CZ:Rules

Citizendium's governance and content rules are established by the Management and Editorial Councils, and must be in accordance with the Charter. The following is a list of rules established by the Councils since 2010 [hope is to collect all of them, including old EC rules], ordered by topic and relative importance:

Management Council

Registration and membership of Citizendium

Pseudonyms (2011-006, 2 February 2011)

Recognizing that one purpose of Citizendium is to establish knowledge through expert guidance, pseudonyms undermine the principle of expertise by the anonymity of authors; however pseudonyms may be granted only on a case-by-case basis by special resolution of the Management Council. Pseudonyms may be granted in cases only when the identity of an author may endanger the life, person [i.e. bodily harm], or property of the author. Pseudonyms will not be granted in cases where the reputation of the author may be damaged by the writings of the author. Authors must be responsible for what they write.

User page rules (2011-009, 11 February 2011)

The MC officially approves the user page rules contained in revision http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=CZ:User_pages&oldid=100754848.

Citizens may not edit each others' user pages, or subpages thereof, unless such a page is clearly labeled as inviting contributions from others, as per Category:Editable user pages. Constables will have the authority to edit user pages to bring them into conformity with the above rules; they will, however, first make a request that the author do so him- or herself. Purely technical edits like fixing categories, templates or redirects shall be exempted from requiring permission or prior notification.

Resignations from the project (2011-008, 11 February 2011)

Citizens who wish to leave Citizendium may email constables@citizendium.org to formally resign from the project. The Constabulary will block that user's account from editing, place a notice at the top of their user page stating "This user has resigned from Citizendium" and protect their user page. From that point the user will no longer be considered a Citizen and therefore no longer be subject to rules applying to Citizens nor have the rights conferred to Citizens.

Any user who has resigned and wishes to rejoin the project may email constables@citizendium.org to formally request reinstatement. This request will be passed to the Management Council who will consider the request. Should the request be granted the user account will be unblocked, the user page unprotected and the user will be once again considered a Citizen.

Post-resignation reinstatement waiting period (2011-045, 23 November 2011)

First-time resignations are subject to a three-month waiting period from the date of resignation before a reinstatement request is granted.
For each citizen, the waiting period imposed on him/her is doubled each time he/she is reinstated.

Behavior and the Constabulary

Role of the Constabulary (2011-013, 10 March 2011)

The Constabulary is the line organization entrusted to enforce Citizendium policy. Its decisions are authoritative and must be followed by all citizens. Failure to do so is an infraction of Citizendium rules of behavior, which may lead to disciplinary action, including banning. If a citizen believes a Constabulary decision violates Citizendium policy, he/she may appeal this decision to the Management Council. The Management Council will then consider the case and render a judgment. This judgment may confirm that the Constabulary decision implements current policy or indicate where it does not and direct the Constabulary to correct the problem. As a subcategory of the first outcome, the Management Council may decide the appeal is frivolous and quickly confirm the Constable decision without further comment.

When the Constabulary declines to take an action requested by a citizen, this decision may be appealed to the Management Council.

Deletion of derogatory comments (2011-003, 28 January 2011)

The constables may delete all personal comments that are derogatory to named individuals who are not public figures. Offenders shall be warned. Offenders who exhibit a pattern of personal attacks will be banned. This rule shall apply to all applications at citizendium.org. Forum thread.

Penalties for infractions (2011-017, 09 April 2011)

The following are established as infractions of Citizendium rules of professional discourse with the specified penalties. "Disturbing the Peace" occurs when two or more correspondents in any discussion venue of Citizendium engage in personal attacks on each other. "Taunting" occurs when one correspondent in any discussion venue of Citizendium engages in personal attacks on any other correspondent without retaliation by those attacked. A personal attack is any derogatory reference to another correspondent. Spirited discourse that attacks arguments or positions without reference to their author or supporter is not a personal attack.

