Overview

By accessing, browsing, editing, uploading to, creating an account on, submitting material to, or otherwise using Metopedia, users agree to follow these Terms of Use and the site policies linked from this page. Users who do not agree should not create accounts, edit pages, upload files, submit material, or use account-based features.

Metopedia is an independent research encyclopedia and knowledge-reconstruction project. It supports evidence-based inquiry, source criticism, original research with declared methods, disputed-claim analysis, historical reconstruction, cognitive analysis, open-source investigation, and structured review of institutional narratives. It permits disagreement, revision, critique, and correction. It does not permit harassment, doxxing, threats, spam, malware, unlawful activity, malicious automation, or disruption.

These terms apply to all users, including readers, account holders, editors, uploaders, administrators, technical maintainers, bot operators, and anyone who submits material to the site.

Plain-language summary

This summary explains the page in ordinary language. The full terms control if there is a conflict.

Public edits are public and may remain visible in page histories.
Contributors are responsible for what they add, upload, cite, summarize, or claim.
Users must follow the content license, copyright rules, privacy rules, source standards, article standards, and conduct rules.
Disagreement is allowed. Harassment, threats, doxxing, stalking, spam, vandalism, and abuse are not.
Metopedia may restrict accounts, pages, uploads, bots, or editing when needed to protect the site.
Contributions may be edited, moved, archived, cited, exported, reused, or removed according to site policy and license terms.
Users may appeal restrictions by contacting [email protected] with the relevant account, page, action, and reason for review.
Policies may change as the site develops. Material changes are posted on-wiki and may also be announced through notices, page histories, or other available channels.

Policy integration

The following pages form part of these Terms of Use by reference:

Page	Function
Metopedia:Policy	Core site principles, editorial scope, claim handling, dispute handling, deletion, and transparency.
Metopedia:Code of Conduct	User behavior, harassment rules, talk-page conduct, dispute behavior, administrator conduct, and reporting.
Metopedia:Privacy policy	Public contributions, account data, logs, cookies, backups, third-party processing, and privacy requests.
Metopedia:Copyrights	Licensing, attribution, quotations, uploads, fair use, takedown notices, counter-notices, and reuse.
Metopedia:Article standards	Article structure, claim wording, scope, evidence separation, counterarguments, and maintenance.
Metopedia:Source standards	Source hierarchy, citation rules, archive standards, source conflicts, fabricated sources, and dead links.
Metopedia:Research method	Research process, evidence levels, independent modeling, reproducibility, technical analysis, and ethics.
Metopedia:General disclaimer	Limits of Metopedia content, no professional advice, user-generated content, external links, and liability limits.
Cookie statement	Cookies, local storage, session tools, preference cookies, security cookies, and third-party cookies.
Metopedia:Contact	Contact instructions for policy, privacy, copyright, correction, abuse, account, and technical requests.

A user who violates one of these linked policies may also violate these Terms of Use.

Definitions

Terms used across Metopedia policy pages should be read in the following way.

Term	Meaning
Good faith	Conduct aimed at improving the site, correcting errors, preserving evidence, asking honest questions, or discussing sources even when the user is mistaken or strongly disagrees.
Bad faith	Conduct aimed at deception, disruption, harassment, manipulation, evasion, false sourcing, reputation harm, spam, or abuse rather than site improvement.
Disruption	Conduct that interferes with normal editing, reading, administration, technical stability, source preservation, or policy enforcement. Examples include edit flooding, repeated off-topic disputes, coordinated harassment, page blanking, false reports, or refusal to follow settled procedural instructions.
Spam	Repetitive, promotional, deceptive, irrelevant, machine-generated, affiliate, commercial, backlink-focused, or low-value material added for visibility rather than research value.
Vandalism	Intentional damage to pages, files, templates, categories, source records, talk pages, logs, redirects, or site structure.
Malicious automation	Bot, script, crawler, scraper, form submission, account creation, edit tool, upload tool, or API use that overloads the site, evades restrictions, posts spam, scrapes aggressively, bypasses rate limits, masks identity deceptively, or performs actions without approval where approval is required.
Ban evasion	Using another account, anonymous access, proxy, VPN, device, network, bot, third party, or altered identity to avoid a block, restriction, page ban, upload ban, topic restriction, or administrative action.
Doxxing	Publishing or threatening to publish private personal information without a valid editorial, legal, archival, safety, or consent-based reason.
Harassment	Targeted conduct that intimidates, threatens, humiliates, stalks, pressures, or repeatedly attacks a person rather than addressing claims, evidence, or policy.
Source manipulation	Misquoting, fabricating, altering, selectively clipping, falsely attributing, misdating, misarchiving, or misrepresenting a source in a way that changes its evidentiary meaning.
Conflict of interest	A personal, financial, institutional, legal, employment, promotional, or adversarial relationship that could affect how a user writes about a subject.
Administrative action	A warning, block, page protection, deletion, revision hiding, suppression, file removal, user-rights change, topic restriction, edit restriction, import action, or other action taken to enforce policy or protect the site.

