Privacy

If you only read the site

The site sets no cookie for a reader who has not signed in, shows no advertising, and carries no tracker from an advertising or social network.

The board counts its visits with an analytics program it runs on its own server. It records the page you asked for, the page you came from, your browser, your language and the size of your screen, and it uses your network address to tell one visit from another. None of it is sold or passed to anyone.

The machines that carry the site keep the access logs any web server keeps, network addresses among them, for security and for finding faults.

The typefaces are served by Google Fonts, so your browser asks Google for them, and Google sees your network address when it does.

If you sign in

Signing in is by Google. From Google the board receives your account’s identifier, your email address and the name on the account, and keeps them. It never sees your password. Your email address is not published.

While you are signed in the site keeps one cookie, elenchus_id, which says who you are and lasts at most 14 days. Signing out removes it.

What you do while signed in is kept with your account: a debate you suggest or vote for, a callout you mark, an appeal you file, a request that a debate be left out of your record. Only the archon, the person who moderates the board, sees who suggested or voted for a debate. An appeal is read by the board’s council and by the archon.

If you verify a YouTube channel, the handle you gave, the channel’s identifier and the time it was verified are kept with your account; the code is kept only until then.

If you are a debater

Elenchus is a record of public argument. It takes debates that were broadcast in public, writes down what was said, and publishes its judgment of how each side argued: your name as the broadcast gave it, your words, the calls made on them with the reasons for each, and, where you said it yourself, the tradition or worldview you speak from.

To tell the speakers of a debate apart, the board keeps a numerical pattern of each speaker’s voice, made from the public recording. It is used for that and for nothing else, and is not published or shared.

You can claim your record. Sign in, give the handle of your YouTube channel, put the code the board gives you into the channel’s About text, and the board reads it there. That shows the archon the channel is yours: he looks at it and links your account to your record, and no record is linked without him. You can also ask the archon, who can link your account or send you an invitation that does.

Once linked you can appeal any call made on your words, ask that a debate be left out of your record, and ask for a fact about you to be corrected. You can write a statement in your own words, which is kept to be shown in public on your record: put nothing in it you would not publish. What it said before is kept each time you change it, with the account that changed it, and only the archon sees that. And you can change the name your record shows you under; the name it had before is kept, so that what was said under it still reaches your record.

Who else handles it

• Google: sign-in; storage of recordings and backups; the typefaces; and YouTube, through which the board finds and reads public videos and posts as its own channel. The board uses YouTube API Services: by using the parts of this site that rely on them you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service, and how Google handles data is set out in the Google Privacy Policy.
• Deepgram turns the public recordings into text.
• Anthropic runs AI models that read those transcripts and judge them.
• xAI runs others that do the same. The words of a public debate go to both with the names of those who spoke; nothing from your sign-in ever does.
• Meta: the board posts to its own Facebook Page. Where the archon asks it to, it also reads the public posts of a public Page, in order to answer them: those are kept for him alone, are not published here, and go when he removes them. It does not sign you in with Facebook, and takes nothing about you from it.

Nothing the board keeps is sold, and none of it is given to anyone else except where the law requires it.

How long, and how to have it removed

An account and what was done with it are kept until you ask for them to be removed. The public record of a debate is kept as a record. Backups are kept for two weeks.

To see what the board keeps about you, to have it corrected, or to have your account removed, write to info@mcclintock.dev. A person reads it and answers.

Children

The site is written for adults, and the board does not knowingly keep an account for anyone under 13.

Changes

When this page changes, the date at its head changes with it.