User:Howard C. Berkowitz/C4

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

Personnel and governance

The Citizendium is devoted to transparent and fair governance at a minimum of bureaucracy. Special roles will not be created without excellent reason.

Content

Authors

Any Citizen can act as an Author, contribute or modify content, unless blocked from specific articles or topics by an Editor or Constable. Blocks may be appealed through the Dispute Resolution procedure.

Editors

Editors are Citizens who — because of their recognized expertise in specific areas — are responsible for the scope and quality of the content presented by the Citizendium. Specifically, in their areas of expertise, they are entitled (1) to make decisions about specific questions or disputes concerning particular articles, and (2) to approve high-quality articles.

Editorial Council

An Editorial Council will be responsible for guiding content and establishing policy. It shall consist of nine active Citizens, with five seats reserved for Editors. The remaining four seats are reserved for Authors that are not Editors. A quorum shall consist of 2/3 of the members.

During the startup, the Editorial Council will start with five (seven?) citizens, of whom three are Editors and two are Authors. With each doubling of the number of Approved Articles, two more members, one an Author and one an Editor, will be elected.

The Editorial Council will establish a rotation of members who will be available, for short defined periods, to make interim content decisions when such cannot be resolved by the Workgroup or Editors. All such decisions are subject to the authority of the full Council

Members of the Editorial Council may not simultaneously serve on the Management Committee or be Constables. They may, however, be Task Managers. The members of the Editorial Council will be elected by vote of active Citizens, with two-year terms renewable once consecutively. The Editorial Council will appoint one of its members as the Editorial Lead, who will represent the Citizendium externally on matters of content; contractual negotiations for external matters remain with the Executive Committee.

During deliberations on a matter covered by specific workgroups, the Chief Editor of that Workgroup, or another member, may be part of a quorum if that individual is not a Council member. If, however, the matter under discussion involves a dispute with such an Editor, that Editor may state positions to the Council but not vote on them unless already a member.

Workgroups

The Editorial Council may create and reorganize workgroups to arrange areas of content, and to encourage collaboration among Authors and Editors in areas of expertise. Workgroup members will build top-level articles and knowledge structures for the articles in a discipline.

The Editorial Council shall elaborate a strategy and policy on topic-specific collaboration and some accepted ontology or other knowledge categorization scheme. In addition to subject specific Workgroups, there shall be a General Workgroup with jurisdiction over general issues of style and content, and for articles of very wide scope. There may be, in addition, interdisciplinary or specialized Subgroups. In addition, there may be Area Groups, as for (e.g., Science or Science & Technology) to deal with broad issues affecting many but not all workgroups (e.g., units of measurement).

When there are disputes on content issues, assuming there are multiple Editors in a workgroup, they will attempt to resolve the dispute. Failing agreement, the matter will be taken to the Ombudsman, and then to the Editorial Council.

Editorial task managers

The Editorial Council may appoint Task Managers, who need not be members of the Editorial Council, to facilitate tasks associated with content development. For example, an Approval Manager may focus on coordinating Editors, Authors, Constables and others concerned in the process of publishing articles deemed of high quality.

Operations

(no objections)

Behavior and Dispute Resolution

Ombudsman

An Ombudsman shall be appointed, charged with the task of assisting in dispute resolution, as laid down in this Charter. The role of Ombudsman shall be vested in a Citizen with substantial Citizendium experience and widely respected judgement, who may appoint up to two other Citizens (Assistant Ombudsmen) to support his/her work; their appointment and termination of duties is at the personal discretion of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman will be elected by simple majority vote of each of the Editorial Council and Management Council, for a term of 2 years. An Ombudsman may be recalled by a supermajority (75%) of each of the Editorial and Management Councils. Should the Ombudsman be unable to discharge her or his duties, an Assistant Ombudsman will be a replacement, and appoint a new Assistant until the next election.