+
+
The short version
+
+ You keep the copyright in anything you write here. You give me permission to
+ publish it. You can ask for it to come down and I will take it down. Be decent,
+ which is covered properly in the code of conduct.
+
+
+
+
Who owns what
+
+ The articles, videos, and dev disaster write ups that I produce are mine. Read
+ them, quote them, link them, argue with them. If you want to republish something
+ whole, ask, and the answer is usually yes.
+
+
+ Comments and stories you send in are yours. You keep the copyright. What you give
+ me is permission, not ownership: permission to publish it on this site, to edit
+ it for length and clarity, to talk about it in a video, and to keep it up while it
+ is still relevant. That permission is not exclusive, so the same story is still
+ yours to tell anywhere else, including somewhere that pays you for it.
+
+
+ The one thing I will not do is change what a story means. Trimming a paragraph is
+ editing. Changing the outcome, the cause, or how it felt is not, and if a story
+ needs that much work I will ask you rather than do it.
+
+
+
Taking something down
+
+ Email me and it comes down. You do not need a reason, and I am not going to
+ negotiate about it. This is in the consent you tick when you send a story in,
+ and it is the term I would least want somebody to discover was missing.
+
+
+ Comments you can delete yourself. They become a tombstone rather than
+ disappearing, because a hole in the middle of a thread makes nonsense of the
+ replies underneath it, and those replies belong to other people.
+
+
+
What you promise about a story
+
+ Two things, and you tick both before it sends. That it happened to you or you
+ were there for it, and that you have taken out anything identifying your
+ employer, your coworkers, or a customer.
+
+
+ That second one matters more than it looks. This site exists because people can
+ admit to breaking things without it costing them, and the fastest way to end that
+ is one story where somebody works out which outage it was. I check every
+ submission for it as well, but I only know what I can spot from outside.
+
+
+ Do not send me something covered by an agreement you signed. I have no way of
+ knowing, and it is your name on that agreement rather than mine.
+
+
+
What happens to a story after you send it
+
+ It goes into a queue only I can see. A title and a web address get drafted for it
+ automatically, then I read it, fix the title if the machine got it wrong, check it
+ for anything identifying, and file it under a severity. Nothing publishes without
+ me reading it first.
+
+
+ If story notifications are on, the site emails you when the story publishes and
+ if it reaches the front page. A story I do not publish does not send a rejection
+ email, so your account remains the complete record of what you sent and where it
+ stands. Publishing anonymously keeps your name and handle off the page and off
+ the source. The badge and notification still follow the account rather than the
+ byline.
+
+
+ I do not have to publish anything, and not publishing a story is not a judgement
+ about you or about the story. Most of the time it is that I already have three
+ that are too similar.
+
+
+
Your account
+
+ Sign in with an auth provider, pick a handle, and it is yours until you delete it or I close
+ it. I close accounts for the things listed in the code of
+ conduct and for nothing else. Handles that impersonate somebody, or that are
+ reserved for parts of the site, are not available.
+
+
+ Deleting your account is a button on your account page
+ and it works immediately. What survives it is set out in the
+ privacy page, and you should read that part before you
+ press it rather than after.
+
+
+
Where this site sends you
+
+ Links out are links out. Once you are on YouTube, Twitch, GitHub or anywhere else,
+ their terms apply and mine have stopped. Links people put on their profiles carry
+ nofollow and are not an endorsement from me.
+
+
+
The part every site has
+
+ The site is provided as it is. I run it carefully, but I am one person, and it can
+ be down, wrong, or briefly very strange. Everything published here is somebody's
+ experience rather than professional advice, and a dev disaster is a story about
+ what went wrong rather than instructions for your production database. Read it,
+ learn from it, and make your own call.
+
+
+ If something here causes you a loss, I am sorry, and I cannot be liable for it,
+ to the extent the law where you live lets me say that. Where it does not, the
+ law wins.
+
+
+
Changing these terms
+
+ The date is in the sidebar and it only moves when something actually changed. A
+ change never applies backwards to a story you already sent under the old wording.
+
+
+
+
Not a lawyer
+
+ I wrote this myself, in plain English, because a page nobody can read protects
+ nobody. It has not been through a solicitor yet. If you are reading it as a
+ lawyer and something here is unenforceable or missing, tell me and I will fix
+ it rather than defend it.
+
+
+
+
+