User:Thomas H. Larsen/Draft charter

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

The Citizendium is a collaborative effort to collect, structure, and update knowledge and to render it conveniently accessible to the public. Content distributed by the Citizendium is available free of charge and is freely licensed.

Fundamental policies

The Citizendium is built on the principles of trust, goodwill, and responsibility. In order to establish a shared understanding of purpose, all Citizens are asked to respect certain fundamental policies.

• Trust. The Citizendium encourages contributions by any Citizen at any time. To establish trust, Citizens register under their real name and are required to participate in a civil manner. Citizens are encouraged to "be bold" in contributing, using their own common sense and good judgment.
• Context. Citizendium content will be presented in context, and not as advocacy of any position. All entries at Citizendium should engage their subjects comprehensively, neutrally, and objectively to the greatest degree possible. This entails providing full explanations of the facets of an article's subject that experts judge significant, as well as highlighting important connections to other topics.
• Accessibility. While the basic content provided at the Citizendium is intended for an audience with completed secondary education, more specialized content is welcome. Integration of the Citizendium with teaching and research is encouraged, as long as these activities do not diminish the user experience of non-experts using non-specialized content. As far as possible, special needs of visually or otherwise impaired users and of machines will be taken into account.
• Respect for expertise. The Citizendium seeks to be a trusted resource, and, for that reason, it commits to respect expertise and the use of expert guidance for quality control.

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.

• Authors. Any Citizen can act as an author by contributing to or modifying 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.
• Constables. Constables are charged with the upholding of the Citizendium's rules of behavior, covering all Citizens including those with official positions (such as the Ombudsman or the Editor-in-Chief). Constable authority is restricted to matters of behavior, and constables are not permitted to intervene in matters of content, which are under the purview of the Editorial Council and Editor-in-Chief. The enforcement of behavioral rules is carried out with reasonable pragmatism and leniency, without prejudice as to Citizen status or position, and only in those situations where the applicability of existing rules is clear. Decisions of constables may be appealed through the appropriate adjudication process.
• Editor-in-Chief. An Editor-in-Chief will be appointed, with a term of office of four years renewable once, by simple majority of each of the Editorial Council and Management Committee. The Editor-in-Chief will (1) ensure day-to-day smooth functioning of the Citizendium, (2) facilitate the practical implementation of the Citizendium editorial policy as defined by its governing institutions, (3) make interim editorial decisions (in consultation with other editors), and (4) carry out any other tasks as required by this Charter or decisions of the governing bodies.
• Ombudsman. An Ombudsman will be appointed, charged with the task of assisting in dispute resolution, as laid down in this Charter. The role of Ombudsman will 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 4 years. An Ombudsman may be recalled by a supermajority (75%) of each of the Editorial and Management Councils.
• Management Committee. A Management Committee will be responsible for matters concerned with the non-editorial policies of Citizendium, such as finance, external alliances, communications, administration, and behavior. To this end, it may appoint Administrators and Task Managers whose activities it will oversee. It will also appoint constables and oversee their activities. The Management Committee will consist of seven Citizens, who may not simultaneously serve on the Editorial Council. They may, however, be constables or Task Managers. A quorum will consist of four members. The members of the Management Committee will be elected by vote of active Citizens and authors, with two-year renewable terms. The Management Committee will appoint one of its members as the Management Lead, who will represent the Citizendium externally on all matters except content. The Committee, with advice from legal and audit advisers, will designate those members that can enter into contracts or expend funds on behalf of the Citizendium. Substantial expenditures will require more than one signature.
• Editorial Council. An Editorial Council will be responsible for guiding content and establishing policy. It will consist of nine active Citizens, with five seats reserved for editors. The remaining four seats are reserved for authors who are not editors. A quorum will consist of five members. 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. 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 will elaborate a strategy and policy on topic-specific collaboration, chiefly based on CZ:Workgroups and some accepted ontology or other knowledge categorization scheme. In addition to subject specific Workgroups, there will 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.
• Administration. The Citizendium's administration handles the legal, financial and technical operations necessary for the project to fulfill its mission.

Dispute resolution

Disputes will be settled at the lowest possible level, such as by bringing in peer editors or constables. Next, the Ombudsman will be contacted for non-binding mediation. Should that fail, the matter will go to the appropriate body—the Editorial Board/Council for content matters and the Management Council for behavioral and administrative matters. As a last resort, both Councils may appoint members to an arbitration panel, for final arbitration as defined below.

In the event of a dispute that cannot be resolved at a level below that of the Editorial Council or the Management Committee, appeals boards may be constituted on an ad hoc basis. They will consist of three members nominated by the Editorial Council and three members nominated by the Management Committee, who will not have been involved in the specific dispute. An Ombudsman will preside; that official will direct the Board and will be non-voting other than to possess a tie-breaking vote. Should no Ombudsman be available who is not a party to the matter, the Councils will appoint a special presider from the Citizenry.

License

The content of the Citizendium will always be free to use, reuse, and redistribute. Content originating at the Citizendium is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Content that originated elsewhere may also be incorporated into the Citizendium if such reuse is permitted by the copyright owners or copyright status.

Legal status

The Citizendium will be owned and controlled by the Citizendium Foundation, a non-profit organization.

Final clause

• Ratification. If this Charter has been ratified by two thirds or more of the votes validly cast in a referendum for this purpose, it will be certified by the Editor-in-Chief within a week after the closing of the referendum. For future amendments, a certifying official or officials will be agreed upon by the joint Management Committee and Editorial Council.
• Entry into force. This Charter will enter into force on the day following ratification.
• Interim guidance for the transition period. As long as the administrative prerequisites for implementing the charter are not entirely fulfilled, the rules listed in this section will provide interim guidance to the Editorial Council, Management Council, and other bodies. Such material may be modified by those bodies by their normal procedures, without a full Charter amendment.
  • Editorial Council and Management Committee. For both bodies, the intention is to elect half of the members each year, so of the first group, a number corresponding to the quorum will be selected, by lot or personal agreement, to serve one-year terms.
  • Citizens with pseudonyms. Within a month after the entry into force of this charter, all existing pseudonym accounts will be closed by the Constabulary, and the respective user pages protected. The Citizens concerned may reapply under their real name.
  • Registration of new editors. To streamline the Editor Application Review Procedure, applications for editorship will be processed in two steps. First, an applicant will be registered as an author, so s/he can immediately start editing. Secondly, the application for editorship will be reviewed by the Editorial Personnel Administrators (to be appointed by the Editorial Council) who will strive to make a decision within one week. Editorial Council Resolution 0012 will be extended such that these new editors will be categorized as New Editors during the first three months after registration or until their first contribution to the project.
  • External partners. The Management Council will elaborate a strategy and policy on collaboration with external partners, paying particular attention to fostering the collaboration with instructors by way of Eduzendium, and with external experts or professional organizations for the purposes of providing or reviewing content at the Citizendium.
• Future amendments. This Charter will be open to amendment at any time subsequent to its ratification. The Management Council is hereby vested with the power to act upon proposals for amendment originating from any Citizen or Citizendium institution. The process of Amendment requires the Management Council initially to consult with Citizens (including via the Forum) and subsequently to draft an appropriate amended text. The decision to accept the amended text will be taken by popular vote of the Citizenry, and requires a two-thirds majority of votes validly cast.