Vinismo is written by its readers -- Internet users like you -- and we need your help! Try our getting started guide to learn how.
Many Vinismo users -- but by no means all! -- are experienced Internet users who value their privacy. The following policy tries to balance the needs of individual Vinismo users with the needs of the Vinismo community at large.
- Vinismo user information will not be sold for any reason. Your user information will not be sold to marketing companies or other groups who want to bother you. We get enough unsolicited bulk email as it is; we're not going to go out of our way to get more.
- You may be sent email by other Vinismo users. Each User Page] contains a link to email that user (this function is deactivated by default). Your email address will not be exposed to other users, but they will be able to send you email through the Web form. Additionally, if you email another user, your email address will be used in the From field; sending email through Vinismo is not anonymous. You can enable or disable email from other users in your User Preferences.
- You may be sent email by Vinismo administrators even if you disabled email from other users. In extreme circumstances, Vinismo administrators may contact you directly through email. This would be only for extraordinary situations.
- You may be sent mass email by Vinismo administrators. On very rare occasions, it may be necessary for Vinismo administrators to send out a mass email to all Vinismo users. Again, this would be for extraordinary situations -- such as spectacular changes in copyright policy -- and will not be used for marketing, promotions, or other "newsletter" types of mailing. Normal announcements and news will go in the site itself.
- Vinismo user information will be transferred on demand to law enforcement officials or under court order. In general, your Vinismo identity will not be protected in case of legal investigation. Vinismo is not some kind of digital snitch service, and we won't go out of our way to rat you out to the authorities, but we do need to protect the community first. However, any legal request of this sort must be conducted in conformity with the laws of Canada, via a federal court, or via a court of the Province of Québec.
- IP addresses are logged. The MediaWiki software used by Vinismo logs the IP address of anonymous users. This is mostly to give those users some identity, but in case of legal hassle, IP address log information will be turned over to courts or law enforcement officials.
- Your username or IP address is associated with changes. When you create and edit an article, your username will be associated with that change. This is required by our copyleft license; we need to have some identifier to attribute your work to.
- User pages are published, copyleft works. Your user page is released under the same copyleft license as any other part of Vinismo. Don't put personal information there that you would feel uncomfortable having appear on other Web sites, in books, projected onto the sides of buildings, or whatever.
- Talk pages are published, copyleft works. Similarly, your comments on the Talk page of any Vinismo article are also copyleft, and subject to the same rules for distribution as any other page.
