BoyWiki:Terms of Service
|
Part of our mission is to:
You are free to:
Under the following conditions:
|
| BoyWiki guidelines |
|---|
| Administration |
| Content guidelines |
| Policies and guidelines by section |
| Disclaimers |
| Deletion guidelines |
| About BoyWiki |
1. Our Services
BoyWiki is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free multilingual content, and to hosting the full content of BoyWiki for the public free of charge. However, we act only as a hosting service, maintaining the infrastructure and organizational framework that allows our users to build BoyWiki by contributing and editing content themselves. Because of our unique role, there are a couple of things you should be aware of when considering our relationship to you, BoyWiki, and the other users:
Because the BoyWiki articles are collaboratively edited, all of the content that we host is provided by users like yourself, and we do not take an editorial role. This means that we do not take any responsibility for this content. Similarly, we do not endorse any opinions expressed via our services, and we do not represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any submitted community content. Instead, we simply provide access to the content that your fellow users have contributed and edited.
You are responsible for your own actions: You are legally responsible for your edits and contributions on BoyWiki, so for your own protection you should exercise caution and avoid contributing any content that may result in criminal or civil liability under any applicable laws. For clarity, applicable law includes at least the laws of the United States of America. Although we may not agree with such actions, we warn editors and contributors that authorities may seek to apply other country laws to you, including local laws where you live or where you view or edit content. BoyWiki or our host Free Spirits cannot offer any protection, guarantee, immunity or indemnification.
2. Privacy Policy
BoyWiki does not collect or stored personal information. BoyWiki believes in maintaining and preserving the privacy of our users however Boywiki can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information nor prevent a user from disclosing personal information on discussion pages, through editing, or when emailing other users or staff.
3. Content We Host
You may find some material objectionable or erroneous: Because we provide a wide array of content that is produced or gathered by fellow users, you may encounter material that you find offensive, erroneous, misleading, mislabeled, or otherwise objectionable. We therefore ask that you use common sense and proper judgment when using our services.
Our content is for general informational purposes only. It should not be taken as professional advice. Please seek independent professional counseling from someone who is licensed or qualified in the applicable area in lieu of acting on any information, opinion, or advice contained on BoyWiki.
4. Refraining from Certain Activities
The articles hosted by BoyWiki only exist because of the vibrant community of users like you who collaborate to write, edit, and curate the content. We happily welcome your participation in this community. We encourage you to be civil and polite in your interactions with others in the community, to act in good faith, and to make edits and contributions aimed at furthering the mission of the shared Project.
Certain activities, whether legal or illegal, may be harmful to other users and violate our rules, and some activities may also subject you to liability. Therefore, for your own protection and for that of other users, you may not engage in such activities on our sites. These activities include:
- Harassing and Abusing Others
- Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism; and
- Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users.
- Violating the Privacy of Others
- Infringing the privacy rights of others under the laws of the United States of America or other applicable laws (which may include the laws where you live or where you view or edit content);
- Outing by breaking by any means, partially or completely, the anonymity of living persons, and particularly of other contributors;
- Soliciting personally identifiable information for purposes of harassment, exploitation, violation of privacy, or any promotional or commercial purpose not explicitly approved by the Boywiki Council; and
Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose or violating any applicable law regarding the health or well-being of minors.
- Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud
- Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation; With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate;
- Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive; and
- Engaging in fraud.
- Committing Infringement
- Infringing copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other proprietary rights under applicable law.
- Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes
- Posting child pornography or any other content that violates applicable law concerning child pornography;
- Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law; and
- Using the services in a manner that is inconsistent with applicable law.
- Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities
- Posting or distributing content that contains any viruses, malware, worms, Trojan horses, malicious code, or other device that could harm our technical infrastructure or system or that of our users;
- Engaging in automated uses of the site that are abusive or disruptive of the services and have not been approved by the Boywiki Council;
- Disrupting the services by placing an undue burden on a Project website or the networks or servers connected with a Project website;
- Disrupting the services by inundating any of the Project websites with communications or other traffic that suggests no serious intent to use the Project website for its stated purpose;
- Knowingly accessing, tampering with, or using any of our non-public areas in our computer systems without authorization; and
- Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of any of our technical systems or networks unless all the following conditions are met:
such actions do not unduly abuse or disrupt our technical systems or networks;
such actions are not for personal gain (except for credit for your work); you report any vulnerabilities to MediaWiki developers (or fix it yourself); and
you do not undertake such actions with malicious or destructive intent.
