CZ:Policies/Proposed Citizendium Policy Changes 2020

Proposed removals are stricken out. Proposed insertions look like this.

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The Citizendium shall be run according to the policies set out in this document.

1. Usage and eligibility

1) The Citizendium shall be open to all who endorse this document.

2) The Citizendium is a knowledge resource that shall be owned and managed on a non-profit basis.

3) Citizendium articles shall be free to access on-line via a wiki and available under a licence that permits reuse with attribution.

4) Citizendium contributors shall participate publicly under their real, verified names and maintain public biographical details about themselves; minors—who must be at least 16 years old—shall provide only brief details, and their otherwise–personal information shall be kept private and destroyed when no longer needed.

5) The Citizendium shall prohibit behavior that restrict the activities of the project or its members, or damage its reputation, including but not limited to unauthorised advertising ("spam"), vandalism, harassment, copyright violations, plagiarism, libel, slander, use of the site for purposes other than providing a free knowledge resource, criminal activity, or use of material that is considered either inappropriate for minors or illegal.

2. Content

6) Citizendium articles shall be as neutral, comprehensive, accurate, and comprehensible as possible while respecting the balance of scientific evidence.

7) While all article contributors shall be otherwise equal, there shall be special recognition for subject experts (who shall be individuals with any of: accredited research-level qualifications; three or more peer-reviewed publications; or equivalent practical experience as defined by existing expert contributors), who shall have the final say in any dispute over content, and shall have the right to close a version of a reasonably high quality article to further editing.

7) Citizendium no longer grants extra authority to editors; all members are now authors. Citizendium permits the following article policies, several of which have already been in use informally. These include:

• 7a) Allowing lead authors on an article, and allowing multiple articles on a given topic
• 7b) Suspending the creation of so-called Citable articles, and allowing reversions of current Citable articles to regular collaboration mode
• 7c) Nomination of articles as “Ready for reading”, making them eligible to be featured on the landing page
• 7d) Endorsing the use of Citizendium as a staging platform for Wikipedia or other websites (with attribution per the site license)
• 7e) Encouraging deletion of articles deemed not up to standard

These experimental article policies are described in more depth here.

3. Governance

8) The Citizendium community or its representatives shall decide its own governance structure and who shall be responsible for administrative, financial, legal, content, behavioural and technical matters.

8) The Citizendium is to be run transparently by its management team, who represent its members even in cases where they have not been formally elected. Finances will be transparent and reported on regularly by the Treasurer. Donations are needed and will be devoted to keeping the servers running. All aspects of the wiki are being managed ad hoc by volunteers from among those available, able and willing to serve as of August 2020. When membership increases, we may be able to reinstitute having elections about personnel and policy. We intend to seek and listen to community input as always.

9) No Citizendium member shall be denied a fair, unbiased appeal process against a decision made against them on administrative, legal, or technical matters.

9) Being a member of Citizendium is like having a driver’s license—it is a privilege, not a right. The management team reserves the right to enforce the peace and do what’s best for the wiki’s survival, up to and including, if needful, expeditious banning of a citizen deemed to be disturbing the peace, causing serious or repeated problems in the community, or bringing legal risks to the project. Appeals to the management team are permitted (please use the enquiry form). Any appeal will be handled closed-door, with those hearing it kept anonymous, followed by an email giving a final verdict. We can’t predict how long appeals might take.

10) These policies supersede all previous articles, rules and decisions, which may be used as guidance where publicly-accessible, and this document shall be modified, abolished, added to or otherwise changed only via mandatory public discussion and when authorised by a two-thirds majority of participating Citizendium members; other rules and decisions may be made through voting, consensus or precedent, in as transparent a manner as possible.

10) These policies supersede all previous articles, rules and decisions.