Terms and Conditions

Last updated: January 1, 2024

Please read these terms and conditions carefully before using gitWiki.

These Terms of Use tell you about our public services at gitWiki, our relationship to you as a user, and the rights and responsibilities that guide us both. We host an incredible quantity of educational and informational content, all of which is contributed and made possible by users like yourself. Generally we do not contribute, monitor, or delete content (with rare exceptions, such as under policies like these Terms of Use, for legal compliance, or when faced with urgent threats of serious harm). This means that editorial control is in the hands of you and your fellow users who create and manage the content.

The community -- the network of users who are constantly building and using the Projects and/or their websites (hereby referred to as "Project Websites") -- is the principal means through which the goals of the mission are achieved. The community contributes to and helps govern our Projects and Project Websites. The community also undertakes the critical function of creating and enforcing policies for the specific Project editions (such as the different language editions for the Wikipedia Project or the gitWiki Commons multilingual edition).

You, the user, are welcome to join as a contributor, editor, or author, but you should follow the policies that govern each of the independent Project editions, including the Code of Conduct (UCoC), which apply to all Project editions. The largest of our Projects is Wikipedia, but we host other Projects too, each with different objectives and work methods. Each Project edition has a team of contributors, editors or authors who work together to create and manage the content on that Project edition. You are welcome to join these teams and work with them to improve these Projects. Since we are dedicated to making content freely accessible to the public, content you contribute is made available under a free license or released in the public domain.

Please be aware that you are legally responsible for all of your contributions, edits, and reuse of gitWiki content under the laws of the United States of America and other applicable laws (which may include laws where you or the subject of your contributions are located). This means it is important that you exercise caution when posting, modifying or reusing content. In light of this responsibility, we have some rules about what you cannot do, most of which are either for your own protection or for the protection of other users like yourself. Please keep in mind that the content we host is for general informational purposes only, so if you need expert advice for a particular question (such as medical, legal, or financial issues), you should seek the help of an appropriate professional. We also include other important notices and disclaimers, so please read these Terms of Use in their entirety.

For clarity, other organizations, such as other websites and associations, that may share in the same mission are nevertheless legally independent and separate from gitWiki. Unless otherwise stated by gitWiki as an authorized party on a given Project's Website, those other organizations have no responsibility for the operations of the Project's Website or its content.

1. Our Services

gitWiki is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development, and distribution of free multilingual content, and to hosting the full content of these wiki-based Projects for the public free of charge. However, we act only as a hosting service provider, maintaining the infrastructure and organizational framework. This infrastructure and framework allow our users to build the Projects by contributing and editing content themselves. They also allow our users to reuse that content. The infrastructure we maintain includes specialized technological infrastructure that enables users to programmatically interact with and reuse content on Projects (referred to as "Application Programming Interface" or "APIs"), and mobile applications.

2. Privacy Policy

We ask that you review the terms of our Privacy Policy, so that you are aware of how we collect and use your information.

3. Content We Host

You may find some material objectionable or erroneous: Because we host 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.
The Projects' content is for general informational purposes only: Although our Projects host a great deal of information that pertains to professional topics, including medical, legal, or financial issues, this content is presented 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 in one of the Project Websites.

4. Refraining from Certain Activities

The Projects hosted by gitWiki 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.

Prohibited Activities

Certain activities, whether legal or illegal under the applicable law, 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, or otherwise using, our Projects. These activities include:

Harassing and Abusing Others

Engaging in threats, stalking, spamming, vandalism, or harassment as described in the UCoC
Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users
Posting or modifying content with the intention to seriously harm others, such as deliberate inducements to self-harm, or deliberate triggering of epilepsy

Violating the Privacy of Others

Infringing the privacy rights of others under the laws of the United States of America or other applicable laws
Soliciting personally identifiable information for purposes of harassment, exploitation, or violation of privacy
Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose

Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud

Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation
Posting or modifying content with the intent to deceive or mislead others
Attempting to impersonate another user or individual
Engaging in fraud

2. Privacy Policy

We ask that you review the terms of our Privacy Policy, so that you are aware of how we collect and use your information.

3. Content We Host

You may find some material objectionable or erroneous: Because we host 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.
The Projects' content is for general informational purposes only: Although our Projects host a great deal of information that pertains to professional topics, including medical, legal, or financial issues, this content is presented 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 in one of the Project Websites.

4. Refraining from Certain Activities

Prohibited Activities

Harassing and Abusing Others

Engaging in threats, stalking, spamming, vandalism, or harassment as described in the UCoC
Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users
Posting or modifying content with the intention to seriously harm others, such as deliberate inducements to self-harm, or deliberate triggering of epilepsy

Violating the Privacy of Others

Infringing the privacy rights of others under the laws of the United States of America or other applicable laws
Soliciting personally identifiable information for purposes of harassment, exploitation, or violation of privacy
Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose

Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud

Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation
Posting or modifying content with the intent to deceive or mislead others
Attempting to impersonate another user or individual
Engaging in fraud

5. Password Security

You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and other security credentials, and should never disclose them to any third party.

