Privacy & discussion rules
This project asks Manitoba Hydro to show its work. It would be poor form not to show ours.
Last updated 28 August 2026
Human operator: Hersh Seth, Winnipeg, Manitoba · Contact: hersh.seth@proton.me
AI operator: barb@cryotechterraforming.ai
The short version
Reading the filing pages is anonymous to us. There are no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking pixels. Typefaces are system fonts. The letter builder runs entirely in your browser — what you type never reaches a server. Opening /forum/ sets a Flarum session cookie even if you never create an account. If you post in the forum, that content is public and permanent-ish, and we hold your email address until you ask us not to.
1 · Reading the site
We run no analytics. We do not know who you are, which pages you read, or where you came from. There is no advertising and nothing is sold or shared with data brokers.
What the web host records
The site is hosted on shared hosting operated by Spaceship. Like nearly all web servers, it keeps access logs containing your IP address, the page requested, timestamp, and browser user-agent. These are generated by the hosting provider for security and troubleshooting, are not used by us to profile readers, and are subject to the provider's own retention schedule.
Typefaces
Public filing pages use system fonts (Georgia / Segoe UI / Consolas). They do not load typefaces from Google Fonts. Links to the Free Press, the Public Utilities Board, and City of Winnipeg data are ordinary links: nothing loads from those sites until you click.
2 · The letter builder
The Take Action page assembles a letter to the Public Utilities Board, your MLA, or your councillor. It is worth being precise about this, because it is unusual:
- There is no server. Your name, community, and the words you write are assembled by JavaScript in your own browser.
- Nothing is transmitted to us. We never receive your letter, and we could not read it if we wanted to.
- Nothing is stored. Close the tab and it is gone. There is no draft saved anywhere.
- When you press send, your own email application sends it, from your address to the recipient. We are not a party to that message.
The MLA and councillor rosters are static files published in this site's source, retrieved from the Legislative Assembly's member pages and data.winnipeg.ca. Selecting your constituency looks something up in a local file; it tells us nothing.
3 · The discussion forum
The forum at spirited.energy/forum runs on Flarum, self-hosted on the same server. Creating an account is the only part of this site that collects personal information.
What an account stores
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Username, and display nickname if you set one | Attributes your posts. Choose a pseudonym if you prefer — we do not require a real name. |
| Email address | Sign-in, password reset, and notifications you opt into. Never published, never sold. |
| Password | Stored only as a bcrypt hash. We cannot read it or recover it for you. |
| IP address attached to each post, and to your active sign-in sessions, with browser user-agent | Standard forum software behaviour, used for spam and abuse handling. Visible to administrators only, never shown publicly. |
| Your posts, replies, likes, and avatar if you upload one | The discussion itself. |
Your posts are public. Anything you write in the forum can be read by anyone on the internet, indexed by search engines, quoted, and — because this is a live regulatory matter — potentially cited in a filing before the Public Utilities Board or reported by journalists. Please write accordingly. Do not post anything you would not want attached to your name in a public hearing record.
Cookies
The forum sets a session cookie named flarum_session so you stay signed in, plus flarum_remember if you choose “remember me”, and a small preference cookie for interface settings. These are strictly functional — there are no advertising or analytics cookies on the filing pages. A GET to /forum/ sets flarum_session even if you never create an account. See the cookies page.
Email we send
Only transactional messages you have caused: address confirmation, password reset, and notifications for discussions you chose to follow. These are machine-generated and arrive from noreply@terrafirm.world — worth adding to your contacts so they are not filed as junk. Nothing sent to that address is read. There is no newsletter and no marketing. You can switch notifications off in your account settings.
Anything needing a person — a privacy request, a moderation appeal, a correction — goes to hersh.seth@proton.me and is answered by one.
4 · How long we keep things
- Account and posts — until you ask us to delete them.
- Post IP addresses — retained with the post; ask and we will clear them from yours.
- Sign-in sessions — expire on their own; you can revoke them by signing out.
- Server access logs — held by the hosting provider under their schedule, not ours.
5 · Your rights, and how to use them
Email hersh.seth@proton.me from the address on your account and you can:
- See everything we hold about you.
- Correct anything wrong.
- Delete your account. We will remove your email address, password hash, session records, and post IP addresses.
- Withdraw from notification emails at any time.
We aim to answer within 30 days. One honest limitation: where a post has already become part of a public discussion others have replied to, we would normally anonymise it rather than erase the thread — tell us if you want it removed outright and we will discuss it with you.
As a Canadian project we take PIPEDA as our baseline, and apply it whether or not it strictly binds a non-commercial site. If you are unsatisfied with how we handle a request, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
6 · Security, and what we cannot promise
The full list of quality and protection measures — what is enforced, how, and where the limits are — is published on the verification page.
The site is served over HTTPS. The forum application and its database credentials sit outside the public web directory, so they cannot be fetched from the web. Passwords are hashed, never stored in readable form.
What we will not pretend: this is a self-hosted forum maintained by one person on shared hosting, not a service with a security team. Use a password you do not use elsewhere. If we ever discover a breach affecting your data, we will say so publicly and promptly rather than quietly.
7 · Children
The forum is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep accounts for them. If you believe a child has registered, write to us and we will remove the account.
8 · Discussion rules
This forum exists so the arithmetic can be argued in public. That only works if the argument stays about the evidence.
- Attack the number, not the person. Disagreement is the point. Abuse, harassment, and slurs are not, and get removed.
- Bring your source. Claims that carry a citation, a document, or a calculation get taken seriously. Assertions get asked for a source.
- Say what would change your mind. We publish our own falsifiers under Change our mind; opposing claims are welcome to meet the same standard.
- Correct yourself in public. We have already corrected our own headline numbers once, on the record. Nobody here loses standing for doing the same.
- No campaigning, spam, or undisclosed interests. If you work for a party to this proceeding — Hydro, a vendor, a competing proponent — say so. You are welcome. Concealing it is not.
- Nothing unlawful: no defamation, no confidential material you are not free to share, no personal information about others.
Moderation is done by the site operator. Posts may be edited or removed, and accounts suspended, under these rules. If you think a decision was wrong, email us and say so — that reply becomes part of the record too.
9 · Changes
If this policy changes materially, the date at the top changes and we will post a note in the forum's Start here category rather than quietly editing the page.
Not legal advice. This page is written in plain language to be understood, not to be airtight in court. It describes our actual practice as of the date above. If you are relying on it for a legal purpose, ask a lawyer — and tell us what we got wrong.