CZ:Charter/Brainstorm

This page and its parent page are dedicated to drafting a charter for Citizendium and should only be edited by those eight Citizens elected to the drafting Committee. Other Citizens, please comment on the dedicated thread at the Citizen Forum. Non-Citizens can comment in a separate thread at the non-Member Forum. The drafting period shall end when November 12, 2009 is over all around the globe.

General points

• The encyclopedia author's task is to objectively recount what is already established and known about each topic, not to offer his or her own determinations about it. The composition of Citizendium articles is guided by "Editors", who have demonstrated expertise in what is established and known about the topics they oversee.
• Citizendium is a knowledge project
• We accumulate knowledge as an evolving network of theoretical concepts and practical experience
• the still fledgling Citizendium currently seems to be the closest match for a cross-disciplinary scholarly wiki anchored in the real world
• Just imagine if all authors currently writing up manuscripts about a subject were instead to coordinate their efforts by collaborating on a single but detailed and balanced citable reference in which the topic would be described in and linked to all relevant contexts, updated as new research results pass peer review.
• Citizendium is a community of people from all walks of life and all corners of the world coming together for the sole purpose of creating a reliable and credible compendium of knowledge.
• Citizendium should be a community of people who celebrate the diversity that comes with any large community and not only tolerate, but showcase, organize and discuss all the differences in culture, lifestyle and beliefs that make up what we know as Life.
• Expert guidance on Citizendium is not simply fact checking. It is providing expert perspective to contextualize and interconnect knowledge.
• the Charter's main purpose should be to dictate who (or what entity) has the responsibility to create and/or amend each policy and how they should do it, ie. - what percentage of a quorum can change a policy.
• (an example of a goal from a talk archive, describing contextualization): macro-level article on the [top-level subject] that would put the many [subtopics]] into a broad context and then linking to (not redirecting from) an article called [very important subtopic] ... Much of the article also remains at the high policy level (national politicians deciding national direction and military objectives); there is no ground-level description of the wars here.
• Knowledge should not be orphaned. Ideally, every article will have several links to and from other articles, and can be traced to a top-level article.
• Not just facts: context, explication/exposition/explanation and exploration with the goal of engendering greater understanding
• Systematic survey
• In an encyclopedia article you would probably only describe an individual study if it was exceptionally important. An encyclopedia article is a display of breadth of knowledge more than depth.
• Not a place for advocacy or "giving voices" to specific issues.
• Breadth for top level articles, levels of depth for subpages, ie student/advanced/debate or clarifying a concept from the top level.
• An expert knows both the breadth and depth of a field.
• consensus among experts vs popular consensus
• majority rule, minority rights
• Everyone is a lay person nearly everywhere
• Provide quality and naming standards.

Preamble

Hover over the marked terms to see their definition in the context of the charter.

1. Citizendium is a collaborative knowledge project, which emphasizes objectivity and recognition of expertise. The broad audience is assumed to want professional (or knowledgeable) expertise and confidence in their information.
2. Citizendium provides a living, evolving framework for the systematic presentation of knowledge sources and ideas.
3. Citizens commit themselves to transparent governance and responsible authorship by using their real names.
4. Citizendium content will bear identifiers giving the confidence of its experts on the material. Content experts will have verified real-world expertise.

This looks like a really good start. Within the definitions, I would like to see dictionary-type definitions first and then an explanation of how they are to be understood in the context of the charter. "Objectivity" would be something along the lines of: "Based on observations that are not biased by emotion or opinion. At Citizendium, this means..." Does that sound reasonable? --Joe Quick 21:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll move the longer parts to separate sections in the #Appendix then, keeping just the dictionary-like definitions for the mouse-overs. --Daniel Mietchen 21:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that they need to be moved, but I do think they should be a little more direct. The definition for "objectivity", in particular, includes things that are not at all implied by the word: expert knowledge, for example, is not necessary for someone or something to be objective. --Joe Quick 21:41, 25 October 2009 (UTC)