ETHW:Policies

Security

Private Logging

Every time you visit a web page, you send a lot of information to the web server. Most web servers routinely maintain access logs with a portion of this information, which can be used to get an overall picture of what pages are popular, what other sites link to theirs, and what web browsers people are using. While we will be following these standard practices, it is not the intention of the ETHW to use this information to keep track of legitimate users. Policy on release of data derived from page logs.

It is the policy of ETHW that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs may only be released in the following situations:

In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement.
With permission of the affected user
To the chair of the ETHW Council, his/her legal counsel, or his/her designee, when necessary for investigation of abuse complaints.
Where the user has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers.
Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of ETHW, its users or the public. ETHW policy does not permit public distribution of such information under any circumstances, except as described above. ETHW will not sell or share private information, such as email addresses, with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is required by law to release the information.

Security of information

The ETHW makes no guarantee against unauthorized access to any information you provide. This information may be available to anyone with access to the servers.

E-mail

You may provide your e-mail address in your Preferences and enable other logged-in users to send email to you through the wiki. Your address will not be revealed to them unless you respond, or possibly if the email bounces. The email address may be used by the ETHW to communicate with users on a wider scale.

Deletion of Content

Removing text from the ETHW does not permanently delete it. In normal articles, anyone can use the “History” tab to look at a previous version and see what was there. If an article is "deleted", any user with "administrator" access on the wiki can see what was deleted. Users can request their accounts be disabled and redacted. Information can be permanently deleted by those people with access to the servers.

User Identity and User Info Available to Other Users and Administrator

User Identity

Publishing on the Wiki and Public Data

Simply visiting the web site does not expose your identity publicly (but see “private logging” above).

When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document. This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit as its author. You will be identified by your user name. This may be your real name if you so choose, or you may choose to publish under a pseudonym.

When using a pseudonym, your IP address will not be available to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a wiki page by you or by another user with the same IP address. In all cases, your IP address will be stored on the wiki servers and can be seen by ETHW's server administrators.

Cookies

The wiki will set a temporary session cookie (PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. More cookies may be set when you log in, to avoid typing in your user name (or optionally password) on your next visit. These last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and don't wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. If you wish to do so, you may also wish to clear the browser cache as well.

Passwords

Many aspects of the ETHW's community interactions depend on the reputation and respect that is built up through a history of valued contributions. User passwords are the only guarantee of the integrity of a user's edit history. All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them. No one shall knowingly expose the password of another user to public release either directly or indirectly.

Intellectual Property Issues

Intellectual Property

The ETHW operates under two license agreements developed by Creative Commons. Each type of content on the ETHW falls under one or the other license agreement, with the exception of Oral Histories:

Encyclopedia-- Use of "Topic" articles and lesson plans are subject to the "Attribution, NonCommercial-ShareAlike" license. As long as attribution (crediting the source) is given, the first license allows users of the ETHW to download and redistribute freely for non-commercial uses only. Furthermore, this first license also allows users to remix, slightly alter, or buildupon the content. All redistribution of the work, whether in its original form or reworked, must also carry this license and its restrictions.
First-hand Histories, Published Works, Archives, Milestones, and Landmarks -- Use of all "First-Hand Histories", "Oral Histories", "Published Works", "Archives"", Milestones" and Landmarks is subject to the "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives" license, unless explicitly stated otherwise on the individual page. Like the first license, this license allows for content to be freely downloaded and redistributed, for non-commercial purposes only, as long as there is attribution. Unlike the first license, however, none of the content can be altered in any way.
Oral Histories, Personal Narratives -- These manuscripts are being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscripts, including the right to publish, are reserved to the contributing ETHW society. Licensing conditions for an oral history will depend on which society uploaded it - see individual oral history for citation information.

The particular license that applies depends on the nature of the content being used.

By contributing content to the ETHW, users are accepting that they are assigning "licensor" rights to ETHW and that their work will be subject to one of the three licenses above, depending on the type of content being contributed.

