Privacy Policy for the Playable Archive Applications

The following privacy policy applies to all Playable Archive applications, including (but not limited to) the Virtual Museum of Charles "Teenie" Harris.

Section 1. What data is collected?

The following data is collection from all users when they create an account at the start of interacting with the Playable Archive:

• An optional username. Users on the playable archive may either have a username or join anonymously. The username does not have to contain any identifiable information.
• Identity standpoints. The system prompts you to select elements of your gender, religion, race, ethnicity, or anything else that you feel is important in contextualizing who you are to other users in the playable archive. It is up to individual users how much they wish to disclose, including the option to disclose no identity standpoints.
• Your IP address.

The following data is collected throughout play, based on actions taken by users:

• User-generated content is stored. This includes comments, notes, and collections of artifacts users create. Comments and notes may either be in the form of text or audio recordings. Audio recordings explicitly made for comments or notes are the only audio recordings saved by our system.
• Virtual exhibits you choose to visit are tracked to determine exhibit view counts.
• Settings chosen in the settings menu.

Section 2. Why is this data collected?

Data is collected by this system for two reasons:

1. Data that is explicitly necessary for the system to support user-to-user communication. This includes: username, standpoints, and user-generated content.
2. Data that is collected for the purposes of academic research and application design iteration. This includes: all of the previous category, exhibit visits, IP address for proxy location, and settings menu options chosen.

The Playable Archive was designed and developed by academic researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Thus, data collected by this system will be aggregated for the purposes of supporting academic research publications in conference proceedings, journal articles, and other academic venues. Ultimately, this is meant to serve the interests of furthering research in accessible virtual worlds for digital cultural heritage projects.

Section 3. Who has access to the data?

Data on the Playable Archive system is only directly accessible by developers on the research team at the University of Pittsburgh. Aggregations of that data, with identifiable information removed, may be shared for the purposes of research publication. Raw data will only be shared with other members of the immediate research team, under the ethical review of the University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board.

Notably, given that much of the data of the system is public communication, it is important to note that all user-generated content, tagged with username and standpoints, in the Playable Archive is visible to all other users of the system.

Section 4. Can the data be deleted?

If you would like your data to be removed from consideration for data analysis, you may access this option inside the application's options menu, which prompts the user if they would like to opt-out of research.

If instead you would like to fully remove your data from the playable archive, you must contact our project lead, Pat Healy at pat.healy@pitt.edu, with your username and user ID number, which are visible in the application's settings menu. They will remove your data from the database at earliest convenience.

Section 5. Further considerations in data storage

This application is hosted on servers managed by PythonAnywhere. Thus, one may be interested to refer to PythonAnywhere's own privacy policy, since data stored by the Playable Archive is stored on PythonAnywhere's servers.