Notices · privacy
Privacy Policy
This policy explains, in plain language, what the compendium does with information about the people who read it. The answer is short, but it deserves to be stated carefully rather than assumed.
The shape of the compendium
The compendium is a set of plain pages. When you ask for a page, the request travels to the machine that holds the pages, the page is handed back, and the request is answered and the matter ends. There is no account to create, no form that transmits anything, and no place to sign in. Nothing about the compendium asks you to identify yourself, and nothing asks you to leave a trace behind.
What is recorded
The machine that serves the pages keeps a standard note of each request, including the moment of the request and the name of the page. These notes exist so that the desk can tell whether the pages are being served correctly and whether any part of the compendium has been altered without cause. They contain no profile of a reader and are not joined to any other source of information. They are kept briefly and then discarded.
What is not done
- No reader is asked to register, log in or provide a name.
- No reading behaviour is assembled into a picture of a person.
- No information about readers is passed to anyone outside the desk.
- No messages are composed for commercial purposes of any kind.
- No third party is embedded in the pages to observe readers.
The one exception
If you choose to write to the desk by mail, the message and the address you used are held so that the desk can reply and can keep a record of corrections. Mail reaches the desk only because you sent it. Nothing in the compendium sends mail on your behalf, and the acknowledgement page you may have seen sends nothing at all.
Requests about your own message
If you have written to the desk and wish your message and address to be removed, say so in a later message and they will be deleted. Because the desk holds only what a reader chose to send, this request is easy to honour and is honoured without argument.
Children and the compendium
The compendium is written for readers of any age who wish to study the material. It collects nothing from anyone, so it treats every reader alike, and there is no special case to state for younger readers. A reader of any age may use the pages without any information about them being gathered.
Changes to this policy
If the compendium ever changes the way it treats reader information, this page will be revised before the change takes effect, and the revision will be described here rather than hidden. The desk regards a privacy statement as a promise, and a promise that is quietly edited is not a promise at all.
Questions about this policy may be sent by mail to the desk at the address printed at the foot of every page. The desk replies during its open hours and welcomes a reader who wishes to understand the policy better.
A plain restatement
If the whole policy were reduced to a few sentences, they would read as follows. The compendium asks nothing of a reader. It offers no account, no form that transmits, and no place to sign in. It keeps a brief technical note of each request so that the pages can be served correctly, and that note is discarded soon after. It records nothing about a reader's interests, joins nothing to anything else, and passes nothing to any outside party.
The only thing a reader may choose to send is a message to the desk, and only the message and its address are kept, for as long as they are useful and no longer. A reader may ask for the message to be removed at any time, and the request is honoured promptly. In short, the reader is left alone, and the compendium keeps to itself.