About the site

Q: Who runs this site?

FedThread is a project of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. We are not affiliated with the U.S. government.

Q: Do you have a privacy policy?

Yes. Click here. We also have Terms of Use that you should know about.

About the Federal Register

Q: What is the Federal Register?

According to the government, the Federal Register is "[t]he official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents." It's published by the U.S. government, every weekday except holidays.

Q: Why should I care what's in the Federal Register?

The Federal Register tells you what the government is doing, in a lot more detail than you'll find in the newspaper. New rules and regulations are published in the Register, and the government uses the Register to ask for input from citizens.

Q: Where does FedThread get its version of the Federal Register?

We get it directly from the government. Every morning, we download the daily version of the Federal Register, in XML format, from the Government Printing Office's FDsys site.

Q: Where can I get the official version of the Federal Register?

The official electronic version is the version distributed by the Government Printing Office in PDF or HTML format. FedThread pages that show Federal Register content include a link to the official version.

Q: I heard that the government now makes the Federal Register available in XML format. What does that mean?

XML is a geeky data format that labels the parts of a document -- this part is the agency name, that part is the date of publication, and so on -- in a way that is easy for computers to understand. The FedThread software uses these XML labels to analyze and display the Federal Register's contents. By making the Federal Register available in XML format, the government made sites like FedThread feasible.

About notes on FedThread

Q: When I post a note on FedThread, does my note become part of the Federal Register? Is my note submitted to the government?

Your note appears only on this site. It does not become part of the Federal Register, and we do not submit it to the government. Government staffers are welcome to come here and read notes, just like everyone else. We hope they do read the site.

Q: Is posting a note here the same thing as making a formal comment to the government?

No. Formal comments must be submitted directly to the government.

Q: So how do I submit a formal comment to the government?

Some items in the Federal Register invite the public to submit comments to a government agency. Those items will include instructions for where, when, and how to submit comments. The government offers a web site, Regulations.gov, that helps you submit comments, or you can get information from private sites such as OpenRegs.com.

Q: Do you vouch for the information in the notes here?

No. We tell you what people said, but we don't (and can't) tell you whether they spoke the truth. We hope to see vigorous discussion and debate here, and that means giving people some latitude to say what they want. We do reserve the right to remove material that we deem to be abusive, indecent, clearly off-topic, or otherwise inappropriate, but we don't guarantee that we will always remove such material.

About feeds

Q: What is a "feed"?

A feed is a service that notifies you when something happens. On FedThread, you can turn any search into a feed, which means that you will be notified whenever a new item that matches your search is published in the Federal Register. We deliver feeds using RSS. You can use FeedMyInbox, an external service, to have a feed delivered to you by email.

Q: What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's a way for web sites to provide information updates to you. You can receive and read an RSS feed using an RSS reader program, or via a web service such as Google Reader. These tools let you subscribe to as any feeds as you like, and get a list of new items published on the feeds you're subscribed to.

Q: Can I get feeds by email instead?

Yes, you can. We don't provide this service directly, but you can use a third-party service like FeedMyInbox to have feeds delivered to you by email. We have no affiliation with FeedMyInbox, so any comments or complaints about their service will have to be directed to them.

Q: Site Credits?

Icons on the site are from Yusuke Kamiyamane, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.