Terms of use

Plainly, in the order it matters: what is yours, what others may do with what you publish, what isn't allowed, and what we can and cannot promise.

Last updated September 16, 2026.

In short

• What you make is yours. We use it only to run the site, and we don't sell it, show advertising beside it, or supply it to anyone to train AI models.
• Publishing lets others build on your work. Once a timeline is public, anyone here may view it, lay it over their own, or copy it into a timeline of their own, with you credited — and a copy already made stays made.
• Publish only what is yours to share, and nothing unlawful or abusive.
• History is argued over. A timeline shows what its author believes. We don't check it, and its being here isn't our endorsement.
• It is free, and offered as it is. We look after the site, but can't promise it will always be here or never lose anything.

This summary is a guide. The sections below are the agreement.

Agreeing to these terms

These terms are the agreement between you and Steve Jeffery, who runs Timeline Source and is the “we” of these pages. They apply whenever you use the site, with an account or without one, alongside Your data, which says what we keep and why. Creating an account, or using the site at all, means you accept them. If you don't, please don't use it.

To create an account you must be at least 13. Trying the editor needs no account and keeps nothing about you, so it is open to anyone. If you are under 18, read these terms with a parent or guardian, and have their agreement before you sign up. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 13, we will delete it.

Your account

• Use an email address you can receive mail at. It is how you get back in if you forget your password, and how we reach you about your account.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what is done through your account, unless it happened because of a fault on our side. If you think someone else has got in, change your password, which signs out every other browser, and tell us at hello@timelinesource.com.
• Choose a username you are content to see on everything you publish. It appears as the author of your public timelines, and in the credit on every copy made of them. It must not be obscene or abusive, or pretend to be someone you are not. We may ask you to change one that is, and if you don't, change it ourselves and tell you by email.

What you make is yours

Everything you put into a timeline — its title and description, its events and their notes, and the way you have arranged them — stays yours. We claim no ownership of any of it.

To run the site we need your permission to handle it — a license, in legal terms — and you give it by using the site: to store your work, show it to you and keep the site working; and, for a timeline you publish, to show it to anyone, include it in search, and let others use it as the next section describes. The permission is free and worldwide, and we use it for nothing else. We don't sell what you make, show advertising beside it, or supply it to anyone to train AI models.

When you publish a timeline

Every timeline starts private, and becomes public only when you switch it from Private to Public. Publishing it gives everyone who uses Timeline Source permission to:

• view it, and find it by searching its text or its dates;
• lay it over their own timelines, read-only, for as long as it stays public;
• copy it into a timeline of their own, by importing its events or saving a copy, then change that copy and publish it here in turn.

Every copy carries a credit to you, naming the timeline and your username as they were when the copy was made, and the credit stays with the copy.

For copies, the permission can't be taken back. Making a timeline private again, deleting it, or closing your account stops anyone viewing, finding, overlaying or copying it from then on — but a copy already made belongs to the timeline it was made into, and stays there, credit and all. Publish only what you are content for others to build on.

The permission is for use on Timeline Source. It isn't permission to take your work anywhere else; for that, people need to ask you.

No one owns the dates of history, so a timeline covering the same ground as yours isn't a copy of it, even if it reaches the same conclusions. Your own words, in your notes and descriptions, are another matter.

The same holds for other people's words in your timelines. Quoting a source briefly, and saying where it comes from, is how history is written. Long passages of someone else's copyrighted text — a textbook, an article, a modern translation — are only yours to publish if the publisher's own terms allow it.

What isn't allowed

Don't use Timeline Source to:

• publish anything unlawful, or that infringes someone else's copyright, privacy or other rights;
• harass, threaten or demean anyone, or stir up hatred against people for who they are;
• publish a living person's private details, such as their home address or phone number, without their consent;
• pass yourself off as someone else, or as speaking for an organization you don't;
• advertise, or fill timelines with events and links that are there to promote something rather than to record history;
• post links or text meant to deceive people or to harm their devices;
• try to get into accounts or timelines that aren't yours, or get around the site's security or its limits on sign-in attempts;
• collect timelines in bulk by automated means — to feed another service or train AI models, for instance — beyond the ordinary indexing that search engines do, or put a load on the site that gets in the way of other people using it;
• create accounts by automated means, or open a new account to get around our closing an old one.

Recording cruelty is not the same as promoting it. Timelines of wars, persecutions and atrocities are welcome here; using one to attack people is not.

