CZ:Election July-August 2013/Referenda/4a

Only the proposer of the referendum and Election Committee members may modify this page. Substantive modifications by the proposer after the referendum has been formally proposed at 'July-August 2013 Referenda' will invalidate the signatures of any current supporters, and require them to sign again. Comments should be placed on the Talk page.

Permit account creation without approval

Proposed by James Yolkowski

A proposed referendum follows which does modify the charter. Under Article 37, a two-thirds majority is required to have this referendum passed.

To support the establishment of a referendum on this issue, sign here.

Proposed referendum

Whereas:

• A continuous influx of new contributors is essential for the survival of an online community,
• It is widely held that Citizendium is in great need of new contributors,
• Potential new contributors may find the current process to request an account intimidating and so decline to request an account,
• The current process to request an account requires a Constable to approve and create accounts,
• There are no active Constables on Citizendium, and so accounts have not been regularly created during most of 2013, leaving those interested in a Cizitendium account waiting for months,
• Citizendium is a volunteer-based project, and so no-one is obligated to perform any specific task or tasks,
• It has been suggested that the current validation of a user's real name can be easily gamed and anyone who really wanted to sign up under a pseudonym could do so relatively easily (assuming that a Constable were active to approve the request),
• With people more willing now than they were in 2006 to provide their real name online (many social media sites being an example of this), it seems reasonable that most people signing up will be honest regarding their real name and validation is not as necessary.

Therefore, Let it be resolved that:

• The following text is appended to article 2 of the Charter:

Creating an account shall not require manual validation or approval (other than validation of an e-mail address), but accounts suspected of not corresponding to the real name of the person using that account may be suspended or other sanctions imposed, or reasonable validation of identity requested.

• The Citizendium community formally:
  • requests Citizendium's governing council to have the account creation pages updated in accordance with this change upon the passing of this referendum. If technical support is required to make this change, Citizendium's governing council is requested to find a technical resource to implement this change.
  • thanks all current and former Constables for their attention to creating accounts in the past.
• For greater clarity, would-be editors may need to apply separately should they wish to request editorship.