Archive:Policy Outline

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All, I'm about to eviscerate this document...as I do so, I will move parts of it to certain pages, and I will put links from here to those pages (just to make sure I don't lose track of them). After I'm done doing that, I'll systematically go through links to this page, and redirect them as necessary. --Larry Sanger 15:39, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Parts of this document were moved to the following pages:

Editorial Workgroups and Management

Editorial Council

The Editorial Council, how chosen. The Citizendium's Editorial Council will deliberate about and decide questions of editorial policy. While initially, all editors will be eligible for membership, for purposes of workability the Council may eventually wish to limit membership to a certain number of editors. Editors will then be selected every one or two years by sortition from among volunteer editors.

Purview of the Council. The Council will have broad authority to settle matters of editorial policy, including, but not necessarily limited to:

  • Naming conventions
  • Article standards
  • Article deletion
  • Article approval
  • Editorial dispute resolution
  • Editor registration
  • The Topic Informant program
  • The list of workgroups
  • The process of creating new workgroups
  • The process of choosing Chief Subject Editors
  • Editor review policy (but editors may not be removed through deliberation of the entire body)
  • The Editorial Council itself

The Editorial Council is not responsible for Constabulary policy, technical requirements (beyond those specifically connected to editor tools), technical priorities, author registration, or a future Citizendium Charter.

Operation of the Council. The Council will deliberate via a mailing list. If necessary, the list moderator will limit the number of messages, either total or from each person, to ensure that the total amount of discussion does not make participation prohibitively costly for many editors, and to ensure that no single person tends to dominate the discussion. The list will begin unmoderated, but if there is too much mail, discussion too frequently gets off topic, or discussion becomes acrimonious too often, then it may become moderated. Another option will be to create workgroups (subcommittees) devoted to particular topics.

Leadership of the Council. The Editor-in-Chief will initially chair the Council. Depending on the interest, time commitment, and suitability of various contributors to the Council's work, he may appoint a replacement. In the future, the chair of the Council will be selected through a non-politicizable method to be decided by the Council. The chair's primary function is to take a leading role in discussion and, when necessary, take a vote of the Council members, or (when a vote seems unnecessary) make an assessment of the sense of the Council. Any Council member may challenge such an assessment and call for a vote, however. While any Council member may propose that a certain issue be voted upon, it is the purview of the Chair to decide finally what competing positions shall be presented to the Council.

Outcome of decisions. Until or unless the Council decides otherwise, any member of the Council may make changes to wiki pages that reflect the outcome of a vote or of the chair's sense of the Council.

Ejection of Council members. Any Council member may privately request that the Chair put it to a vote that another member be removed. It is then up to the Chair to decide whether to put this to a vote of a randomly selected group of five Council members. This may be necessary if a particular member appears to be calling for more votes than other members can tolerate, unduly dominating discussion, or behaving in an uncollegial way. The Chair may be removed by this process, but the decision and choice of voters is performed by the Editor-in-Chief or, in case they are the same person, the Chief Constable, and in this case, complaints from three Council members are needed. A Council member may be ejected from the Council without necessarily losing his or her Citizendium editorship. However, anyone who does lose his or her editorship is automatically removed from the Council.

Replacement of Council members. Particularly if there is a limited number of seats on the Council, the Council will take efforts to fill an empty seat, by sortition, as soon as possible.

For more information, please see the Editorial Council home page.

Editorial Workgroups in General

Editorial workgroups, their types and purpose. In general, editorial workgroups are collections of Citizendium editors tasked with loose oversight of sets of articles. Editorial workgroups are of three types: discipline, subdiscipline, and project. Discipline and subdiscipline workgroups oversee specific subject areas, such as philosophy or particle physics, while project workgroups oversee certain classes of article, overlapping the discipline and subdiscipline workgroups, that have special requirements, such as biographies of living people. The purpose of editorial workgroups is to act as a resource to, and arbiter of, contributors working on a set of wiki articles. Workgroups may set policy and standards that are appropriate for that set of articles. Workgroups may also set up meetings in physical space--for example, as part of a larger professional meeting.

