Meta:Submission Standards

Before you submit any material to Wikipedia or use its content we ask that you consider the following. If you cannot agree with these Standards we ask you not to submit your materials.

Summary This page gives you the basic terms and conditions upon which you can and should submit your original (or otherwise authorized) material to Wikipedia. It should be read in combination with Wikipedia:Terms of Use and Wikipedia:Copyrights and disclaimers. If you make a submission you are agreeing that:

1. You will make only lawful contributions.
2. Your contributions are released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
3. You must be able to give your consent to making a contribution so that others can later use it.
4. Your contributions can be changed, modified, or deleted.

What follows is the unavoidable legal text. Please take the time to read it and enjoy contributing to Wikipedia, the free encyclopdia. We all hope you will stay a while and make many contributions here:

Not in violation of any law

By submitting to Wikipedia you affirm to your own knowledge that any submission you make is not in violation of any applicable law or agreement.

These laws include making defamatory statements about anyone. Defamatory statements include false statements that may change a person's or company's reputation causing them damage. Please consider your contribution in this regard. If you have any doubts try and rewrite your contribution so that while it states your or some one else's opinion about the topic in an accurate and precisely manner. The truth is your defense to any claim of defamation, such truth must be based upon reliable sources.

"Not in violation of any applicable law or agreement" includes all intellectual property laws, such as copyright, trademark, industrial design rights, other laws that cover privacy, personality rights, unfair competition, trade secrets or torts such as intentional interference with contractual relations, or contractual obligations you may be under such as non-disclosure agreements. An example would be if someone posts an insider trading tip on Wikipedia this could be in violation of insider trading or public securities laws in your country or in another country; if you post personal information that may violate privacy statutes in your country or another country where the material may be viewed; another example would be posting a secret formula of which you are aware. In some jurisdictions threats of violence against individuals may be criminal in nature, as your text may be seen in other countries such threats may expose you to criminal liability and would thus be in violation of these submission standards.

Your consent

You must also be able to give your consent to make contributions here. If you:

1. are a minor, unemancipated, child,
2. are in some manner judged to be incapable of giving consent by a competent authority (i.e. a court)
3. are unable to give consent because someone is influencing you to make a contribution here under duress or undue influence, or
4. cannot give consent for any other reason,

... we ask you to consider your actions (to the extent you are able to do so). Since you have not made your contribution with consent, you or someone else may later request that it be removed. However, if you do not act quickly to have it removed, it may be possible that your permission has been ratified by your subsequent lack of action, or subsequent permissive activity, on Wikipedia.

Consent if you are a minor

If you are a minor, you can make contributions, however please be advised that your parents may withold their consent and if they do they may remove your contributions. In such a case if you have made a significant contribution others may try and modify it so that it is no longer your work but has become the work of other volunteers. It is possible to do this because the information you post is not the same as the expression of that information, thus someone can rewrite your contribution so that the information remains but the copyright belongs to someone else and not your parents.

Nature of your submission

You also understand that once your submission is released into Wikipedia it can (and most likely will) be changed, modified, edited, deleted or combined by subsequent users; that there can be no warranty regarding submission to any Wikimedia project beyond the immediate availability under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) until the next edit is made by someone else or it is removed for a violation.

You also understand that acceptance of your submission is conditional on complying with the terms of the submission agreement (i.e. clear copyright, or GFDL permission or public domain status). Anything that might be fair use may be deleted or modified so as to be a creative and non-infringing adaptation of the original work. If you do add fair use material you must note clearly that it is being submitted as fair use and you must give your own analysis of the four factors that make such a contribution a non-infringing addition to any article (see e.g., how to document fair use). Your page or any submission you make may be deleted if it violates any of the Submission Standards or other policies that are later developed on Wikipedia.

Arbitration

This Submission Standards, the Copyrights and Warranty Disclaimers and other policies as set forth and time to time revised by Wikipedia volunteers are an agreement between you and other Wikipedia volunteers. You specifically consent to allow any matter arising under this agreement to be resolved by binding arbitration as defined by the dispute resolution, mediation and arbitration rules and policies of Wikipedia.

General terms

As with most wiki pages, this page can be edited by anyone. You agree to modify this page only if the modification is minor and does not represent any addition, modification, or deletion of the generally accepted principles and policies under which the MediaWiki Foundation operates. It is the readers' responsibility to check the history page for changes.