CZ:Privacy policy

The Citizendium is committed to maintaining your privacy.

We collect no information about users, other than what standard Web traffic logs reveal.

For contributors, however, we realize that privacy is a special concern, since we require the use of real names and identities. We require that contributors reveal this information, so that our readers, and your co-authors and co-editors, know who you are and that there are people who are willing to take real-world responsibility for what appears here. We believe that this is the only way to have a mature, pleasant community and a credible product. We are a community of real people, not avatars and pseudonyms.

Still, you need not reveal very much information about yourself. When you join, the only information we will put on your user page biography is what you say we may put there. After your user page is created, you may edit it yourself, as long as you continue to maintain some helpful information about your (scholarly) interests and education.

Your name will not show up in search engines such as Google and Yahoo! because of your Citizendium account. This is because we prevent them from spidering Citizendium userpages and talkpages with robots.txt (see robotstxt.org for information).

It is impossible for the vast majority of contributors or readers to find out anything about you other than what you yourself reveal, through your participation in the system. We do, however, have a category of contributor, called "Constables," who keep our global village here running smoothly. They have access to your e-mail address and any application details. The details of editor applications, moreover, are accessible by "Editorial Personnel Administrators." These people are chosen for their responsibility and maturity, and they are intelligent and sensitive to privacy concerns. They know not to share your personal information.