User:Peter Schmitt/Charter

Draft as of Dec.12 http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=CZ:Charter_drafting&oldid=100610296

• Since the comments have become quite complicated, I have tried to write my Charter draft on the talk page.

• Comments marked like this, some part marked like this.
• Last version not yet commented!

Mission statement

The Citizendium is a collaborative expert-guided effort to collect, structure, and update knowledge and to render it conveniently accessible to the public for free.

• I still prefer:

The Citizendium is a collaborative effort to compile an online encyclopaedia that presents human knowledge organized and structured in a way to serve as a convenient, reliable, and well-written source of information.

• (plus public domain / editorial guided?)

The project is guided by a board of editors (and put into the public domain?).

Fundamental policies

Trust

The Citizendium is a mutually trusting community that encourages contributions by any Citizen to any of its content at any time. To establish this trust, contributors are required to register under their real name and to behave professionally. This includes the obligation to remain civil and constructive even in cases of dispute.

Expertise

Expertise will be respected, and integration of the Citizendium with expert workflows is encouraged, as long as this does not diminish the user experience of non-experts.

Contextualization

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. Furthermore, each topic should be represented as a complex whole rather than a simple conglomeration of its parts: a good Citizendium article will explain how different aspects of a topic fit together, and highlight important applications and connections to other topics. It will also be neutral, which means it will not align with any one position if there is controversy amongst experts concerning some aspect of the article's topic. Instead, it will remain objective, describing each relevant position without skewing the narrative toward the personal beliefs or positions of the author(s). In short, articles should present the big picture, including relevant perspectives, and should be written carefully and without bias. Citizendium is not a place for advocacy or for advertisement.

Accessibility

While the basic content provided at the Citizendium is intended for an audience with completed secondary education, more specialized content is welcome. As far as possible, special needs of visually or otherwise impaired users and of machines will be taken into account.

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, 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.

• My suggestion:

"Within the limits set by the Editorial Council they are entitled to evaluate articles and to make decisions about specific questions or disputes concerning particular 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 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 Chair, who will represent The Citizendium externally on matters of content and lead the Editorial Council in its deliberations.

The Council will have broad authority to settle matters of editorial policy, including, but not necessarily limited to:

   * Naming conventions
   * Article standards
   * Article deletion
   * Article approval
   * Editorial dispute resolution
   * Editor registration
   * Workgroups
   * Selecting Chief Subject Editors
   * The Editorial Council itself 
   * Other policies as suggested and proposed by the Citizenry

The Editorial Council may delegate any of these powers to lower governing bodies. For instance, it may adopt an Article Approval policy that entails the approval of only three workgroup editors. It may adopt an Article Deletion policy that will delete article upon recommendation to the Constabulary only. It may allow workgroups to define their own workgroup specific content standards. Any such delegation of authority, however, is not permanent and the Editorial Council may act in any area where it has delegated authority.

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.

The Editorial Council shall not adopt any policy or resolution that contravenes this Charter.

Past Practice

Until the Editorial Council acts on particular matters, past practice shall be followed. Past practice, however, shall not be accepted in areas where the Editorial Council has adopted policy.

• This is "interim guidance" not part of the Charter

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, chiefly based on CZ:Workgroups 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. All decisions of the Editorial Council regarding content are not appealable but the Editorial Council shall not be barred from revisiting content disputes at later times or at some other length of time as established by the Editorial Council.

Management Committee

A Management Committee shall 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 shall consist of seven Citizens, who may not simultaneously serve on the Editorial Council. They may, however, be Constables or Task Managers. A quorum shall consist of four members. The members of the Management Committee shall 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.

All decisions of the Managerial Committee requiring action (such as banning Citizens or implementing dispute resolutions) shall be delegated to the Chief Constable.

Constabulary

In order to provide a safe environment in which the citizenry can write, the members of the Constabulary are charged with the upholding of the Citizendium's rules of behavior and professionalism while encouraging collaboration in accordance with the principles of this charter.

A Chief Constable shall be appointed by the Managerial Committee. The term of the Chief Constable shall be two years and without term limits. The duties of the Chief Constable shall be to organize and train the constables. The Chief Constable is responsible for making sure constables are doing their paperwork. The Chief Constable can also be a liaison between management and constabulary.

Constables (except Chief Constable) are selected at an annual election. Any citizen may nominate or be nominated for a Constable.

The Constabulary should be able to organize themselves as they see fit, as long as they follow the guidelines set out in the charter and accompanying policy documents.

Constables shall have the power block citizens from The Citizendium. Constables shall have the power to protect pages.

Any constable, including the chief constable may be removed from office upon a vote of 80% or more of voting members of the Joint Managerial Committee and Editorial Council. For purposes of oversight, the Managerial Committee and Editorial Council should have access, if only read-only, to Constabulary discussions.

Citizens in persistent breach of the spirit or letter of the Citizendium's rules can be expelled banned from the project by joint decision of the Editor-in-Chief and the Ombudsman Managerial Committee subject to appeal under the Final Arbitration procedure.

Constabulary authority is restricted to matters of behavior and Constables shall not intervene in matters of content, which is under the purview of the Editorial Council and Editor-in-Chief.

Constables are empowered to advise and instruct Citizens on Citizendium policies and expectations of behavior, remove offensive text, warn and ban users according to the Constabulary Blocking Procedures. They may advise and warn Citizens either on Citizendium pages or through email.

Citizendium policies apply equally to all citizens. The enforcement of these rules is to be 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 shall be appointed by a simple majority of each of the Editorial Council and Management Committee. The term of office shall be four two years renewable once.

The Editor-in-Chief is to ensure smooth day-to-day functioning of the Citizendium; to facilitate the practical implementation of the Citizendium editorial policy as defined by its governing institutions the Editorial Council; to make interim editorial decisions (in consultation with other editors); and to carry out any other tasks as required by this Charter or decisions of the governing bodies 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.

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 4 years. An Ombudsman may be recalled by a supermajority (75%) of each of the Editorial and Management Councils.

Final arbitration

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 shall not have been involved in the specific dispute. An Ombudsman will preside; that official shall 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 shall 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.

Legal status

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

Languages

The official language of the Citizendium is English. Branches in other languages require approval by the Editorial Council and have to be based on this English-language charter or an approved translation.

External partnerships

The Citizendium invites collaboration with non-Citizen partners on any matters relevant to the project's mission, provided that the interaction does not conflict with this Charter.

Final clause

Ratification

All Authors are entitled to vote on the adoption or modification of this charter.

If this Charter has been ratified by two thirds or more of the votes validly cast in a referendum for this purpose, it shall be certified by the Editor-in-Chief within a week after the closing of the referendum. For future amendments, a certifying official or officials shall be agreed upon by the joint Management Committee and Editorial Council.

Entry into force

This Charter shall 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 shall 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.

All previously accepted resolutions of the Editorial Council shall be subjected to a vote by the new Editorial Council upon ratification of this charter. Those resolutions not re-adopted shall become null and void.

Citizens with pseudonyms

Within a month after the entry into force of this charter, all existing pseudonym accounts shall 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 CZ:Editor Application Review Procedure, applications for Editorship shall 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. CZ:Editorial Council Resolution 0012 shall 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 shall 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 shall 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 amendment 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. Each accepted Amendment shall be added to this Charter below and becomes as binding and equal to other sections of this charter.