Disturbing the Peace and Taunting carry the same disciplinary penalties. The first offense will generate a warning by the Constabulary. The second offense carries a penalty of 3 months ban from all Citizendium wikis and fora. The third offense carries a penalty of 6 months ban from all Citizendium wikis and fora. The fourth offense carries a penalty of a permanent ban from all Citizendium wikis and fora.

Appeals of Constabulary decisions (2011-015, 22 March 2011)

The following guidelines control appeals made to the MC in regards to constable decisions:

An appellant must have standing in the dispute. Standing means the decision under appeal directly involves him or her. An appeal by someone without standing will be dismissed.

Both the involved constable(s) and the appellant must provide their analysis why the decision under dispute either satisfies or contravenes CZ policy, the latter to include a constable decision based on non-existent policy. The Ombudsman will collect the relevant information for the appeal and present it on either the MC private communications board (for appeals the appellant or involved constables request remain private) or on a public board that only the MC and Ombudsman may modify.

The MC may request the Ombudsman to collect further information from the disputants and present it as part of the appeal process. The presentation of appeal evidence is a matter for the Ombudsman and not for the disputants. The Ombudsman is required to present all evidence provided to him by the disputants, but disputants are not parties to the discussions of this evidence by the Management Council. The Ombudsman may provide his views on the merits of the case, but does not have a vote on the disposition of the appeal.

Appeals will be based on the policy that existed at the time of the appealed decision. Appeal judgments by the Management Council will not include the provision of new policy. If an appeal identifies conditions requiring new policy, the Management Council will establish this policy in a separate administrative action.

The Management Council has complete flexibility in the judgments rendered for a particular appeal case. However, some common outcomes are: 1) denying the appeal without comment (for appeals the MC judges to be frivolous), 2) denying the appeal with comment, 3) confirming the appeal, and 4) acknowledging part of the appeal as meritorious. In the first two cases, the constable decision stands. In case 3 the decision is reversed. In case 4, the Management Council will specify how the decision should be modified to conform to CZ policy.

Rules for appeals to the Management Council (2011-033, 15 July 2011)

The following set of rules shall apply to all appeals presented to the Management Council

Once the Management Council notifies an appellant that his case is on the docket, i.e. is actively being considered:

1. All members with standing in the appeal (appellants), and witnesses, are invited to submit their evidence and arguments to the OMB, in a structured, numbered, and terse manner to facilitate subsequent rebuttals by other parties. Each appellant is allowed to nominate citizens (witnesses) who may, but are not compelled to, provide input for the appeal, and this input must be structured according to the format specified above. Input from witnesses will be provided directly to the OMB. Excess puffery, emotion and verbage shall be deemed unresponsive to the matter at hand and summarily dismissed from consideration by the Management Council. In addition, any part of CZ law pertinent to the matter at hand (the act leading to punishment) must be noted at this stage. In subsequent rounds, additional laws may only be brought up if they directly refute a point of law or witness evidence from a previous round. Parties will have 1 week to submit their round 1 documents from the time the MC notifies the appellants.

2. Appellants will receive the submissions of all other appellants as soon as is practical by the OMB.

3. All appellants may submit, again to the OMB, rebuttals that directly address, by number, evidence and arguments submitted during the initial round of proceedings. Witnesses do not participate in the rebuttal stages. Arguments, additional evidence, or CZ laws that does not refer explicitly to a numbered item of previous evidence, argument, or citation of law shall be deemed unresponsive and will not be considered by any persons or panels sitting in judgement of such proceedings. New evidence is not allowed at this stage unless it directly refutes evidence presented during the round of submission (step 1 above). Rebuttals shall both be numbered for ease of counter-argument, and within them refer to the evidence number to be rebutted.

4. All appelants shall receive the rebuttals submitted during the first rebuttal stage (Step 3 above) as soon as is practical.

5. After the round 2 submissions are sent (not necessarily received) to the parties, all appellants have 1 week to submit a final round of rebuttals. Only evidence and arguments that specifically address the rebuttals of Step 3 are allowed.

