CZ:Dispute Resolution

This is a draft proposal under construction. It might contain good advice but it does not contain established rules, unless they are repeated from elsewhere.

What to do if you have a disagreement

A disagreement occurs when you want the article to read one way, and someone else wants it to read another way. A disagreement blows up into a conflict when both sides will not back down from their positions, which they actively defend.

Not all disagreements need to become full-blown conflicts, and conflicts can be de-escalated to mere disagreements. When faced with a disagreement, the first thing to do--regardless of the participants--is to engage in a constructive, friendly dialogue on the talk page, aimed at compromise.

Please make sure that you behave professionally as you discuss things. Bear in mind that your dialogue does not necessarily determine the outcome of your disagreement. If one side cannot persuade the other, or if you cannot arrive at a compromise, the issue will be decided by other Citizendium community mechanisms. We ask only that you trust that these mechanisms will result in a fair and intelligent decision.

If a conflict cannot be resolved by dialogue

(1a) Disagreements handled by individual editors: initial disagreement about article content. The grounds for disagreement are many: purely factual, typically resolved by reference to "objective" sources; neutrality (i.e., that a piece of text is biased, or that some other text needs to be added in order to make a paragraph neutral); article title; copyediting matters; article level; copyright matters; etc.

(1b) Disagreements handled by workgroups (when established?): disagreement with decisions made about the items in (1a), i.e., appeals; about whether a person is or is not qualified to be an editor; and about templates and rules established by the workgroup.

(1c) Disagreements handled by the Editorial Council: those about content policy that has not yet been settled.

Disagreements handled by

How to avoid conflict: determine first that there is actually a substantive disagreement that cannot be resolved by dialogue or compromise.

How is the decision made while consulting an authority for a resolution? The

What to do if there is no policy

What to do if there is seems to be no procedure for this type of conflict

What to do if the other person will not play along with the procedure

What to do in case of disagreement about purview

What to do if there is a difference in interpretation of existing policy

To do: establish workgroups (i.e., establish the process through which workgroups make decision)