GNOSIS+ Live Archive

Gnosis+ Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 25, 2026

Gnosis+ (“Gnosis+,” “we,” “us,” or “the site”) is a music ratings and review project operated by a volunteer committee of contributors (the “Committee”).

This Privacy Policy explains what information Gnosis+ collects and maintains, how that information is used, what information is publicly visible, and the choices available to users.

1. Information We Maintain

1.1 Rater Accounts

Gnosis+ maintains account information necessary to identify and authenticate registered raters and administrators. This may include:

• Your username;
• Your display name or rater name;
• Your password in hashed form;
• Whether your account is active;
• Whether you have administrative privileges;
• Account-management information, such as whether you are required to reset your password; and
• Information associated with your activity as a rater.

Gnosis+ does not currently require or maintain an email address as part of a rater account. Passwords are stored in hashed form rather than readable form. A rater who cannot log in can ask the Committee to reset their password (Section 1.10).

1.2 Public Rater Profiles

Registered raters may have public profile information associated with their accounts. Depending on the information provided, this may include display name or rater name; alternate name or “AKA” information; location; favorite artists, styles, or other musical interests; “About Me” information; rating statistics; and ratings associated with the rater.

Information entered into these profile fields should be considered public information because it may be displayed to visitors to Gnosis+. Users should not enter information into their public profile that they do not wish to make publicly available.

1.3 Ratings

Gnosis+ stores ratings submitted by registered raters. Individual numerical ratings are part of the public Gnosis+ database and are displayed together with the associated rater's display name. Ratings may be changed or removed by the rater. Gnosis+ may maintain an administrative record showing that a rating was created, changed, or removed, including the previous and new rating where applicable.

1.4 Entry Submissions and Database Contributions

Registered users may submit entries (an entry is any release in the database: an album, a single, or another release type) or other information for inclusion in the Gnosis+ database. We may maintain the information submitted; the rater who submitted it; the date and time of the submission; an optional proposed rating; notes supplied with the submission; and administrative records concerning approval, rejection, correction, or modification of the submission.

Submission notes and related review information may be visible to authorized Gnosis+ administrators even when they are not displayed publicly.

1.5 Activity and Administrative Records

Gnosis+ maintains activity records associated with registered raters, covering actions such as adding, changing, or removing ratings; submitting entries; updating profile information; dismissing albums from the “New For You” feature; and other actions associated with maintaining the Gnosis+ database.

Registered users may be able to view their own activity history through the site. Authorized administrators may access activity records for other raters when reasonably necessary for site administration, moderation, troubleshooting, maintaining data quality, reviewing submission history, or investigating misuse. Gnosis+ also maintains separate administrative activity records documenting certain actions performed by administrators.

These user and administrative activity records form part of Gnosis+’s continuing operational, historical, and audit record. They are not subject to routine automatic deletion.

1.6 “New For You” Information

For registered raters, Gnosis+ may maintain information used to operate personalized site features such as “New For You.” For example, the site records entries that a rater has dismissed from the “New For You” list so that those albums do not continue to appear for that rater, and so that they are also left out of “Recommended For You” the next time that list is computed (Section 1.9). This information is used to operate these features and is not displayed as part of the rater's public ratings.

1.7 Private Entry Notes

Registered raters may keep a personal note attached to an entry, visible only to that rater. Private notes are not shown to other raters or to administrators, and are not included in activity records.

1.8 Visitor Issue Reports

Visitors who are not logged in may report a possible issue with an entry (such as an incorrect year, country, spelling, or a possible duplicate) using the “Report an Issue” feature, without creating an account or providing a name or email address.

For a visitor report, Gnosis+ maintains the category, suggested correction, and note submitted, together with a one-way cryptographic hash of the submitter's IP address, used only to apply reasonable rate limits and abuse controls. The hashed IP address is discarded after 2 days. The report content itself is retained for up to 90 days, after which it is deleted. See also Section 9 (Data Retention).

A logged-in rater who reports an issue instead has that report handled as an ordinary rater-to-admin message, as described in Sections 1.4 and 1.5 above.

1.9 “Recommended For You” Information

Gnosis+ may offer registered raters a “Recommended For You” feature (currently offered as a labeled prototype): a list of entries the rater has not yet rated, computed automatically from the rater’s own ratings and the public ratings of other raters whose ratings tend to agree with the rater’s. The list is computed only from information already in the Gnosis+ database (ratings, album status, whether rater accounts are active, and the rater’s “New For You” dismissals and “Rate Later” list). It involves no editorial selection and no third-party service, and it does not change any rating, statistic, or account setting.

