Terms of use

Who we are

Mountain House Observer is an independent local publication covering Mountain House, San Joaquin County, California. We are not affiliated with the Mountain House Community Services District, the city, the school district, or any other public body we report on.

Accounts

Reading requires no account. Posting does. You must be 13 or older to hold an account, and you agree that the information you give us when creating one is accurate. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

You post under a pseudonym. Choosing one that impersonates a real person, a public official, or this publication is not allowed.

What you may post

The community rules govern participation and are part of these terms. In short: do not post anything unlawful, harassing, or targeting a private individual; do not post someone else's personal information; do not state as fact an accusation you cannot support; and do not post content you have no right to share.

Content about identifiable people accused of wrongdoing is routed for additional human review before it appears. That is a safeguard, not a guarantee, and it is not a substitute for your own care in what you write.

Your content stays yours

You keep ownership of everything you post. By posting, you give us a non-exclusive licence to display, store, distribute and archive it as part of the publication, and to show excerpts when linking to it. That licence exists so we can run the site; it does not let us sell your writing to anyone else.

If you delete your account we remove your profile and pseudonym. Posts that form part of a published discussion may be kept in anonymized form, because deleting one side of a conversation misrepresents the people who took part in the rest of it. Our privacy page explains how to make that request.

Moderation, and appealing it

We may remove content or restrict an account that breaks the community rules. When we do, you are told which rule was applied.

You can appeal, and the appeal is heard by someone other than the person who made the original decision — that separation is enforced by the software, not left to good intentions. Start an appeal from report a problem.

Our reporting, and correcting it

Articles and briefs published here are ours. You may quote and link to them; please do not republish them wholesale. Our editorial standards describe how we source, label automation, and route risk.

If we get something wrong, tell us at corrections@mountainhouse.observer. Material corrections are logged publicly and retracted articles keep their URL with a notice. We do not quietly delete mistakes.

What we do not promise

The site is provided as it is. We work to be accurate and we correct what we get wrong, but we do not warrant that everything here is complete, current or error-free, and we do not guarantee the site will always be available.

Two things deserve saying plainly. Calendar entries are imported from calendars published by public bodies; if an agency moves a meeting without updating its own feed, we will show the old time — confirm anything that matters with the agency. Commute information is a convenience, never a safety system; do not rely on it for an emergency or to decide whether a road is safe.

Opinions in comments and discussions belong to the people who wrote them, not to us.

Liability

To the extent the law allows, Mountain House Observer is not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of the site, or from content posted by other users. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Ending things

You may stop using the site and close your account at any time. We may suspend an account that repeatedly breaks the community rules, or close the site itself — in which case we will say so in advance here rather than disappearing.

Governing law and changes

These terms are governed by the law of the State of California. If we change them materially we will post the change and update the effective date above; continuing to use the site afterwards means you accept the new terms.

Questions about these terms: legal@mountainhouse.observer.