History is argued over

Timelines here are made by the people who use the site, and each shows what its author believes, or sets out to show. The dates of the ancient world are often uncertain and sometimes fiercely disputed, and the site is built to let an author say so, not to settle the question. We don't check timelines for accuracy, and a timeline being published here doesn't mean we agree with it.

Read them as you would any secondary source: useful, and worth checking against the evidence before you rely on one in your own writing or teaching.

Reporting a problem

If you come across something that breaks these terms, email hello@timelinesource.com with a link to it and a sentence on what is wrong. Copyright complaints have a section of their own, below.

If you find a security weakness, tell us there before you tell anyone else, and give us a fair chance to fix it. We won't take action against anyone who reports one in good faith, provided they did no harm to other people's accounts or data and kept nothing they saw.

Copyright complaints

If you believe something published here copies your work without permission, send a notice to hello@timelinesource.com that includes:

1. the work you believe has been copied;
2. a link to where the copy appears on Timeline Source;
3. your name, postal address, phone number and email address;
4. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use isn't authorized by the owner, their agent or the law;
5. a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you own the rights or are authorized to act for the person who does;
6. your signature, which may be your full name typed at the end.

We will remove or disable what a complete notice identifies, and tell the person who published it. If that is you, and you believe it was removed by mistake or misidentification, you can send a counter-notice to the same address that includes:

1. what was removed, and a link to where it was;
2. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification;
3. your name, postal address and phone number;
4. a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where you live — or, if you live outside the United States, any judicial district in which Timeline Source may be found — and that you will accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice;
5. your signature.

We pass a counter-notice on to the person who complained, and put the material back 10 to 14 business days after receiving it, unless they tell us first that they have taken the matter to court. Anyone who knowingly misrepresents the facts in a notice or a counter-notice can be liable for the costs that causes. We close the accounts of people who repeatedly publish other people's work.

Removing content and closing accounts

We may remove anything that breaks these terms, and suspend or close an account that breaks them seriously or repeatedly. We will usually tell you what we did and why, by email, unless the law prevents it or telling you would put someone at risk. If you think we got it wrong, reply, and we will look again.

You can close your account whenever you like, from settings. What that deletes, and the one thing it can't reach, is set out in Your data.

The service itself

Timeline Source is free to use. If we ever offer something that costs money, you will see the price before you are asked to pay it, and nothing will be charged without your agreement.

We look after the site, but we can't promise it will always be available, free of mistakes, or never lose anything, and we may change or remove features as it grows. We may also set limits — on how many events a timeline can hold, for example — to keep it working for everyone. Work kept without an account lives only in your browser: clearing your site data, browsing privately or switching devices loses it.

If we ever decide to close Timeline Source, we will say so on the site, and email every account, at least 30 days before it closes.

What we can't promise

Timeline Source is provided as it is, and as available. To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no promises about it beyond the ones written in these terms and in Your data — including any implied promise that it is merchantable or fit for a particular purpose, or that what is published on it is accurate.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for lost work, time or opportunity, arising from your use of the site, and our total liability to you for anything to do with Timeline Source is limited to $100.

Nothing in these terms limits a liability that the law doesn't allow to be limited — for fraud, for instance, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence — or takes away rights you have as a consumer that can't be given up by agreement.

If there's a dispute

Most problems are best settled by talking. Please write to hello@timelinesource.com first, and give us 30 days to put things right, before taking the matter further.

If you live in the United Kingdom, the European Union, or anywhere else whose law gives you the right to bring a claim in your own courts, or protections that an agreement can't remove, you keep them.

Changes to these terms

These terms will change as the site does, and the date at the top says when they last did. A change that takes something away — that narrows what you may do, or what we promise — will be announced on the site, and emailed to every account, at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you go on using Timeline Source after that, you accept the new terms; if you don't accept them, you can close your account before then.

No change will ever widen what others may do with a timeline you published before it took effect.

The rest

• These terms and Your data are the whole agreement between you and Timeline Source.
• If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands.
• If we don't enforce part of them straight away, we haven't given it up.
• Your account is yours alone; you can't pass it on to someone else.
• If Timeline Source is ever passed to someone else, these terms and the promises in Your data pass with it, and the new owner can change them only as the section above describes.
• If you send us ideas for the site, we are free to use them without owing you anything for them.
• What others may do with copies of what you published, what we can't promise, and how disputes are settled all continue after your account is closed.