To operate the feature, Gnosis+ maintains for each eligible rater (currently, each active rater with at least 50 ratings) a set of derived records: a limited number of other raters (currently up to 30) who have rated many of the same albums and whose ratings agree most closely with theirs, together with the number of albums both have rated, the degree of agreement, the weight given to each, and each such rater’s average rating; and the resulting list of suggested albums, each with a predicted rating and the number of those raters who rated it. While the feature operates, these records are recomputed periodically (currently nightly) and replaced each time; they are not kept as a history, and a rater’s records are removed at the next recomputation after the rater ceases to be eligible (normally within a day).

A rater’s suggestions, and the list of raters they are based on, are shown on the site only to that rater. The agreement statistics themselves (how many entries two raters have both rated and how closely their ratings agree) are the same statistics available to registered raters through the site’s “Rater Correlation” feature. Your public ratings may be used in computing suggestions for other raters, as they are for other statistics derived from the public Gnosis+ database (Sections 1.3 and 5), and your display name or rater name may appear to another rater as one of the raters their suggestions are based on.

1.10 Password Reset Requests

Gnosis+ does not maintain an email address for rater accounts and does not send email to raters, so a password cannot be reset by email through the site. Instead, the login area offers a “Forgot password?” form that anyone, whether or not they are logged in, may use to ask the Committee to reset a password. The form asks for a username or the name the person goes by on Gnosis+, and allows an optional short note of up to 200 characters.

For a password reset request, Gnosis+ maintains the name as typed, the optional note, the date and time of the request, whether the name matched a rater account (and, if so, which one), the status of the request (open, handled, or dismissed) and which administrator handled it, together with a one-way cryptographic hash of the requester’s IP address, used only to apply reasonable rate limits and abuse controls. The hashed IP address is discarded after 2 days, and the request itself is deleted after 30 days. Submitting a request does not change any account, and the site gives the same response whether or not the name matches an account. See also Section 9 (Data Retention).

Requests are visible to administrators, who may reset the account’s password and pass the temporary password to the account holder directly, outside Gnosis+. Before doing so, the Committee may take reasonable steps to confirm that the person asking is the account holder. A temporary password must be replaced by one the rater chooses at their next login, and resetting a password ends any existing logged-in sessions for that account. The administrator’s action in handling a request, including the name that was typed, is recorded in the administrative activity record described in Section 1.5, which is not subject to routine automatic deletion.

2. Cookies and Browser Storage

2.1 Login Cookie

Gnosis+ uses a first-party cookie named gnosis_session to keep registered users logged in. The cookie contains a randomly generated session identifier rather than your password. The login cookie normally expires after 30 days. Logging out invalidates the current session. This cookie is necessary for authenticated features of the site and is not used for advertising.

2.2 Local Browser Storage

Gnosis+ also uses browser local storage to remember certain interface preferences on the device you are using. These preferences currently include items such as which raters you have chosen to highlight; whether advanced search options are expanded; and whether certain editing sections are expanded.

This information remains in your browser and is used to make the interface remember your preferences. It is not used for advertising or behavioral profiling.

3. Technical and Server Information

The Gnosis+ application itself does not currently maintain IP addresses or browser user-agent information as part of rater profiles, ratings, or application activity records (visitor issue reports and password reset requests are the only exceptions, where a one-way hash of the IP address is kept for 2 days — see Sections 1.8 and 1.10).

However, like most websites, the web-hosting infrastructure used to operate Gnosis+ may automatically process or retain ordinary server information associated with requests to the site, which can include IP address; browser or device information; requested pages or files; date and time of requests; referring pages; and information concerning failed requests or server errors. Such information may be used for hosting, security, troubleshooting, abuse prevention, and technical maintenance.

4. How We Use Information

Information maintained by Gnosis+ may be used to operate and maintain the site; authenticate registered users; respond to requests to reset a password; associate ratings with the correct rater; publish ratings and public rater profiles; maintain the historical ratings database; review album submissions and database corrections; provide personalized features such as “New For You” and “Recommended For You”; maintain user and administrator activity histories; assess submission quality and data accuracy; moderate contributions and maintain data quality; diagnose technical problems; protect the site against unauthorized access, abuse, or misuse; maintain backups and the integrity of the database; and comply with applicable legal obligations.