Eligibility and account use

Users must be legally able to use the site under the laws that apply to them. Users who are not legally permitted to access or contribute to the site must not use account-based features.

Account holders are responsible for activity performed through their accounts. Users should protect passwords, avoid credential sharing, use secure email access, and report suspected compromise. Metopedia administrators will not ask users for passwords.

Users must not create accounts for deception, impersonation, spam, harassment, vote manipulation, evasion of restrictions, false authority, false affiliation, or coordinated disruption.

User responsibilities

Users are responsible for their own edits, uploads, comments, citations, summaries, templates, files, source descriptions, and account activity. Contributions must not intentionally misrepresent evidence, fabricate sources, falsify quotations, impersonate others, or conceal conflicts of interest when disclosure is needed to evaluate the contribution.

Users must respect copyright, privacy, personal safety, source integrity, article standards, and applicable law. Users must not submit private, confidential, restricted, stolen, hacked, or unlawfully obtained material unless there is a clear lawful basis, editorial necessity, and administrator review where required.

Users who add claims should provide sources or mark the claim as unsourced, disputed, inferential, original research, or needing review. Users who remove material should avoid deletion when correction, qualification, citation repair, or talk-page explanation would preserve the record more accurately.

Acceptable use

Users may use Metopedia to:

create and improve articles;
add reliable citations and archived links;
correct factual, formatting, citation, spelling, grammar, and structural errors;
discuss evidence and sources;
upload files with source, author, license, and rationale;
build and maintain categories, templates, redirects, and navigation;
write original research when the method is declared and evidence is inspectable;
document uncertainty, contradictions, counterarguments, and unresolved questions;
report vandalism, spam, abuse, privacy issues, or copyright problems;
participate in policy discussions;
operate approved bots within approved limits.

Strong disagreement is allowed. Criticism of institutions, methods, claims, public records, evidence, research, and official narratives is allowed when it follows article standards, source standards, and conduct rules.

Prohibited activity

Users must not use Metopedia to:

publish threats, harassment, intimidation, stalking, or targeted abuse;
publish private personal information without a valid basis;
impersonate another person, organization, administrator, editor, institution, agency, official role, or source;
upload malware, exploit files, credential-stealing tools, or files intended to damage systems;
use the site for fraud, phishing, scams, unlawful coordination, evasion, or deceptive solicitation;
spam pages, links, forms, uploads, accounts, comments, talk pages, search, categories, or templates;
scrape, crawl, query, or automate in a way that degrades performance or bypasses controls;
evade blocks, page restrictions, topic restrictions, upload bans, bot rules, or administrator actions;
manipulate citations, archives, logs, page histories, timestamps, attributions, or source descriptions;
fabricate sources, false quotations, false archive links, false authorship, or false credentials;
submit copyrighted material without permission, license, fair-use basis, public-domain status, or lawful quotation;
interfere with another user's lawful editing through harassment, intimidation, false reports, or coordinated pressure;
add material that violates privacy, safety, court orders, legal restrictions, or site policy;
use hidden scripts, tracking pixels, external embeds, or code that collects user data without approval;
publish secrets, private keys, passwords, tokens, server credentials, exploit instructions, or operational details that materially assist abuse.

