Terms of Service has placeholder values

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I noticed the terms of service for this instance has various placeholder values like company_name and governing_law. It seems like a good idea to fill in the real values for these.

Thanks for setting up this instance! It's a much better experience than the mailing list in my view. :slight_smile:

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I hear city_for_disputes is beautiful this time of year, though. I may have to sue the racket discourse to have an excuse to visit.

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There was some more discussion on the mailing list, specifically e.g. here, from @jbclements:

I’m actually very heartened to see the boilerplate here; it sounds like this is something we can edit, and not something imposed by Discourse. If that’s the case, then it certainly seems likely that we can find some language (or, more importantly, lack of language) that makes more of us happy.
I, for one, am shocked to see binding arbitration language in here: I think binding arbitration is one of the most revolting elements of corporate control in our society today, and if we were unable to remove the binding arbitration clause, I would likely abandon discourse myself.
Sounds like the next step is to come up with a TOS that’s acceptable to all, or find a way to remove it entirely.

I agree. As I mentioned there, it would be great if the Software Freedom Conservancy could help with this.

In addition to, some other things that struck me (n.b. I am not a lawyer) as worth reviewing:

  • Acceptable Use № 4 ("You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the forum, or use the forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.") seems mostly right, obviously, but we might want to clarify that things like conference Calls for Papers are welcome. Likewise, I think it would be on-topic to announce a commercial product using Racket or a Racket job opening, if done in a tasteful way, rather than spammy "advertising".

  • Acceptable Use № 5 (scripting/scraping), № 8 (linking to images), and № 10 (no embedding this site via <iframe>—we might even want to do this on racket-lang.org) seem overly restrictive, sweeping in some non-abusive behavior along with abuse.

  • Content Standards № 3 ("You may not submit content to the forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.") seems like a very good rule in most cases, but we probably want to be able to discuss bugs with e.g. racket/contract or other Racket features that don't rise to the level of needing confidential reporting and responsible disclosure.

  • Some of the language around indemnifying "the company" or "You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorized by you or not, until you either close your account or notify the company that your account has been compromised." seem a bit one-sided.

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