6. The Management Council adjudicates the appeal. The only official involvement of the MC occurs in this step. However, if MC members wish to ask questions after the first submission and after the provision of each rebuttal round, they may.

Blocking of Council members (2011-035, 26 July 2011)

If an Editorial Council or Management Council member is blocked by the Constabulary for violations of Citizendium's polices on behavior, the other members of the affected council shall decide whether the blocked member shall continue to participate in its deliberations during the period of time that block remains in force. If the appeal (including, if necessary, consideration by an Appeals Board) fails, the member will be removed from the council and the seat held deemed vacant.

Management Council policies and procedures

Voting (2010-008, 3 November 2010)

(1) All our voting on any subject shall occur over a 24 hour period or until all five members have voted, whichever comes first, so that all of us in greatly different time zones can participate in making decisions.
(2) All our votes shall be decided by a simple majority. Thus, at least three (3) yes votes shall mean that the matter being voted upon is approved whereas at least three (3) no votes shall mean that matter is not approved.
(3) Once a motion has not changed for 24 hours, any member can request to end discussion. Upon a second, debate shall close and a vote on the resolution will be taken. If all members agree, a vote to end discussion may occur prior to the end of the 24 hour wait period.
(4) Postings by the chair as the chair shall not be recognized as seconding any proposal nor shall they be considered in the calculation of a quorum.

Protection of policy pages (2011-007, 11 February 2011)

Any policy page officially approved by the MC will be protected. Any future edits to the page (excluding spelling and grammar edits) will require a vote from the MC.

Top priority of Management Council (2011-011, 4 March 2011)

Until resolved, the top-priority issue for the Management Council is finding a long-term funding solution for Citizendium. Activity addressing this issue will take precedence over that addressing any other issue.

Elections

Elections procedure (2012-001, 18 January 2012)

Management Council motion 20 is rescinded and replaced by the following:

Elections for Citizendium officials must satisfy the following:

1. Nominations shall be collected and collated by the election committee.
2. A candidate must be nominated by at least one citizen other than the candidate himself.
3. Only those nominees who accept their nomination shall be candidates eligible to appear on the ballot. Accepting a nomination serves as a declaration of commitment, in the case of being elected, to fulfill this function until the limit of the term.
4. When multiple vacancies exist for an office (e.g., Council seats), the ballot shall give citizens the opportunity to vote for as many candidates as there are vacancies. The ballot shall clearly indicate how many vacancies are eligible for votes.
5. Ballots indicating votes for more candidates than vacancies for any particular office, or ballots voting both for and against resolutions shall be declared invalid. The whole ballot shall not be counted.
6. The right to vote shall not be denied to any unblocked Citizen whose accounts were created at least 30 days prior to the election.
7. No citizen may vote more than once in any election. The first ballot received by the election committee shall be the ballot counted. No citizen may cast more than one vote for any single candidate. Ballots violating this rule shall be declared invalid and not counted.
8. Candidates receiving the most votes shall be elected.
9. In the case of a tie, an immediate run-off election shall be held by the elections committee. A run-off election shall be completed within ten days.
10. The election committee shall count the ballots not more than two days after the completion of any election. Upon completion of an election and the counting of the ballots, the election committee shall announce the results listing each of the candidates and the number of votes they received and indicating who was elected.
11. All ballots shall be held for 90 days after the complete announcement of the election result, which includes the time necessary to conduct any run-off elections. Ballots shall not be used for any other purpose than to determine which candidates are elected and which referenda pass. Ballots shall only be viewed by the election committee and by the election results auditor.

Number of votes (2011-028, 08 May 2011)

When using the simple majority voting method for council elections, the number of votes on a ballot may be less than or equal to the number of open seats.