Content licensing

By contributing text to Metopedia, users agree to license that text under the license stated on the relevant page and in the site footer unless a different license is clearly stated. Users retain responsibility for ensuring they have the right to submit, license, quote, summarize, or adapt the material.

Metopedia text may be edited, moved, quoted, archived, indexed, exported, copied, analyzed, and reused according to the applicable license and site policies. Page histories normally preserve attribution. Users should not contribute text that cannot lawfully be licensed under the relevant terms.

Uploaded files may use different licenses from text. File pages must identify source, author, license, date where known, and a use rationale. Files without adequate metadata may be removed, hidden, replaced, or tagged for review.

Copyright and uploads

Users must not upload or paste copyrighted material unless one of the following applies:

the user created the material and has the right to license it;
the material is public domain;
the material is openly licensed and the license terms are followed;
the use is a limited quotation for criticism, commentary, research, documentation, or education;
the use has a documented fair-use or similar lawful basis;
the rights holder gave permission and the permission is documented.

Users who repeatedly violate copyright rules may be restricted from editing or uploading. Copyright complaints are handled under Metopedia:Copyrights.

Privacy and public records

Metopedia is a public wiki. Edits, uploads, usernames, timestamps, edit summaries, logs, page histories, and file metadata may be public. Users should not add private information about themselves or others unless publication is intentional, lawful, relevant, and policy-compliant.

Removing text from the current version of a page does not necessarily remove it from page history, logs, backups, search engines, archives, screenshots, mirrors, exports, or third-party copies. Privacy concerns should be reported through Metopedia:Contact or [email protected].

Editorial independence

Metopedia may examine institutional consensus, disputed claims, official narratives, academic disputes, media conduct, historical records, public statements, and source conflicts. Inclusion of a claim does not mean Metopedia endorses the claim.

Articles must separate evidence from interpretation and must not present speculation, inference, original research, satire, opinion, or disputed claims as settled fact. Articles challenging mainstream claims must meet the same or higher standards of sourcing, method explanation, counterargument handling, and uncertainty labeling as articles supporting mainstream claims.

Conflicts of interest

Users should disclose relevant conflicts of interest when writing about themselves, employers, clients, legal opponents, institutions they represent, organizations they belong to, people they know, disputes they are involved in, or projects where they have a financial, reputational, or promotional stake.

Conflict of interest does not automatically prohibit editing. It does increase the need for source accuracy, restraint, disclosure, and independent review. Editors with a conflict should favor talk-page proposals, citations, and transparent explanations rather than aggressive direct editing.

Automation, bots, scraping, and API use

Bots, scripts, crawlers, scrapers, bulk upload tools, mass-edit tools, and API use must not overload Metopedia, evade restrictions, ignore robots instructions, bypass rate limits, or perform unapproved editing. Bot operators may be required to identify the bot, state its purpose, limit request rate, use a stable user agent, provide contact information, and stop when requested.

Approved automation must be reversible, logged, and limited to its stated task. Automation used for spam, harassment, account creation, credential attacks, scraping overload, source manipulation, content flooding, or evasion may be blocked without warning.

Account restrictions and enforcement

Metopedia may use warnings, page protection, upload restrictions, edit filters, rate limits, temporary blocks, indefinite blocks, topic restrictions, user-rights changes, revision hiding, file deletion, suppression, import limits, bot bans, and other administrative controls to protect the site.

Administrative action may be used for:

vandalism;
spam;
copyright violations;
privacy violations;
harassment or threats;
doxxing or stalking;
malicious automation;
ban evasion;
source manipulation;
false citations;
disruption;
security risk;
legal risk;
repeated policy violations;
account compromise;
technical abuse.

Enforcement should be proportional to the conduct, the user's history, the severity of harm, the risk to the site, and the likelihood that the issue can be corrected. Severe abuse may require immediate action.

