publicly viewable in the edit histories.
Retention of Personally Identifiable Information
IP and other technical information
In the course of any contribution the IP address of the editor is securely registered on the server. It is expired after a fixed period. There is no public access to that information.
Cookies
If your browser allows it cookies may be set either as session cookies or to maintain logged in status. Users are reminded that if they save a username and password in a browser, that information will be available for use for up to 30 days. Any contributor using a public machine is advised to clear all such cookies and browser caches.
Page History
All edits, contributions and translations are normally retained indefinitely and can be viewed in the Page History. Deleting a page hides it from view, but users in the higher levels of access groups will still be able to access the information. Permanent deletion will normally only occur when required by law.
User Contributions
UserBase offers RSS and Atom aggregation feeds. Aggregation is made according to the user's registration and login status. Other information regarding user contribution, such as the number of edits made, is publicly available in the User Contributions list on Special Pages.
When Reading UserBase
UserBase securely logs accesses in the same way as other websites. That information is not publicly available.
When Editing or Translating Pages
The IP address of a contributor is stored for a time on the server. While system administrators can view that information it is not publicly available.