Posting here

This archive is kept by the family, for the family. Everything on it was put there by a relative, and everything you put on it will be read by relatives — including ones you have never met, and ones who will read it long after all of us are gone.

What you post is yours, and it is your responsibility

You keep whatever rights you have in the words and pictures you add. By adding them you give this archive permission to store them, show them to the family, and keep them as part of the record — that is what an archive is. You are not signing anything over to anybody, and nothing here is sold, licensed on, or used for advertising.

You are responsible for what you post. Post only what is yours to post: your own photographs, your own writing, or things you have been given permission to share. If somebody else owns a picture and asks for it to come down, it will come down.

Other people are in your photographs

A family archive is full of people who did not choose to be in it. Think before you post about somebody who is alive — particularly children, and particularly anything to do with health, money, addresses or where somebody lives. If you would not say it to their face at a wedding, do not put it here.

Anybody may ask for something about themselves to be taken down, and it will be. Ask on your messages page, or write to mike@kallas.com.

What must not be posted

None of the following, in words, pictures or links:

• Abuse, threats, or anything aimed at frightening or humiliating a person.
• No religion and no politics. Not arguments about them, not opinions about them, not jokes at their expense. This family is spread across Lebanon, Brazil, France and the United States and holds every view those places have produced; it stays a family by leaving both subjects outside. That is a rule about the subject, not about who is right.
• Anything obscene, or anything anybody would reasonably find offensive — including insults or hostility aimed at somebody for their nationality, race, sex, or who they are married to.
• Sexual material, or anything involving children that is not plainly innocent.
• Anybody's private information — telephone numbers, addresses, papers, documents — shared without their agreement.
• Advertising, selling, fundraising, or political campaigning.
• Anything unlawful under the law of the country you are writing from.
• Deliberate falsehoods about a living relative.

What happens if you break these rules

Anything posted here can be hidden by a curator or an administrator. Hidden means hidden, not deleted: it stays in the record with the name of whoever posted it against it, because if a decision ever has to be explained, it has to be shown.

An administrator may close an account. That is expected to be rare, and it is not a committee decision — there is one administrator, and he will make it. Repeated abuse, material involving children, or anything that puts a relative at risk will end an account without warning. Everything else usually gets a word first.

If your account is closed you can ask for it back by writing to mike@kallas.com. There is no appeal beyond that, because there is nobody else to appeal to.

What this archive does not promise

It is one family's record, kept by relatives in their own time, on shared hosting paid for by one of them. It is offered as it is. Nobody guarantees that it will stay up, that a photograph will not be lost, that a date is correct, or that a link between two people is right — a great deal of it was copied from a spreadsheet made from memory in 1996, and the archive says so wherever it can.

Keep your own copies of anything you care about. This is a place to share what you have, not the only place to keep it.

Nobody involved in running it is liable for anything that follows from using it, to the extent the law allows. That sentence is there because a sentence like it has to be; what it means in practice is that this is a family project and should be treated as one.

Your account and your information

What is held about you, why, and how to have it removed is set out on the privacy page. In short: an email address so you can sign in, whatever you choose to add, and nothing else. Nothing is shared with anybody outside the family, and there is no advertising and no tracking.

If these rules change

They will, as the site grows. Changes are announced on the front page and in the family chat rather than slipped in quietly. If a change matters, you will be told.

Written plainly on purpose. If any of it is unclear, ask — that is a better outcome than guessing, for both of us.