The membership of a workgroup defined by the composition of its [mailing list/forum]. A [mailing lists/forum] will be set up for all editorial workgroups. A workgroup is precisely defined by the roster of members who are on the [mailing list/forum] for that workgroup. No other list will be regarded as official.

Workgroups reactive, not proactive; and other restrictions. It makes up no part of the purpose of editorial workgroups to direct the work done on the wiki; that is, while workgroups may establish some general policy for an area, its oversight over actual work done is reactive, not proactive. Similarly, it is far beyond the remit of a workgroup to make up new rules, that apply only to the articles in its care, that make it difficult for whole classes of people to work where, when, and as they want. In short, workgroups will not be permitted to make the wiki operate any less as a wiki. Furthermore, a workgroup may not establish policy that, if established at all, should plausibly govern a broader set of articles than the articles in the care of the workgroup.

Subject workgroups are divided into discipline and subdiscipline workgroups, but do not form a hierarchy. A discipline workgroup, such as philosophy or physics, may form workgroups for subdisciplines, such as ethics or particle physics, and assign classes of articles to those workgroups. While a discipline workgroup may establish policy and standards for all the articles in the discipline, that policy and those standards are interpreted by the subgroups; there is no chain of command or of appeal from subdiscipline workgroups to discipline workgroups.

Every article assigned to at least one workgroup. Every Citizendium article will be assigned to at least one workgroup. Some articles will be assigned to more than one workgroup; see the policy on shared articles. Articles should not be assigned both to a discipline workgroup and a subdiscipline workgroup in the same discipline. If it is thought that an article would be best managed by a subdiscipline workgroup that has not yet been created, then the article will be (at least temporarily) assigned to the discipline workgroup.

Editorial Workgroup Formation and Function

The formation of discipline workgroups. A comprehensive set of discipline subject workgroups will be formed at the same time, by a process of rough consensus from among the editors subscribed to the "Citizendium-Editors" mailing list, and the results of which will be articulated by the Editor-in-Chief.

The formation of subdiscipline workgroups. Each discipline workgroup will be expected, as one of its first tasks, to formulate a list of at least 10 and not more than 40 subdiscipline workgroups. Subdiscipline workgroups should not be tasked with any responsibilities, however, until there is a quorum of at least three [or five??] members and at least one suitable Chief Subject Editor for the group. See policy on starting subdiscipline workgroups.

The formation and operation of project workgroups. The Editor-in-Chief will, with advice from the community of editors on the Citizendium-Editors mailing list, form project workgroups. Each project workgroup will be managed by its own Project Leader, who will select the membership of the project workgroup, and to whom editors may apply. For details on the operation of project workgroups, see policy on project project workgroups.

Eligibility for workgroup membership. All subject editors are automatically eligible for membership in a discipline workgroup, i.e., the discipline that would typically teach their specialization at a university. Specialty editors are not eligible for workgroup membership, unless there is a workgroup that precisely corresponds to their specialization. But (unlike authors) they may represent their own positions in dispute resolution before workgroups that govern their specialization.

Workgroup proliferation. Note, we do not anticipate the indefinite growth of numbers of workgroups. But it is entirely possible that, as subdiscipline workgroups grow in size, members may feel that they can be optimally split into further and smaller groups. They are permitted to make this determination themselves, although subgroups may not be formed unless most of the anticipated subgroups would have quorums if constructed. Note that articles are then to be reassigned to new subgroups, they are not to be regarded as under the control of the parent group.

General policy against overstandardization. In making policies and standards, editors must constantly weigh the advantages of uniformity against the disadvantages of teaching and maintaining the policy or standard. Generally, a policy or standard must be shown "pay for itself" in terms of clearly expressed and obvious advantage for the project.

Chief Subject Editors

Chief Subject Editor responsibilities. For each discipline and subdiscipline workgroup, there will be a Chief Subject Editor, who is appointed for a one year term, and whose main function is to speak on behalf of the group.

