Terms of use

What this is

Watchers USA is a public record of local government in every American county: who holds office, what bodies govern there, and when those bodies meet. Some of it is loaded automatically from government sources. The rest is put there by citizens, because no agency publishes it.

Using the site means agreeing to what follows. If you do not, please do not use it.

Accuracy — read this one

We do not guarantee that anything here is correct or current. Meeting times change. Meetings are cancelled, moved and rescheduled. Officials resign. Records go stale between the day someone checks them and the day you read them.

Every schedule shows its source and the date it was last confirmed, so you can judge how much to trust it. Before you travel to a meeting, check the body's own website or call their office. We are a starting point, not an authority, and we are not responsible for a journey wasted on a meeting that did not happen.

Nothing here is legal advice. Open-meetings and recording laws differ by state and we describe them only in general terms.

Your account

• One account per person. Keep your password to yourself.
• Pick a handle you are willing to have shown publicly. You can change it at any time, and every past contribution changes with it.
• Do not impersonate anyone — in particular, do not pick a handle implying you hold an office or speak for a public body.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account.

Contributing

Adding a meeting or confirming a record puts a fact on a page other people will act on. So:

• Always give a real source. A page on the body's own site, a posted notice, or minutes. Submissions without one are not accepted, and that rule is the whole reason this record is worth anything.
• Submit what you found, not what you assume. If you are not sure, say so or leave it.
• Do not submit claims about people. This is a record of when bodies meet and who holds office. It is not a place for allegations about anyone's conduct, and material of that kind will be removed.
• Do not submit anything unlawful, anyone's private information, or anything you do not have the right to share.

By contributing you give us permission to publish, keep and correct what you submit, and you agree it may be shown to anyone. Facts about public meetings are not owned by anybody, and we make no ownership claim over them either.

Attending meetings

Saying you will attend a meeting is a note to your neighbours, not a commitment to us. Nobody chases you if you cannot go.

What you do at a public meeting is your own responsibility. Follow the body's rules and your state's law, particularly on recording. We ask that you go to observe and to take notes, which is the point of the whole exercise, and that you treat clerks and officials as people doing a job.

Moderation

Submissions are reviewed. Some publish immediately because their source is on a domain already on record as official for that county; the rest wait for a moderator. We may decline a submission, remove a record, or close an account that repeatedly submits things that are wrong, unsourced or abusive. If we decline something you sent, you will be told why and you can correct it and send it again.

Membership

Every county record is public and always will be. Membership is not a key to a locked door — it is how the work gets paid for. Payments are handled by Stripe. You can cancel at any time and your membership runs to the end of the period you have paid for. Because nothing is gated behind it, we do not generally refund past periods.

Where we stand

We are open about our starting point, and it is set out on the front page. You do not have to share it to use the site, and nothing here requires you to. The record is the record either way.

The legal bit

The site is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from using it or from relying on anything published here. If some part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

We may change these terms. If a change matters, we will say so on the site rather than quietly editing the date at the top.