We may also use aggregated information concerning ratings or site activity to produce statistics about Gnosis+ and its database.

5. Public and Private Information

Gnosis+ is built around a publicly accessible music-rating database. Information intended to be publicly visible may include your display name or rater name; your ratings; your public profile information; reviews or commentary you intentionally contribute for publication; albums or database information you contribute; and statistics derived from your ratings.

Information that is not intentionally displayed publicly includes your password hash; login session identifiers; administrative account settings; private submission notes unless incorporated into published material; private album notes (Section 1.7); “New For You” dismissal records; “Recommended For You” records (Section 1.9); and internal user and administrator activity records.

Authorized administrators may access non-public information where reasonably necessary to operate, moderate, secure, troubleshoot, maintain, or evaluate the quality of contributions to Gnosis+.

6. Third-Party Services and Links

Gnosis+ does not currently use third-party behavioral advertising or website analytics services. Site fonts, images, and other ordinary visual assets used by Gnosis+ are hosted by Gnosis+ rather than intentionally loaded from third-party advertising, analytics, or asset-hosting services.

The About page contains a plain link to Ko-fi, a third-party service, so that visitors can support the project. No Ko-fi code runs on Gnosis+ pages and nothing is sent to Ko-fi unless you choose to follow that link; from that point Ko-fi’s own privacy policy governs, not this one.

Gnosis+ may operate an official community server on Discord, a third-party communications platform. Participation is voluntary, limited to active raters the Committee admits, and requires a separate Discord account; you can use Gnosis+ without it. Discord collects and processes information about your use of its service under Discord’s own terms and privacy policy, not this one. Gnosis+ Committee members can see what you make available in the server, including your Discord display name, username, profile information, messages, and other content you post in channels they can access. To admit you, a Committee member compares the rater name you provide with Gnosis+ rater records; Gnosis+ does not currently store your Discord account identifiers in your rater account or link the two accounts. Gnosis+ may retain limited records relating to Discord membership verification, moderation, and Committee decisions where reasonably useful for operating the Gnosis+ community (see Sections 7 and 9). Content posted in Discord is not part of the Gnosis+ database unless it is separately submitted through the site.

Gnosis+ may also use third-party music catalogs or databases to assist with entry identification, duplicate detection, and metadata review. Where used, catalog queries may send information such as artist names, album titles, or external release identifiers; they do not send your Gnosis+ password, session identifiers, private notes, or personal profile information. Catalog information is treated as corroborating, not authoritative — see our Terms of Service, Section 7. If Gnosis+ enables access to the Discogs API, this section will be updated to include the attribution notice Discogs requires of API users.

Gnosis+ may also link to websites operated by artists, record labels, streaming services, retailers, or other third parties. Following a link to another website takes you outside Gnosis+. Third-party websites and services operate under their own privacy policies and practices, and Gnosis+ does not control how they collect or use information.

The technical providers used to host or operate Gnosis+ may also process information as described elsewhere in this policy.

7. Communications With the Committee

If you contact Gnosis+, including by emailing committee@gnosisratings.com, the email service involved in that communication may maintain your email address, the contents of your message, and related message information.

We may retain correspondence where reasonably useful for responding to your inquiry, resolving an issue, documenting a correction or copyright complaint, administering an account, maintaining an appropriate record of Committee business, or documenting decisions relating to the site or its database.

An email address supplied in correspondence does not automatically become part of your Gnosis+ rater account.

8. How We Share Information

Gnosis+ does not sell personal information. Gnosis+ does not rent personal information to advertisers or data brokers. Gnosis+ does not use personal information for targeted behavioral advertising.

8.1 Public Information

Ratings and other information designated as public are available to visitors to the site.

8.2 Committee and Administrators

Authorized Committee members and site administrators may access non-public account, contribution, submission, and activity information when reasonably necessary to administer Gnosis+, maintain data quality, or enforce site policies. Committee members may likewise see information you post in the official Gnosis+ Discord server (Section 6).

8.3 Service Providers

Companies providing infrastructure necessary to operate Gnosis+, such as web hosting, database hosting, email, backup storage, or related technical services, may process information as part of providing those services.

8.4 Legal or Security Reasons

We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with applicable law or valid legal process, or to protect the rights, security, or integrity of Gnosis+, its users, contributors, or others.