We reserve the right to exercise our enforcement discretion with respect to the above terms.
5. Password Security
You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and should never disclose it to any third party.
6. Licensing of Content
To grow the commons of free knowledge and free culture, all users contributing to BoyWiki are required to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely, so long as that use is properly attributed and the same freedom to re-use and re-distribute is granted to any derivative works. In keeping with our goal of providing free information to the widest possible audience, we require that when necessary all submitted content be licensed so that it is freely reusable by anyone who cares to access it.
You agree to the following licensing requirements:
a. Text to which you hold the copyright: When you submit text to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under:
- GNU Free Documentation License (“GFDL”) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).
b. Importing text: You may import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, but in such case you warrant that the text is available under terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
- You agree that, if you import text licensed under a CC BY-SA license [1] used on other sites that it may also be licensed under GNU Free Documentation License and that if it requires attribution, you must credit the author(s) in a reasonable fashion. Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the text.
c. Non-text media: Non-text media on BoyWiki are available under GNU Free Documentation License that support the general goal of allowing unrestricted re-use and re-distribution. When you contribute non-text media, you agree to comply with the requirements for such licenses.
d.No revocation of license: Except as consistent with your license, you agree that you will not unilaterally revoke or seek invalidation of any license that you have granted under these Terms of Use for text content or non-text media contributed to BoyWiki or features, even if you terminate use of our services.
e.Public domain content: Content that is in the public domain is welcome! It is important however that you confirm the public domain status of the content under the law of the United States of America as well as the laws of any other countries as required by the specific Project edition. When you contribute content that is in the public domain, you warrant that the material is actually in the public domain, and you agree to label it appropriately.
f.Re-use: Re-use of content that we host is welcome, though exceptions exist for content contributed under "fair use" or similar exemptions under copyright law. Any re-use must comply with the underlying license(s).
- When you re-use or re-distribute a text page developed by the BoyWiki community, you agree to attribute the authors in any of the following fashions:
- Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages that you are re-using (since each page has a history page that lists all authors and editors);
- Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy that is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on the Project website; or
- Through a list of all authors (but please note that any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions).
If the text content was imported from another source, it is possible that the content is licensed under CC BY-SA license but not GFDL (as described in “Importing text,” above). In that case, you agree to comply with the compatible CC BY-SA license and do not have the option to re-license it under GFDL. To determine the license that applies to the content that you seek to re-use or re-distribute, you should review the page footer, page history, and discussion page.
In addition, please be aware that text that originated from external sources and was imported into a Project may be under a license that attaches additional attribution requirements. Users agree to indicate these additional attribution requirements clearly. Depending on the Project, such requirements may appear for example in a banner or other notations pointing out that some or all of the content was originally published elsewhere. Where there are such visible notations, re-users should preserve them.
For any non-text media, you agree to comply with whatever license under which the work has been made available (which can be discovered by clicking on the work and looking at the licensing section on its description page or reviewing an applicable source page for that work). When re-using any content that we host, you agree to comply with the relevant attribution requirements as they pertain to the underlying license or licenses.
g.Modifications or additions to material that you re-use: When modifying or making additions to text that you have obtained from a Project website, you agree to license the modified or added content under GNU Free Documentation License (or, as explained above, another license when exceptionally required by the specific Project edition or feature).
When modifying or making additions to any non-text media that you have obtained from a website, you agree to license the modified or added content in accordance with whatever license under which the work has been made available.
