Privacy

What we measure, and what we don't

We count how our pages are read so we can write better ones. That is the whole reason. Here is exactly what that involves, in plain English.

What we collect

When you visit a page on this site, we record a small amount of information about the visit:

  • The page path and title you looked at.
  • The domain that sent you here (just the domain, not the full link) and any campaign tags on the URL.
  • Your device type, browser family and operating system family — "mobile, Firefox, Android", not a detailed profile.
  • The country your request came from, which our edge network tells us. We never store your IP address.
  • How long you stayed on the page, how far down you scrolled, and which parts of an article you actually spent time on.
  • Whether you opened an image or played a video, plus anonymous events such as searches and shares.

How it works

The measurement is deliberately simple and stays on our own servers:

  • A random session id is kept in your browser's sessionStorage. It disappears the moment you close the tab.
  • No cookies are used for analytics.
  • No fingerprinting. We do not try to recognise your device between visits.
  • No third-party analytics scripts — nothing is sent to an outside analytics company.
  • Obvious bot and crawler traffic is filtered out before anything is counted.

If you are signed in

Having an account changes one thing:

  • Activity may be linked to your account so community features work — your profile activity, awards, forum history and similar.
  • This stays first-party. It is used on this site and is not shared with anyone else.

What we do not do

  • We do not sell your data.
  • We do not hand it to ad networks.
  • We do not track you across other websites.

How long we keep it

  • Raw events (individual page views and interactions) are kept for up to 12 months.
  • Daily aggregates — counts and averages with no individual rows behind them — are kept longer so we can compare year on year.

Your choices

  • Closing the tab clears the session id, so the next visit starts fresh.
  • Browser settings that block scripts or clear site data will stop the measurement working, and the site will still function.
  • If you have a question about any of this, or want your account data looked at, contact the admins via our Discord server.

Cookies

  • The only cookies we set are the authentication cookies that keep you signed in, plus the security token that protects forms from cross-site requests.
  • They exist for signed-in sessions only, and they are not used to measure traffic — which is why there is no cookie banner on this site.

If we ever start collecting something that is not on this page, this page changes first.