Chief Subject Editor selection. Chief Subject Editors will be selected through a specific process of sortition, to keep editor relations as apolitical as possible. Subject editors for a given discipline or subdiscipline declare their willingness to serve as Chief Subject Editor to a neutral third party (sortition administrator). A list of such declared persons is then sent secretly to all members of the workgroup by the sortition administrator. Members are instructed to submit "objections" to up to n% [TBD] (a specific number will be provided for each sortition) of the names on the list. The sortition administrator then receives objections from any members. If more than n% [TBD] (a specific number will be provided for each sortition) of the workgroup objects a certain person, then the sortition administrator removes the person from the list. If no persons remain, then the list is repopulated by the person or persons who received the fewest objections. If one person remains, that is the chief subject editor. If more than one person remains, the sortition administrator uses a random number generator to determine which person is the chief subject editor. No Chief Subject Editor may serve more than two consecutive terms.

Editor Review

[This section needs extensive review by the Citizendium-Editors mailing list.]

Dispute Resolution

[This section will be drafted after further discussion with the Citizendium-Editors mailing list. This section should include sections regarding both Content disputes between authors (for which there aren't any editors on hand) and Content disputes between editors.

Constabulary Policy

[The policies and procedures for constables, outlined below, should be considered "provisional" and subject to change, as result of deliberations and, in particular, in light of the future adoption of a Charter.]

The Role and Selection of Constables

Constables, what. Constables are members of the Citizendium community. While they can be authors, collaborating on articles, like most of the members of the Citizendium, they have, in addition, the extra job of maintaining our site and enforcing our rules.

Constable responsibilities and tools. In order for the constabulary to enforce our rules, they need to have access to special tools that other members do not. First, they can ban users from our site, for a time period proportionate to the damage the user has caused. Second, they can delete pages, which do not belong on the site for various reasons. For example, constables can delete pages that have “problem” material on them or pages that have been vandalized. Further, not only can they delete pages, but they can also “rollback” them, as well, restoring the page to an earlier version, before the damage was done. All these actions require special tools to perform them.

Qualifications of constables. One of the first matters to consider is the qualifications, if any, of a constable. Although we might ideally specify such qualities as maturity, honesty, wisdom, and understanding, these qualities are not easy to quantify. In addition, in these early days of the Citizendium, most of us barely know each other. In place of such qualifications, we must choose some that can be validated. Therefore, it has been decided that constables must, of course, have all of the qualifications of Citizendium members, and, in addition, have attained the age of 25 years old and be a college graduate. It is possible that we decide to consider certain life experiences as equivalent to a college education, but, initially, these will be the qualifications.

Selection of constables. Since many of the Citizendium’s members will be both 25 years old and college graduates, we need additional means to designate which of these members will be constables. The proposed selection system involves the following steps. To become a constable, a member must first be nominated for this position either by him/herself or by another member. Further, two other members must second this nomination. Finally, the nominated person must receive no more than one detractor. Such a simple system is appropriate for selection at the beginning. As members get to know each other, this system can be elaborated, say, to include responses by the nominated members to negative comments, which would be presented anonymously by a committee of the constabulary. And, perhaps, this committee of the constabulary will make the final choice, privately.

No more constables than necessary. It is important that we do not have an "over-regulated" wiki, because that would damage the robustness of the collaborative process. Therefore, we will select as many constables as are needed to keep the project running smoothly, but no more. The Chief Constable will make the determination of the proper number of constables.

(Before we discuss the particular procedures and policies for constables, one must bring up a problem that has arisen to a great degree in other open, collaborative projects. And, we solicit suggestions on how to prevent this problem from developing in the Citizendium. The problem, put simply, is how to prevent the constabulary from becoming an in-group or “clique” of power-hungry members? Some ideas are:

  1. Set a term for constables, say 1 or 2 years, and require that they be re-elected if they want to continue as constables.
  2. Have an appeal process, in which, banned parties can appeal constables’ decisions. This is part of the system already. Perhaps, make this stronger, so that, if a constable loses three appeals, he is put on probation. If he loses one more appeal, he is no longer a constable.
  3. Any suggestions? Discuss on Citizendium-L or the forums.]

Policies and Procedures for Constables

For more informal, constable-oriented instructions, see Constabulary Home.