Contributors' Rights and Obligations

If you contribute material to the ETHW, you agree to license it to the public under either the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives or Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licenses, depending on the type of content. In order to contribute, you must be in a position to grant this license. This means that either you hold the copyright to the material, for instance because:

You produced it yourself. In this case you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives or Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licenses for the copies of materials that you place here; these copies will remain under either of these two licenses until they enter the public domain.
You acquired the material from a source that allows the licensing under these two licenses. In this case if you incorporate external materials that are subject to either of these two licenses, then you must acknowledge the authorship and provide a link back to the network location of the original copy.
It is in the public domain. In this case there are no restrictions or reserved rights.

Using Copyrighted Work From Others

All works are copyrighted unless either they fall into the public domain or their copyright is explicitly limited, as in the case of creative commons licenses, or disclaimed. If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use", or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under the terms of our license, you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of the ETHW’s material as possible, so original images and sound files licensed under the these two licenses, under the GFDL or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use.

Under guidelines for non-free content, brief selections of copyrighted text may be used, but only with full attribution and only when the purpose is to comment on or criticize the text quoted.

Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others; it is a violation of the law. It could also create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the ETHW. If in doubt, write it yourself. Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to the ETHW. However, it would still be unethical (but not illegal) to do so without citing the original as a reference.

Linking to Copyrighted Works

Since most recently-created works are copyrighted, almost any ETHW article which cites its sources will link to copyrighted material. It is not necessary to obtain the permission of a copyright holder before linking to copyrighted material, just as an author of a book does not need permission to cite someone else's work in their bibliography. Likewise, the ETHW is not restricted to linking only to GFDL-free or open-source content.

However, if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States.

Copyright Violations

Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material despite appropriate warnings may be blocked from editing by any administrator to prevent further problems. If you suspect a copyright violation, it is your responsibility to bring up the issue on that page's discussion page. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. If it is your copyright that has been violated, please contact the Administrator.

Image Guidelines

Images and photographs, like written works, are subject to copyright. Someone holds the copyright unless the images have been explicitly placed in the public domain. Images on the internet need to be licensed directly from the copyright holder or someone empowered to do so on his or her behalf. In some cases, fair use guidelines may allow an image to be used irrespective of any copyright claims. [US Copyright Office article on Fair Use]. Works produced by civilian and military employees of the United States federal government in the scope of their employment are public domain by statute in the United States (though they may be protected by copyright outside of the U.S.).

Disclaimer

User-submitted ETHW articles may contain errors of fact, bias, grammar, etc. The ETHW and the participants in the ETHW make no representations about the reliability of these articles or, generally, their suitability for any purpose. If you notice errors of fact, bias, grammar, or other mistakes, please contact us immediately.

Ethical Issues

User Responsibility

In addition to observing the legal requirements, it is necessary for users to maintain civility and appropriate language at all times. All content submitted by members and administrators must conform to the IEEE Social Media Operations and Best Practices Guide. While ETHW content will be available to the general public for viewing, content can only be added or edited by members of the ETHW, which includes all ETHW members and others who apply for ETHW membership. Membership represents belonging to a community of engineers, innovators and those that study their work and implies the responsibility to conform to the norms of collegiality and professionalism that distinguish our community. Anyone violating the ETHW’s norms, or assisting someone else in doing so, can be blocked from the site by the ETHW at its discretion. Ethical behavior is of the utmost importance in such a community and falls into three basic categories.

