Terms of membership

Admission

Membership is for people of 18 or over. One email holds one membership. Use an address you can read. A password needs at least 8 characters, and it is yours to keep.

The email admits you. Other members never see it. The house does. The privacy notice says what that means.

The name you are given

The house assigns a pseudonym. You may ask for another until you have chosen a workplace. After that, the name stays.

Remarks are left under that name. It is the only name other members see. Listings carry no name at all.

Your workplace

A community is one company. You belong to one at a time, and you may move. Gossip you have already listed stays in the community where you listed it.

The room stays sealed until three members have each left some gossip. Until then, you see only what you yourself left. Once it is open, you see that community's market, and no other.

A workplace you look up on the way in is remembered in your browser until you are seated there. The community is created only when a member arrives for it.

Gossip and remarks

A listing is a tag, a teaser, the gossip, and a price. The tag is overheard, first-hand, unconfirmed, or urgent. The teaser stays within 180 characters. The gossip stays within 600, and it must say more than the teaser. The price is a whole number of credits, from 1 to 500.

Once the room is open, members of your community can read the teaser. The gossip itself is shown to you, and to a member who unlocks it. A remark stays within 400 characters. Only members who hold that gossip can read it, and they see it under your house name.

Leaving your first piece of gossip costs 10 credits, once. After the room opens, a colleague who unlocks gossip you listed pays the price you set. That amount is added to your credits. The house keeps nothing from a sale.

You are responsible for what you list and what you remark. The house does not read gossip before it is listed, and does not promise that it is true. An unconfirmed tag means you are not offering it as fact. Other members decide for themselves.

What stays outside

Leave these out of a teaser, a piece of gossip, and a remark.

• Anything unlawful, including a threat, blackmail, or a demand for silence.
• Anything about a person under 18.
• A home address, a private telephone number, a private email, a financial account, an identity document, or a medical record.
• A statement you know to be false, offered as something you know.
• Your real name, your email, or a detail that only you could know.
• A guess at who sits behind another member's name, or a request that someone else make one.

The house may refuse a membership, or remove a listing, that breaks these rules.

Credits

On admission the house places 20 credits on your account. That is the allowance for the month you join. Another 20 arrive on the first of each month after that. Leaving your first piece of gossip costs 10 credits, once. A sale adds the price you set. A pack adds the credits you bought, once the payment has cleared.

Credits are for use inside the house. They are not money. They cannot be withdrawn, transferred to another member, or turned back into pounds. Unused credits are forfeited when a membership is closed. A further allowance, if the house grants one, is a gift of credits, not a sum owed.

Payments

Packs are a one-time payment in pounds, taken by Stripe. They are not a subscription. The house never sees your card.

• The Taster. 100 credits, £4.99.
• The Regular. 300 credits, £12.99.
• The Insider. 750 credits, £27.99.
• The Inner Circle. 2,000 credits, £64.99.

Credits are added only after Stripe reports the payment as paid. The same checkout does not pay twice. If a payment does not clear, the credits are not added. Prices on the market stay in credits.

Letters

Before the room opens you may ask the house to write to two colleagues. The letter names the workplace. It does not name you, and the house does not record that you asked. It does record the address, so it does not write to the same person twice. Name only people you may properly write to.

The house also writes to you when your membership begins, to the members of a community when its room opens, to the other members when gossip is listed, and to you when gossip of yours is bought. Those letters do not quote the gossip, and they do not name a member. Each letter is sent on its own, so one address never sees another.

Closing a membership

You may close it from your profile, by confirming your password. This permanently deletes your account, your credits, the record of gossip you have unlocked, the remarks you have left, your purchase history, and your sessions. A waitlist request made with the same email is removed with it. It cannot be undone.

Gossip you have listed stays in that community. It was never shown under your name. A community you started stays for the members still in it.

The service

The house is provided as it stands. Packs, allowances, and these terms may change. The terms on this page are the current ones. If you keep a membership after they change, you accept the new ones. The house may suspend the service.

Do not attempt to break the house, to scrape it, or to work out who a member is.

Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow the house to limit.

The house is not responsible for what a member lists, or for a decision you take after reading it. Credits exist only for use in the market. Subject to the first paragraph, the house's liability to you in any twelve months is limited to what you paid for credit packs in those twelve months.

Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales hear disputes about them.