I have been hosting Civilities.net for close to four years. After tge first couple of months of finding my way through blog-like dribbles of posts, I posted a document Ethical and Stylistic Guidelines. I didn't know very much about the blogger vs. journalism debate then – let alone the specific laws governing the rough edges of free speech – but I had a sense at the time that I didn't want this website to be responsible exposing private information by my own actions. I echoed this philosophy in my Posting Guidelines. I require users to register with a valid email address before posting comments. The peace of mind of not encouraging a “flame board” is more important to me than people being able to automatically add to discussions; there are enough other places on the Internet people can carry on discussions (I have been weighing a policy of having unregistered comments go to moderation).

In practice, there's been a minimum of comments (132 in all, barely three a month), so there has been a minimum risk of exposure of information.

Recently I've been investigating privacy concerns, and it was pointed out to me that this website lacks an explicit privacy policy. I will do so now in more of an instructive than legalistic manner (I am not a lawyer). This deals with the exposure of your information (as the reader) through my actions.

Privacy Policy & Practice

I (the “publisher”) make articles available; you (the “reader”) read those articles, and, on occasion, register to the site, and post comments. The actions of reading articles and posting comments are logged with your IP address. As the publisher, I periodically review the logs to understand how people are reading the website. (e.g., after people privately or publicly praise my work, I often check how much of it they have read.)

Also, this site uses cookies for state management and session tracking. Should you choose to login, your session information is maintained by a cookie from this server.

I do not share this information with third parties. Site visits are tracked independently by the following third parties.

• As of December 17, 2007, traffic statistics are being tracked by Google Analytics, which uses a cookie for tracking.
• As of December 19, 2007, this site is using SiteMeter for tracking as well.

It is possible for information in the logs to be subpoenaed by another party in civil litigation or by the government. In the event I am served with a subpoena for your information I will attempt to notify you about it so you can intervene if you would like to defend against it. How I respond to subpoenas will be my discretion.

Forward-Looking Statements

1. I will update this page when any changes in policy practice are made.
2. I also may update this statement to better reflect legalese, or, if possible, adopt an outside-defined policy which is better written.
3. I will be formatting this policy to the P3P schama shortly (while leaving this human-readable document.