SoylentNews Site Policy

Privacy, Copyright, Disclaimers, Terms of Use, and DMCA

The following sections are a DRAFT and are expected to be revised/amended.

TODO: Probably need different ones for each service (soylentnews.org, irc.sylnt.us, wiki.soylentnews.org, etc). May be worth checking out policies of other popular sites (like FreeNode for IRC, that *other* site for soylentnews.org, wikipedia for wiki.soylentnews.org, etc)

The SoylentNews site is currently based in the United States. As such, it is important to state the policy of SoylentNews with respect to certain laws in effect there as well as internationally.

Privacy Policy

It is the policy of SoylentNews, in as much as is reasonably possible, to retain the least amount of personally identifiable information about the community's members. Certain items are necessary in the conduction of the site's operation. These include, but are not necessarily restricted to: e-mail address and IP address [what else?]. Reasonable and customary steps are taken to protect that information.

Copyright Notice

There are several places on the site where user-supplied content is published.

Submitted Stories

Anyone may submit a story for consideration by the editors for publication on the site. Editors attempt, within the site's guidelines *[need link]* to provide a consistent reading experience for the community. This may entail reformatting, rewriting, spelling corrections, and the like. The revised submission may then be published on the site for the community to read and to comment on. Subsequent to publishing to the site, additional edits may be made so as to correct mistakes (e.g. typos) and/or to add additional information, etc.

The original submitter retains copyright to their submission.

The original submitter grants a non-exclusive right to SoylentNews PBC to publish the story.

Published Stories

SoylentNews PBC retains copyright to the story as published on the site.

Journal Submissions

Each logged-in user has the ability to post "stories" to their journal page. The submitter may edit or even delete any of their journal postings.

Question: is a deleted journal entry actually deleted or is just no longer displayed?

Question: Should we add the comment disclaimer here, as well? That is, should this apply:

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

User Comments

The community is encouraged to provide comments in response to stories published on the site as well as to journal entries in which that option has been enabled. Comments may be submitted anonymously, as an "Anonymous Coward", or attributed to the user's site Nickname. In either case, the site's policy is stated on each story page:

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

TODO: how does the user transfer publishing/usage rights to SN? suggest possibly using the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license (simply saying "following comments are owned by whoever posted them" kinda implies that if someone wants their comment deleted, SN gotta give in to that.

Wiki Entries

Copyright on entries on the site's Wikipedia page are governed by this statement which appears at the bottom of each page:

Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike unless otherwise noted.

Further, when submitting to the Wiki, this notice appears above the "Save page", "Show Preview", and "Show changes" buttons:

Please note that all contributions to SoylentNews are considered to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (see <a href="/w/index.php?title=SoylentNews:Copyrights&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="SoylentNews:Copyrights (page does not exist)">SoylentNews:Copyrights</a> for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

NOTE: The SoylentNews:Copyright link has no destination; it needs to be created or this entry revised.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

The submitter of anything posted to any of the site's IRC channels specifically allows the site to retain anything posted there and make it available, for example, in the form of retained logs. In addition, any chats that take place in the form of staff meetings, board meetings, and the like will be retained and may be posted on the site Wiki.

SoylentCode (rehash)

The site is based on Slashcode (Version xyz) which is under a GPL v2 license. Wherever possible, commensurate with maintaining site security, any new or updated code originated by SoylentNews will retain this licensing and be made available for downloading by any individual in accord with this license. Links will be maintained on the site to enable the repository of the code to be easily located.

Disclaimers

TBD. The following is a DRAFT disclaimer policy and is intended to reviewed and/or amended.

Content published on this website is for general information purposes only.
SoylentNews PBC offers no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, regarding completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability of this website, published information and related graphics or hyperlinks contained on this website for any purpose. Use of such information is therefore at your own risk.
In no event shall SoylentNews PBC or its affiliates be held liable for any losses or damages including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from loss of data or revenue arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website.
SoylentNews PBC has no control over the nature, content, and availability of hyperlinked websites. The inclusion of hyperlinks to other websites is for reference or informative purposes only and does not imply endorsement of them.
Availability is not guaranteed. SoylentNews PBC takes no responsibility for, and will not be liable for, this website being unavailable for any reason.

Terms of Use

TBD. This is a DRAFT that is intended as a starting point for discussion for use on the Site

Last Modified: 2014-09-11

Use of this website is subject to your agreement with the following terms, as well as your agreement with the Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, and Disclaimer. You should review these terms and related documents regularly as they may be revised at any time without notice.

The date that these terms were last modified can be found at the top of the page.

