TMC

Permissions and usage policy

Two features with confusingly similar names — what others may DO with your work, and who may EDIT it.

There are two unrelated things called “permissions” here, and telling them apart is worth thirty seconds.

Answers Audience
Usage policy “May I redistribute this? Modify it? Sell it?” Everybody reading the page
Access grants “Who may edit this item?” You and your collaborators

Usage policy

Your publicly stated position on what others may do with your work. It appears on the item’s Permissions tab as a grid, under whatever you write in the free-form policy body.

policyAllowRedistributionyes | no | not stated

May somebody re-upload this elsewhere?

policyAllowModificationyes | no | not stated

May somebody change it and publish the result?

policyAllowCommercialUseyes | no | not stated

May somebody use it in something they sell?

policyRequireCredityes | no | not stated

Must they credit you?

policyRequireShareAlikeyes | no | not stated

Must the result carry the same terms?

policyUseAiyes | no | not stated

May it be used to train a model?

policyUseNsfwyes | no | not stated

May it be used in adult work?

contentmarkdown

A free-form policy, rendered under the grid — for everything the toggles cannot express.

Not stated is not No

Every answer is a three-state value. not stated means the owner has not said, which is the honest default and what the UI renders in grey. Treating a blank as a refusal would put words in an author’s mouth; treating it as permission would be worse.

The usage policy is not the licence. license is the legal instrument (MIT by default); the policy is the author’s own plain-language answer, and the two are shown together precisely because a licence alone rarely settles the questions people actually ask.

Access grants

Who may act on the item. Three levels:

Grant Lets the holder
READ See the item even when it is hidden
WRITE Edit it
DELETE Delete it

A grant goes to exactly one grantee: a member, or a group — in which case every member of that group inherits it. That is the main practical reason to make a group.

The rules that hold everywhere

  • The owner always has all three.
  • Staff can act on any item.
  • Every write — form, API, bulk API — resolves to the same check. There is no path more permissive than the edit form.
  • A grant handed to a group as a grantee is not a grant over the group as a target. See Groups.

Discussion sections are a special case

A grant can also target one section of a discussion board, where the three levels mean something narrower:

Grant On a discussion section
READ Opens a private section
WRITE Lets somebody post in a restricted one
DELETE Makes them a moderator of that section

A section has no owner of its own, so who may manage its grants is a question about the item the board hangs off, not about the section.