Respecting Intellectual Property (discussed in the previous section)
Conforming with content policies of the ETHW, including but not limited to:
1. Content must reflect historical issues. The ETHW is not a “how-does-it-work” site.
2. Maintenance of a high quality/level of writing
3. First-hand Histories must be restricted to actual experiences of the author and may not contain information beyond the direct experience of the author. Articles about an objective subject must be written as encyclopedic articles, not First-Hand Histories.
Respectful behavior in collaboration on content.
1. Vandalism violates ETHW policy and will not be tolerated. Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the ETHW. The most common types of vandalism include the addition of obscenities or crude humor, page blanking, or the insertion of nonsense into articles. Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism. For example, adding a personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated. Not all vandalism is obvious, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism. Careful attention needs to be given to whether changes made are beneficial, detrimental but well intended, or outright vandalism. If you find that another user has vandalized this site, you should reverse the vandalism by reverting to the earlier version of the page and warn the user (see below for specific instructions). Users who vandalize the ETHW repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported and administrators may block them. Note that the ETHW Administrator is not required to wait for a warning in order to block a user; accounts whose main or only use is obvious vandalism or other forbidden activity may be blocked without warning.
2. Attack Pages violates ETHW policy and will not be tolerated. An ETHW article, page, template, category, redirect or image created for the sole purpose of disparaging its subject is an attack page. Such pages are subject to being deleted by any administrator at any time. If the subject of the article is notable, but the existing page consists solely or primarily of personal attacks against that subject and there is no good revision to revert to, then the attack page should be deleted and an appropriate stub article should be written in its place.

Blocking

What Is Blocking?

Blocking is the method by which administrators may technically prevent users from editing the ETHW. Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to the ETHW, not to punish users. Any user may request a block by writing to the the administrator for specific incidents. Users requesting blocks should supply credible evidence of the circumstances warranting a block. Administrators are never obliged to place a block and are free to investigate the situation themselves. Except in cases of unambiguous error, administrators will not undo other administrators' blocks without prior discussion.

Purpose and Goal of Blocking

All blocks ultimately exist to protect the ETHW project from harm, and reduce likely future problems. When lesser measures are inadequate, or problematic conduct persists, appropriate use of a block can help achieve this in four important ways:

Preventing imminent or continuing damage and disruption to the ETHW.
Deterring the continuation of disruptive behavior by making it more difficult to edit.
Encouraging a rapid understanding that the present behavior cannot continue and will not be tolerated.
Encouraging a more productive, congenial editing style within community norms.

Important note – Blocks are intended to reduce the likelihood of future problems, by either removing, or encouraging change in, a source of disruption. They are not intended for use in retaliation, as punishment, or where there is no current conduct issue which is of concern.

For the purposes of protection and encouragement, blocks may escalate in duration to protect the ETHW while allowing for the cessation of disruptive editing and the return to respected editing.

IEEE Organizational Unit Institutional History Pages

Repeated violations of policies, including but not limited to inappropriately editing IEEE Institutional History pages, may result in disciplinary actions, including blocking user accounts. Blocks related to IEEE Institutional History must be approved by the ETHW Subcommittee of the IEEE History Committee. A block related to IEEE Institutional History may be appealed by writing directly to the IEEE History Committee Chair, who will appoint a three-member Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Appeals, who will review and investigate the matter. Blocks will be removed under condition of unanimous vote by the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Appeals. The Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Appeals will consist of IEEE History Committee members who are completely separate from both the ETHW Subcommittee that issued the block, and the current ETHW subcommittee, if the memberships of the two subcommittees are not the same.

User account blocks are used to prevent disruption to the ETHW and to ensure that content remains appropriate, not to punish users and volunteers. Deliberately abusing ETHW policies or IEEE History Center program processes for personal advantage is not permitted and may be treated with greater severity.

IEEE Institutional History Guidelines

These guidelines apply to articles on the ETHW concerning IEEE Institutional History, which encompasses the history of IEEE and its Organizational Units (IEEE OUs) including, but not limited to: IEEE Sections, IEEE Regions, IEEE Student Branches, IEEE Chapters, IEEE Societies, IEEE Councils, IEEE Committees, IEEE Boards, IEEE Awards and Recognitions, and IEEE Humanitarian technologies. These pages must conform to the specific guidelines detailed in this section.