Use of this website and any disputes arising out of such use of this website are subject to the laws of the United States of America. [State? of Delaware, too?
All registered trademarks reproduced remain property of their respective owners.
Unauthorized use of this website may give rise to a claim for damages and/or be a criminal offense.
This website includes links to third party websites. These links are provided for your convenience to provide further information, and does not signify endorsement.
Availability of this website is not guaranteed.
Spamming, hacking and/or phishing this website is not permitted.
These terms, as well as terms in the related documents, shall remain continuously in force if there is a change to the domain of this website.

DMCA Notice

TBD. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act should be considered as to its applicability to the site and what our policy should be.

DMCACompliance

Subscription Fees

Community Fees

The Board may choose to offer a subscription membership fee to some or all members of the SoylentNews community. Nevertheless, non-payment of the subscription fee will not prevent access to the site; the intention is to enable the site to be viewed by as many people as possible and to encourage them to submit stories for publication and to comment on the stories that have already been accepted and released.

Waiving of Subscription Fees

Once an individual has served as a staff member for (immediately, x weeks, y months?) he is no longer required to pay subscription fees to enjoy all the privileges of site membership. This privilege will remain for the period of their service on the staff, plus a discretionary extension of a maximum of 1 year from the individual leaving the staff. The actual duration will be decided by the MG.

Occasionally, the MG might recommend to the Board that an individual be granted lifetime site membership in recognition of a significant period of service, or being a prominent figure from any relevant field of technology or related interests, or some other act deserving of special recognition. The Board can accept or reject such recommendations as they deem fit.

Site Control and Security

Access to Personal Data

No personal data held by the site will be shared, sold or otherwise distributed outside of the site with the exception of demands supported by the appropriate legal documentation served upon the Board.

Personal data shall be held by the site for the minimum time necessary, and efforts should be made to anonymize or encrypt such data wherever possible.

Abusive Behaviour

SoylentNews aims to be tolerant of any individual's personal views and will allow them to express their views in the comments of published stories. However, occasionally, individuals will not express their views relating to a story but will employ offensive and/or abusive behaviour towards an individual. This is not in the spirit of the site and a graduated response will be adopted to anyone who employs such behaviour in their comments.

The moderation system employed usually results in offensive, abusive or off-topic information being reduced to the lowest viewable priority level such that, to most regular users of the site, it does not even display on their screen. Often, this is sufficient to defuse the situation and the offender departs after a short period of time. However, community members should also be encouraged not to 'feed the trolls' and to avoid responding to any posts by the offender. Staff should adopt a non-confrontational attitude while engaging with community members and the offender in an attempt to cool the situation down.

A member of staff should issue a comment in which he politely but firmly requests that the offender stops his offensive/abusive behaviour while explaining that it does nothing to contribute to the site nor does it show the offender in a positive light. However, it is important to try to identify the true cause of the offenders attitude and for the staff member, alone or with the assistance of other members of staff, to try to resolve any genuine issues or grievances that the offender may have.

A TL or senior staff member should attempt to engage the offender in a private communication (either IRC/PM, email or whatever) and warn the offender that there could be serious consequences if the offender continues with his current course of action.

The MG can agree to ban the offender for a specific period or permanently and take action to do so. There are, of course, technical difficulties associated with effectively banning an individual but a block of his personal IPs for each computer system as and when they are identified might be considered as a reasonable action.

Control of SPAM

SPAM is most often found in story submissions (either as a link in an submission or as the entire contents of a submission) or in the comments to a published story. If the SPAM is simply a link then that link may be deleted by an Editor however, other forms of SPAM should NOT be deleted. A SuperAdmin (which is anyone on staff who is not an editor) should be informed so that the origin of the material can be identified and action taken to block that particular source of SPAM. The SPAM is deleted only when the procedure to block the SPAM is complete.

Control of Access and Password Policy

TODO - User passwords. Post-breach actions and analysis etc.

No-one should be given access privileges above those which are essential for them to complete their role. Additionally, no single individual should have a unique set of privileges because, in the event of some unforeseen circumstance, no other individual will be able to fulfill the same role. TLs should ensure that each task for which his team is responsible is documented and that privileges are assigned to team members as required.

In the event of a member of staff permanently leaving then a SuperAdmin is responsible for ensuring that access privileges are removed for that individual promptly. Shared passwords known by the individual, where they exist, should also be changed.

Response to Denial Of Service (DOS) Attack

TODO - This might simply be "... is the responsibility of the Systems Team", or may be more detailed by listing actions to be taken by one or more teams.