8.5 AI-Assisted Development and Maintenance Tools

The Committee uses AI-assisted coding tools (currently Anthropic's Claude Code) to help write, review, and maintain the Gnosis+ codebase. In the course of that work, these tools may occasionally read technical data used for debugging or feature development, which can include database backups, error logs, or other records that contain rater account, rating, or activity information.

These tools are used by the Committee as a development aid, the same way we'd use any other technical service provider (Section 8.3). They do not have standing or automatic access to the live database, and they are not used to make ratings, moderation, or account decisions about you — those decisions are made by human Committee administrators.

9. Data Retention and the Historical Record

Gnosis+ maintains a historical music-ratings database. Preserving the continuity, provenance, and integrity of that database is an important part of the project's purpose. Information may therefore be retained for extended periods where it forms part of the site's historical, operational, administrative, or audit record. In particular:

• Published ratings and database contributions may be retained indefinitely as part of the historical Gnosis+ database;
• Records showing the creation, modification, or removal of ratings and other contributions may be retained;
• Entry submission and moderation histories may be retained;
• User activity records may be retained as part of the site's administrative and data-quality record;
• Administrative activity records may be retained as part of the site's audit history;
• Anonymous visitor issue reports are retained for up to 90 days, and the hashed IP address associated with a visitor report is discarded after 2 days (Section 1.8);
• Password reset requests are deleted after 30 days, and the hashed IP address associated with a request is discarded after 2 days (Section 1.10);
• “Recommended For You” records are derived from ratings, replaced each time they are recomputed, and not kept as a history (Section 1.9); and
• Correspondence or other administrative records may be retained where reasonably useful to document site operations, decisions, disputes, corrections, copyright matters, or other Committee business.

Gnosis+ does not currently apply a routine automatic deletion schedule to its user or administrative activity records.

Account deactivation or removal does not necessarily require deletion of ratings, entry information, corrections, reviews, activity histories, submission records, or other contributions or records that have become part of the historical or administrative Gnosis+ record. Where appropriate, information may instead be disconnected from an active account or anonymized while the underlying historical record is preserved.

10. Account Deactivation, Correction, and Privacy Requests

You may contact the Committee to request correction of inaccurate account or profile information; changes to public profile information; deactivation of your account; information concerning personal information associated with your account; or deletion or anonymization of personal information where appropriate. Requests may be sent to committee@gnosisratings.com. This is distinct from reporting a factual error in an album's catalog data, which is covered by the Corrections Policy in our Terms of Service (Section 10).

A request to deactivate or remove an account does not necessarily require Gnosis+ to erase historical ratings, contributions, activity records, moderation records, or administrative records associated with that account. Some information may be retained where reasonably necessary for the historical integrity of the Gnosis+ database, site administration, auditing, data-quality review, security, dispute resolution, or legal obligations. Where appropriate, Gnosis+ may anonymize or disconnect retained information from an active user account rather than delete the underlying historical record.

We may take reasonable steps to verify that a person making a request is the account holder or otherwise authorized to make the request. Additional rights may be available under the laws applicable where you live.

11. Data Security

Gnosis+ uses reasonable technical and administrative measures intended to protect non-public account information. Current measures include password hashing, authenticated sessions, encrypted HTTPS connections, restricted access to administrative functions, and limiting access to sensitive configuration information.

No website, database, or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure, and Gnosis+ cannot guarantee absolute security.

12. Children’s Privacy

Gnosis+ is a general-audience music site and is not directed specifically to children under 13. We do not knowingly solicit personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information to Gnosis+ in circumstances requiring its removal, please contact committee@gnosisratings.com.

13. International Visitors

Gnosis+ is operated from the United States. Information associated with use of the site may therefore be processed or stored in the United States or in other locations used by service providers supporting the site. Privacy and data-protection laws may differ between jurisdictions. Where applicable law provides you with specific rights concerning personal information, you may contact committee@gnosisratings.com regarding those rights.

14. No Sale, Advertising, or Behavioral Tracking

Gnosis+ does not currently sell personal information; rent personal information to advertisers or data brokers; operate an advertising network; use third-party behavioral advertising; use a third-party website analytics service; use personal information to create advertising profiles of visitors; or share personal information for cross-site behavioral advertising. If these practices materially change, this Privacy Policy will be updated accordingly.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as Gnosis+, its features, service providers, or applicable requirements change. When changes are made, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top of this policy. Material changes may also be communicated through the site when appropriate.

16. Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or Gnosis+'s handling of personal information may be sent to committee@gnosisratings.com.