With both text content and non-text media, you agree to clearly indicate that the original work has been modified. If you are re-using text content in a wiki, it is sufficient to indicate in the page history that you made a change to the imported text. For each copy or modified version that you distribute, you agree to include a licensing notice stating which license the work is released under, along with either a hyperlink or URL to the text of the license or a copy of the license itself.
h. Used by permission of the author. Historical documents, news articles, book and movie reviews, and media images and videos used with the permission of the copyright holder are not available for free use and the author retains all rights and privileges and are marked with "used by permission", "All rights reserved." or "historical document".
7. BoyWiki: Removal and deletion policy
BoyWiki wants to ensure that the content that we host can be re-used by other users without fear of liability and that it is not infringing the proprietary rights of others. In fairness to our users, as well as to other creators and copyright holders, our policy is to respond to notices of alleged infringement is to remove the article or non-text media pending a determination from the BoyWiki council. Notification must be text only as we can not receive or open .zip files.
If you are the owner of content that is being improperly used on BoyWiki without your permission, you may request that the content be removed by emailing info@boywiki.org.
8. Third-party Websites and Resources
You are solely responsible for your use of any third-party websites or resources. Although BoyWiki contains links to third-party websites and resources, we do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for their availability, accuracy, or the related content, products, or services (including, without limitation, any viruses or other disabling features), nor do we have any obligation to monitor such third-party content.
9. Termination
Though we hope you will stay and continue to contribute to BoyWiki, you can stop using our services any time. In certain (hopefully unlikely) circumstances it may be necessary for BoyWiki to terminate part or all of our services, terminate these Terms of Use, block your account or access, or ban you as a user. If your account or access is blocked or otherwise terminated for any reason, your public contributions will remain publicly available (subject to applicable policies), and, unless we notify you otherwise, you may still access our public pages for the sole purpose of reading publicly available content on the Projects. In such circumstances, however, you may not be able to access your account or settings. We reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. Even after your use and participation are banned, blocked or otherwise suspended, these Terms of Use will remain in effect with respect to relevant provisions.
10. Disclaimers
At Boywiki, we do our best to provide educational and informational content to a very wide audience, but your use of our services is at your sole risk. We provide these services on an "as is" and "as available" basis, and we expressly disclaim all express or implied warranties of all kinds, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We make no warranty that our services will meet your requirements, be safe, secure, uninterrupted, timely, accurate, or error-free, or that your information will be secure.
We are not responsible for the content, data, or actions of third parties, and you release us, our directors, officers, employees, and agents from any claims and damages, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with any claim you have against any such third parties. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from us or through or from our services creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms of Use.
Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through your use of our services is done at your own discretion and risk, and you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from the download of any such material. You agree that we have no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any content or communication maintained by the service. We retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice.
Some states or jurisdictions do not allow the types of disclaimers in this section, so they may not apply to you either in part or in full depending on the law.
11. Limitation on Liability
BoyWiki and FreeSpirits will not be liable to you or to any other party for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data, or other intangible losses, regardless of whether we were advised of the possibility of such damage.
12. Modifications to these Terms of Use
BoyWiki reserves the right to modify the terms of service at any time and without notice.
13. Other Terms
These Terms of Use do not create an employment, agency, partnership, or joint venture relationship between you and us, BoyWiki and Free Spirits. You agree that we may provide you with notices, including those regarding changes to the Terms of Use, by email, regular mail, or postings on BoyWiki.
If in any circumstance, we do not apply or enforce any provision of these Terms of Use, it is not a waiver of that provision.
You understand that, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by us, you have no expectation of compensation for any activity, contribution, or idea that you provide to us, the community, or BoyWiki.
These Terms of Use were written in English (U.S.). While we hope that translations of these Terms of Use are accurate, in the event of any differences in meaning between the original English version and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.
If any provision or part of a provision of these Terms of Use is found unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision or part of the provision is deemed severable from these Terms of Use and will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and all other provisions of these Terms of Use will remain in full force and effect. Thank You!
We appreciate your taking the time to read these Terms of Use, and we are very happy to have you contributing to BoyWiki and using our services. Through your contributions, you are helping to build something really big – not only an important collection of collaboratively edited reference Projects that provides education and information to millions who might otherwise lack access, but also a vibrant community of like-minded and engaged peers, focused on a very noble goal.