6. Trademarks

Although you have considerable freedoms for reuse of the content on the Project Websites, it is important that, at gitWiki, we protect our trademark rights so that we can protect our users from fraudulent impersonators. Because of this, we ask that you please respect our trademarks. All gitWiki Foundation trademarks belong to gitWiki, and any use of our trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, or domain names must be in compliance with these Terms of Use and in compliance with our Trademark Policy.

7. Licensing of Content

To grow the commons of free knowledge and free culture, all users contributing to the Projects or Project Websites are required to grant broad permissions to the general public to redistribute and reuse their contributions freely, so long as that use is properly attributed and the same freedom to reuse and redistribute is granted to any derivative works.

Text to which you hold the copyright

When you submit text to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under:

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License ("CC BY-SA 4.0"), and
GNU Free Documentation License ("GFDL") (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts)

8. DMCA Compliance

gitWiki wants to ensure that the content that we host can be reused 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 that comply with the formalities of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Pursuant to the DMCA, we will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, users and account holders of our system and network who are repeat infringers on our Projects and services.

However, we also recognize that not every takedown notice is valid or in good faith. In such cases, we strongly encourage users to file counter-notifications when they appropriately believe a DMCA takedown demand is invalid or improper. For more information on what to do if you think a DMCA notice has been improperly filed, you may wish to consult the Lumen Database website.

If you are the owner of content that is being improperly used on one of the Projects without your permission, you may request that the content be removed by filing a notice under the DMCA. To make such a request, please email us at legal@gitWiki.

9. Third-party Websites and Resources

You are solely responsible for your use of any third-party websites or resources. Although the Projects and Project Websites contain links to third-party websites and resources, we do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for their:

Availability
Accuracy
Related content
Products
Services (including, without limitation, any viruses or other disabling features)

Nor do we have any obligation to monitor such third-party content.

10. Management of Websites

The community has the primary role in creating and enforcing policies applying to the different Project editions. At gitWiki, we rarely intervene in community decisions about policy and its enforcement.

It is possible to notify us of illegal content, or content that violates our Terms of Use, you can typically make a request directly to the Project's community: this may be more efficient, and is more consistent with our Projects' aim to empower the user community.

Our Rights

In an unusual case, the need may arise, or the community may ask us, to address an especially problematic user or especially problematic content because of significant Project disturbance or dangerous behavior. In such cases, we reserve the right, at our sole discretion (or where legally compelled), to:

Investigate your use of the Projects or our services to:
- Determine whether a violation of these Terms of Use, Project edition policy, or other applicable law or policy has occurred
- Comply with any applicable law, legal process, or an appropriate governmental request
Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues
Refuse, revert, disable, or restrict access to contributions of any user who violates these Terms of Use
Ban a user from editing or contributing
Take legal action against users who violate these Terms of Use
Manage the Project websites to protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and our users

11. Resolutions and Project Policies

gitWiki releases official policies from time to time. Some of these policies may be mandatory for a particular Project or Project edition, and, when they are, you agree to abide by them as applicable.

12. Termination

Though we hope you will stay and continue to contribute to the Projects, you can stop using our services any time. In certain (hopefully unlikely) circumstances it may be necessary for either ourselves or the gitWiki community or its members (as described in Section 10) to terminate part or all of our services, terminate these Terms of Use, block your account or access, or ban you as a user.

Effects of Termination

If your account or access is blocked or otherwise terminated for any reason:

Your public contributions will remain publicly available
A record of your activities on or in relation to the Projects will be unaffected (subject to applicable policies)
You may still access our public pages for the sole purpose of reading publicly available content
You may not be able to access your account or settings

However, regardless of any other provision in these Terms of Use, 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, including Sections 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9-16, and 18.

13. Disputes and Jurisdiction

We hope that no serious disagreements arise involving you, but, in the event there is a dispute, we encourage you to seek resolution through the dispute resolution procedures or mechanisms provided by the Projects or Project editions and gitWiki. If you seek to file a legal claim against us, you agree to file and resolve it exclusively in a state or federal court located in San Francisco County, California.

14. Disclaimers

At gitWiki, 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.

15. Other Terms

These Terms of Use do not create an employment, agency, partnership, joint control or joint venture relationship between you and us, gitWiki.

Thank You!

We appreciate your taking the time to read these Terms of Use, and we are very happy to have you contributing to the Projects 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.

These Terms of Use went into effect on January 1, 2024.

Please note that in the event of any differences in meaning or interpretation between the original English version of this content and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.