[N.B. Again, all Policies and Procedures are to be considered provisional and subject to change.]

Banning users for using pseudonyms that are not anyone's real name. Users who use user names that are not even names are to be banned immediately. This is the case of user names like “Starfinder” and “Laptop.” Likewise, users who are found to be using pseudonyms as user names are to be banned and instructed to go and apply for a pseudonym.

Improper names in the preferences nickname box. Users who have placed pseudonyms within the "nicknames" box in their preferences are to be warned, instructed that they may apply for a pseudonym, and then banned if they fail to fix the problem. "Jon Fields" would be an example of acceptable usage of the nickname box for someone named Jonathan Walter Fields.

Pseudonym workgroup. The constables will establish a workgroup and procedures for creating pseudonyms. Further, their use will only be permitted for good reasons, such as the user is a political dissident, or the user wishes to articulate views that might place him/ her and his/her family in physical danger.

Banning users for vandalism, bad faith edits, and copyright violations. Any insertion of obscenities, bad faith edits, or copyright violations into articles will be considered vandalism. For example, adding obscene text or images into an article or arbitrarily deleting part of an article are considered as vandalism. Similarly, adding material that represents a copyright violation will be deemed a bad faith edit. Any constable who notices vandalism or a bad faith edit in an article will swiftly remove it and ban the user who is responsible for an appropriate period of time.

Deleting articles. In any case that an editor considers an article to be of poor quality and not worth fixing, he/she may request that a constable delete the article. It is expected that no other editor in the field will object. However, if there should be a disagreement among editors over the deletion of an article, an editorial workgroup will try to reach agreement. Then, if an editorial workgroup decides to delete an article, it will call upon the constabulary to enforce this decision.

There are also large classes of articles that may be deleted by constables acting on their own recognizance. See CZ:Article Deletion Policy for elaboration.

Giving editors article approval permissions. If a new editor wants permission to approve article, he/she needs to have this permission reviewed by the constabulary. If the constabulary has questions over whether to issue this permission, it refers the issue to an editorial workgroup.

Checks on Constables

Constables should never rule in their area of expertise or in cases in which they have been personally involved. In such a case, the constable must, without exception, recuse him or herself. This is to maintain a clear "separation of powers" between editorial and constabulary roles. Constables are also forbidden from banning users with whom they have been collaborating, i.e., in cases in which they are personally involved. In such a case, a constable must call an uninvolved constable. Constables must strictly avoid even the appearance of using their constable authority to gain advantage in content disputes. As well, constables should avoid contributing to articles when two-thirds of constables acting as editors or authors are already involved. This is to safeguard that a sufficient number of constables will be available to act as constables in said articles.

Right of appeal. Any user may appeal a ban by a constable. Such appeals will be heard by a special group of constables. The appeal process may be public or private; this decision is made by the banned user. Further, if the user loses three appeals of constables’ decisions (and is banned temporarily and returns), he loses his right to appeal thereafter. Similarly, if a constable’s decisions are successfully appealed three times, he is put on probation. Any further loss of an appeal by such a constable will result in the dismissal of the user as a constable.

Some Rules of Behavior Enforced by Constables

In general, see Constabulary Blocking Procedures.

No initialisms. The Policy pages of the Citizendium may not contain any three-letter “initialisms.” For example, “IAR,” “NOR,” and “AFD” are three letter initialisms. These expressions are a considerable problem for new users who are unfamiliar with them. The first time a user introduces such an expression in a policy page, he/she will be warned and the expression removed. The second time a user repeats this offense, he will be banned for a suitable amount of time.

Rules regarding user pages. The content of user pages and their associated "talk pages" must conform to certain rules. See above. Constables will enforce these rules about the content of user and talk pages.

Instructions. The tools constables will use for these procedures are the same as for Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia’s pages on Administrators:

  1. Administrators. This page is an explanation of Role of Administrators
  1. Admin's how-to guide. This page is an explanation of administrator tools and how to use them
  1. Admin's reading list. This page is an explanation of the policies of Wikipedia that administrators enforce. This may be helpful, but constables must bear in mind that the Citizendium will have different polices.

Items to Add

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