Appeals and dispute resolution

Users may request review of administrative actions. An appeal should be sent to [email protected] or posted through the appropriate on-wiki process if available. A useful appeal includes:

username;
affected page, file, or account;
date of action;
action being appealed;
administrator involved, if known;
short explanation of why review is requested;
evidence that the issue has been corrected or misunderstood;
proposed resolution.

Appeals should address the conduct or policy issue directly. Appeals based only on insults, threats, repeated denial, off-site pressure, or refusal to follow policy may be closed without further action.

Where possible, a different administrator should review serious appeals involving blocks, long-term restrictions, suppression, deletion of substantial content, or allegations of administrator misconduct. If no separate reviewer is available, the reviewing administrator should document the reason and decision clearly.

Metopedia does not currently operate a standing arbitration committee unless such a body is created by later policy. Disputes are handled through administrator review, talk-page discussion, correction processes, source review, policy discussion, and transparency logging where appropriate.

Notice of changes

Metopedia may revise these Terms of Use as the site develops. Minor edits, formatting changes, typo corrections, link updates, and clarifications take effect when posted.

Material changes should be posted on-wiki and may also be announced through site notices, policy-page histories, talk pages, administrator notices, email, or other available channels. A material change is a change that significantly affects user obligations, licensing, privacy handling, account restrictions, dispute process, or legal terms.

Unless immediate action is required for legal, security, privacy, copyright, abuse-prevention, or technical reasons, material changes should provide at least 14 days of visible notice before enforcement begins against existing conduct. Continued use of Metopedia after changes take effect means acceptance of the revised terms.

Termination of access

Users may stop using Metopedia at any time. Stopping use does not remove public contributions, license grants, page histories, logs, citations, uploads, backups, or records needed for attribution, preservation, security, copyright, legal compliance, or administrative review.

Metopedia may suspend, restrict, or terminate account access for policy violations, security concerns, legal issues, account compromise, spam, abuse, or technical risk.

No guarantee of availability

Metopedia may be unavailable because of maintenance, upgrades, attacks, abuse mitigation, hosting issues, software errors, network failures, legal issues, administrative action, or other causes. The site may change, remove, protect, archive, or reorganize features, pages, files, policies, or services.

External links and third-party services

Metopedia pages may link to external websites, archives, papers, datasets, repositories, images, videos, social-media posts, government records, legal documents, news articles, software tools, and other materials. External links are provided for research and reference. Metopedia does not control external sites and does not endorse every statement, file, advertisement, script, tracking practice, or policy found there.

Third-party services may process data as described in Metopedia:Privacy policy and Cookie statement.

Legal compliance

Users are responsible for complying with laws that apply to their own conduct. Users must not use Metopedia to violate copyright law, privacy law, defamation law, computer-crime law, court orders, export controls, sanctions rules, harassment laws, or other applicable legal duties.

Metopedia may remove, hide, restrict, preserve, or disclose information when required by law, lawful process, safety concerns, copyright obligations, privacy duties, security concerns, or site policy.

Governing law and forum

Metopedia is operated from the United States. Unless a different written agreement or mandatory law requires otherwise, these terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the State of Minnesota, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Legal disputes connected to these terms, site access, account use, or user contributions should be brought in a court with jurisdiction over the operator and subject matter. Nothing in this section limits rights that cannot be waived under applicable law.

Limitation of liability

Metopedia is provided for research, educational, archival, and informational use. Content is user-generated, incomplete, revisable, and subject to error. Metopedia does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, legality, availability, reliability, safety, or fitness of any page, file, source, link, method, conclusion, or user contribution.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Metopedia and its operators, administrators, editors, contributors, and technical maintainers are not liable for damages arising from use of the site, reliance on content, inability to access the site, loss of data, external links, user conduct, errors, omissions, or third-party services.

Contact

Questions, policy concerns, copyright notices, privacy requests, abuse reports, legal notices, account appeals, and administrator-review requests may be sent to:

[email protected]

Useful messages identify the page, file, account, revision, log entry, action, and requested resolution.

Metopedia:Terms of use