Privacy

The site is small and invite-only, and it keeps about you only what an account and a rating need.

What the site keeps

It keeps seven things and nothing else.

• Your email address — the invitation you joined by was a link sent to it. If you tick the box on your own page that asks for it, the site also sends one email there each time it becomes your move in a game against another person, saying whose move, in which game, with a link to it; the box is off unless you tick it, and every such email has a link that switches it off with one click, as unticking the box does. The site keeps when each was sent, for its daily limit. No other mail goes there, ever, and the address is passed to nobody.
• Your password as a scrypt hash — the password itself is never stored, and a hash cannot be turned back into the password it was made from. Signing in hashes what you type and compares the two.
• Your session as a hash of the cookie — your browser holds a random string and the site stores its SHA-256, so a copy of the database is a list of digests rather than a drawer of working sessions. Signing out deletes the row.
• Every match you play while signed in — the moves, the result, who or what played each side, and the rating the game moved. Each game's ratings are worked out from these records, which is why they are kept. Against a computer player it also keeps how long you took over each move and which moves a take-back undid, and in practice the ratings each side had on that game when it started; no page shows these, and they are read with the game's moves, never added up per person.
• A dated record of each badge you earn — which badge it was, when the game that earned it finished, and the figures its sentence quotes. A badge is written once and kept, so it still reads true after the numbers behind it have moved, and nothing counts how many anybody holds.
• Anything you post in the suggestion box — the text you wrote, which of the two kinds you picked, and the day you posted it. Your suggestions are read by you and by the person who runs the site and by nobody else, and no other page on the site shows them. They can mark one done or delete it; deleting it removes the text for good.
• Which proven positions you have solved — for each, the game, the position, whether you converted it or found the move, and when. Only your own page shows them, nothing counts them across people, and a try that did not succeed is recorded only as the game it was.

Nothing else is asked of you when you join, your page shows other members only what the next part says, and the session cookie is the only cookie the site sets.

What other members see

Signed-in members, and nobody else, can open your page: your handle and your mark, the month you joined, how many of your games against other people you finished, your last few finished rated games and games against people with their results and opponents, your firsts, the games you designed that are published (never a draft), your milestones and badges, and the people and computer players you have finished most games with. Visitors are sent to the sign-in page instead. Nothing records when you visit, so no page says when you were last here.

The players page lists every member, A to Z, so members can find each other by name: your mark, your handle, the month you joined and the names of up to three of your published games, each the way to your page. It shows members nothing that your page does not, puts nobody in an order but the alphabet's, and visitors cannot see it.

Your votes are private. A game's page shows how many people voted, the average, and how many votes chose each of the fixed tags, never who. The games you gave five stars appear on your page only if you tick the box for it on your own page. A vote is stars and up to three fixed tags, with no text, so nothing you write reaches a game's designer.

When you publish a game you designed, you give it to the public domain, as the terms say, and the site records on the game that you agreed and which version of the terms you agreed to. That is a tick and a number, with the time; nothing you type is kept with it. Games published before the terms existed carry no such record.

If you designed a published game, you may switch on, on your own page, being listed on your games as taking challengers. It is off unless you switch it on. Then members, and nobody else, see your handle first under Play a person on each of your published games, and can challenge you there. A challenge holds no message.

Asking for an invitation

If you ask for an invitation, the site keeps the email address and the note you wrote, and when, for the person who runs the site to read; nobody else sees them. The address is used for one thing, the invitation, if they send you one, and no other mail goes to it. A request is deleted 30 days after it is answered.

A game played without signing in

A practice game keeps no person at all. The moves are stored so that the tab can be reopened, with how long each of your moves took and which moves a take-back undid, and neither side names anybody. A game that reaches its end is also kept, move by move with its result, after a take-back or a restart, so that the ways people beat the computer players can be studied; it too names nobody. A practice game counts for nothing and appears in no table, which is why it needs no account.

Leaving

Your games stay and your name goes. Ask the person who invited you, and your email address and your password hash are deleted and your name on every match becomes a former player. The matches themselves stay, because each game's ratings are worked out by replaying its matches from the first, and removing rows would move other people's ratings along with yours. Which proven positions you solved is deleted. Anything you posted in the suggestion box stays under the same name, because a suggestion is about the site rather than about you; ask and the person who runs the site will delete it.

The description hint

After you save a game, the site sends that game's description and its rules to TypeSafe (typesafe.ai), whose Jev model reads each sentence of the description against the rules. The design page then shows, as a hint, any sentence that seems not to match. Only the game is sent — not your handle, your email address or your cookie — and the answer is kept beside the game on the site so the same description is not sent twice. The hint is optional: the site saves, lists and plays your game the same way without it.

What the site does not do

There are no analytics, no advertising and no third-party scripts, and the page loads nothing from another domain. The web server in front keeps an ordinary request log, which records the address a request came from, and only the person who runs the site reads it. The site itself keeps a running count of how it is used — for each hour, how many requests each kind of page and move received, how much of the machine's time they took, and how many different signed-in people made them. Those counts hold no name, no address and no cookie, so nothing in them can be traced to you, and they are what the site's limits are set from.

Backups

The database is copied once a night onto the same machine and the copies are kept for a fortnight. Something deleted today is gone from the site at once and out of the last copy two weeks later. The copies do not leave the machine.

The terms say what publishing a game gives away and what the site does not promise.