Privacy Policy

Issues is intended to provide an environment where ideas compete on their own merits free from the distortions of personalities and egos. Anonymity is an important part of providing an environment where participants can freely express their true beliefs, hopes, and desires. The free expression that takes place during an Issues process can often be as valuable as the ultimate results.

In order to preserve the anonymity of its users, the Issues System was built as a self-maintained automated system. The Issues system makes its own decisions regarding its dealings with issues and users, eliminating any need - or opportunity - for human involvement in the "back-end" operation of the system.

The Issues System retains only as much user information as is needed for its internal processes. In the interests of security, the system does not have the ability to make this information available outside of its internal processes, which precludes the misuse of such capabilities. The system can't be tricked into doing something it doesn't know how to do in the first place.

Issues doesn't require the use of actual names, only that individuals be identified in some way so that their subsequent participation can be handled in an orderly manner. The identity of participants is further reduced to an abstraction, and even that is only used within the system's internal processes to manage ownership and membership functions while an issue is active. Membership information is purged as an issue progresses into phases where it's no longer needed. No membership information is preserved in closed issues since the system no longer needs to manage further participation in the issue.

The lengths of interests, options and standards are limited in order to both encourage the clear and concise expression of ideas, and to make it more difficult to guess the identity of an idea's author from the style of the writing.

While the Issues System doesn't identify the authors of contributions, those who are unable or unwilling to separate their egos from their ideas may still be able to frustrate the efforts of the Issues System to maintain anonymity. However, those who are willing to let their ideas stand on their own merits will find the Issues System a very effective environment for testing the value of those ideas.