Scope of the ETHW Main Namespace

Materials posted in the “Main” namespace of the ETHW (i.e., not Oral Histories, not First-Hand Histories, not Milestones, etc.) are intended to comprise a history encyclopedia and should not include programmatic or current material.

All material that is posted on the ETHW must be historical in nature and written in an encyclopedic tone. This means the writing should be:

Neutral. Superlatives or value judgments should not be present in ETHW writing, such as sentences like “this computer was great/terrible”
Third-person. If you would like to write a first-person account, please consider submitting a First-Hand History. Second-person language should never be used on the ETHW, except in the rare cases of articles with no content that just have brief stub language that says “Are you a member of this OU? Please help expand the article by using the edit tab”. Second-person calls to action should be removed from pages once content has been added to them, and other second-person language should be removed or reformulated if encountered.
Use formal but plainly understandable language. While the ETHW is intended for a literate reader, it is not intended to be a technical manual, for articles to use excessive amounts of technical jargon, or for articles to use informal language, idioms and slang. If impossible to avoid in a historical narrative sense, excessive amounts of technical language should be also be rephrased in plainer terms.

The ETHW is not general OU webspace. Material which is appropriate for publication on the ETHW includes:

a historically-focused narrative which spans the OU’s founding to the present
tables of officers, meetings, publications, or OU name changes
photographs, programs, agendas, news items
archival back issues of the OU newsletter
archival documents pertaining to the OU (petition to form the OU, foundational documents and correspondence, etc.)
a timeline of key events related to the OU
historic images related to key OU activities or documents

For tangential content, like large photosets, or technology timelines unrelated to specific OU activities, consider creating a separate page and creating a link under a “Further Reading” section. Born digital content, like archival copies of online magazines or newsletters, should be reformatted as a single file in .pdf format and added as a link in an appropriate section of the article. Material which is not acceptable for inclusion on the ETHW includes:

upcoming events and meetings
current OU activities
OU announcements for programs
material written in a non-encyclopedic tone

If you have material that is not appropriate for the ETHW, either not historically focused, nor encyclopedic in tone, please consider publishing this material on your OU website, or in your OU newsletter. Several models to follow for IEEE OU institutional history can be seen on the following articles:

Regions:

Sections:

Societies:

Article content in relation to article title

The ETHW encompasses a wide variety of subjects pertaining to engineering history. As such, articles should be about their nominal subject as reflected in the article title and not drift too far into tangential material. For example, Ethernet is a very important and historically significant computing technology, but it would not be appropriate to write several paragraphs of text about the technical and historic details of Ethernet in the article about the history of the IEEE Computer Society. The IEEE Computer Society History article should be about the IEEE Computer Society's history, and should be written from a historical standpoint, and not give undue attention to related, but ultimately tangential subjects.

Provided that the tangential material is within scope for the ETHW (i.e., historical in nature and related to engineering in some way), this can be handled by adding material to a “Further Reading” section at the end of the page, or “External links”, if the material resides on non-ETHW websites. If appropriate for the article, a “See also” paragraph may be useful, or in many cases, a hyperlink to an existing article may be acceptable. In the case of the IEEE Computer Society and the Ethernet example, there is a sentence in the IEEE Computer Society article which states “The IEEE 802.11 became perhaps the most popular and well-known protocol of the industry. It had its origin in the late seventies as proposed by a group of society volunteers working on the Ethernet standards, IEEE 802.3.” – to expand on Ethernet history, linking the Ethernet term to the Ethernet article is sufficient.

Relation to other ETHW policies

Pages on IEEE Institutional History must also respect other ETHW content policies, including those with respect to copyright as well as vandalism and attack pages. Copyrighted material from other websites, or prose directly copied from Wikipedia, must never be posted on the ETHW.

If you have any questions on how to best follow these policies, or questions about the policies in general, please contact us at ieee-history@ieee.org