Can you not do that with a template override of the offline page?

I thought that if literally every EU-directed website needs a privacy policy on the offline page it should be core? Not?

I can't see why you would need a privacy policy for an offline site.

Maybe you would still need an impressum but that's something unique to Germany iirc

Of course you need a privacy policy - in the moment someone visits the hosting saves log data?

Those are server logs not site logs. There is no personal identifiable information in there (as confirmed by German law).

A lot of people see it different. If you have the IP and the time than you have in theory the possibility to make a connection to a real person.

Yes I also see it like that...

If you are going to add links to these pages/articles/texts, then "these" need to exist somewhere, and you cannot view "these" if they are Joomla content because the site is offline!

You would be changing the whole definition of "offline" (which technically already is not "offline" enough as a lot needs to be instantiated to get to the "offline" message.

Also are we now saying that these three "Articles" are going to be mandated to be completed by all Joomla sites from now on? Would they be Joomla articles? would they just be a url link configured in global config? Links to where exactly as the site could be "offline" for technical reasons... so links to off domain articles?

I think this opens up a whole new ballgame, and is not a quick fix.

The quick fix is for local template developers to style their offline pages to suit their requirements (and laws)

The issue of IP address being pii has already been tested in the european court of justice. The conclusion was that it is only pii if the person logging the data has a legal way to determine who is the user of the ip address. As 99.99999% of joomla web site owners will never have that legal right then it is not pii on its own.

Reference https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/court-confirms-ip-addresses-are-personal-data-some-cases

The CJEU decided that a dynamic IP address will be personal data in the hands of a website operator if:

1. there is another party (such as an ISP) that can link the dynamic IP address to the identity of an individual; and
2. the website operator has a "legal means" of obtaining access to the information held by the ISP in order to identify the individual.

Offline mode, as half baked as it is (and nothing has changed since https://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-feb-2011/item/378-how-offline-is-joomla-offline-mode was written), is not intended to be able to display select portions of your website. I've tried masochistically in the past to make it behave in a semi-offline-but-display-select-content-from-select-sources mode in the past, it's possible but definitely not suggested for day to day use.

If you really need these policy documents to be available while Joomla is in offline mode, you need to serve them as static HTML files on your server.

I think an overwrite is the best way to go, don't see how we can support this without making offline mode to a low level cms online mode. I am for closing this one.

Closed for the reasons stated above