Assignment of seats with different term lengths (2011-040, 6 September 2011)

Election nomination information shall explicitly specify the termination date of open seats. When an election includes more than one seat on a particular council, those seats shall be filled according to the following procedure. The council seats are ordered by the the length of their remaining term. After the ballots are counted, candidates for those seats are ordered by the number of votes they receive. Seats are assigned according to these two orderings, i.e., assign the seat with the longest remaining term to the candidate with the most votes, assign the seat with the second longest remaining term to the candidate receiving the next highest number of votes, and so forth. If there is a tie (two-way, three-way or more), assign the tied candidates to the corresponding seats at random until all open seats are filled. The election committee is responsible for the random assignment with the stipulation that all election committee members shall witness the selection process and that the procedure used and its results are published to the whole community.

Auditing of results (2011-029, 06 June 2011)

It shall be the duty of the Chair of the MC, barring conflict of interest (i.e., running for re-election), to audit the report of the elections committee, by access to the ballots, and report the results to the MC. Should the chair not be available for this task, the MC shall appoint one of its own to serve.

Communication

Management Council forum boards (2010-007, 2 November 2010)

(1) The Management Council will have a publicly accessible forum board which is read-only to anyone not on the Management Council. It will be used for the majority of discussion between members of the Management Council.
(2) The Management Council will have a private forum board which is hidden from anyone who is not on the Management Council. It will be used for sensitive discussions between members of the Management Council. The definition of 'sensitive discussions' is defined elsewhere.
(3) The Management Council will have a public forum board on which any Citizen may post, reply and view topics. It will be used to allow Citizens to publicly communicate with the Management Council.
(4) The Management Council will have a private forum board on which any Citizen may post, however they will only see topics that they have started. It will be used to allow Citizens to privately communicate with the Management Council.

Blog author (2012-005, 2 February 2012)

The Management Council requests the ME to become the primary CZ blog author. This request has the following caveats:

• The CZ blog is Wordpress based, not wiki based. Technical staff will not install a wiki based blog in the foreseeable future.
• The ME will use the blog only to discuss Citizendium related issues.
• Blog posts are official Citizendium communications and must conform to all Citizendium policies.

Official positions

Chief Constable Emeritus (2010-003, 27 October 2010)

The Chief Constable Emeritus is to remain available for consultation by the MC or Constabulary on matters pertaining to the Constabulary.

Treasurer (2011-021, 28 April 2011)

The Management Council creates (as per Article 35 of the Charter) the position of Treasurer, whose responsibilities are to manage the financial details of Citizendium. These include, but are not limited to: 1) collecting donation and other revenue; 2) banking these funds in an appropriate account; 3) paying bills, such as hosting costs; and 4) running campaigns, such as donation drives, that result in additional revenue; 5) present monthly public financial statements to the Management Council; and 6) any other tasks as assigned by the Management Council. The Management Council may appoint any citizen to this position and may also remove the current holder of the position.

Previous Editorial Council

Administrative and content rules established by the Editorial Council prior to its abolition and replacement with the current two-Council system are listed here. The current EC voted to uphold all existing [content] rules in 2011.

Editorial Council Resolution 0003: launch Eduzendium

Whereas, Citizendium needs to renew and extend its recruitment efforts;

Whereas, Citizendium needs to attract contributors that will provide high quality, accurate, and timely information;

Whereas, inviting professors and their students to contribute content to Citizendium is a highly appropriate method for satisfying both above mentioned goals;

Resolved, That the Council adopts the Eduzendium initiative as one of its official recruitment efforts and that Sorin Adam Matei is selected as its leader, with the title Academic Content Coordinator.

Editorial Council Resolution 0004: launch subpages

Whereas, reference information of the same sort that is sought in an encyclopedia can without a great change of mission be added to an encyclopedia project;

Whereas, it has been part of our declared intention, since the project was originally announced, that we might expand to include other sorts of information;

Whereas, our Citizens have already on several occasions added such information alongside traditional encyclopedia article drafts;

Whereas, information of different types grouped together in sets about individual topics are more useful than having the same information ungrouped;

Resolved, That the Citizendium adopts subpages as a new format and tool, as described in CZ:Subpage Pilot (which see). In particular,

(1) there will be a template, similar to either {{subpages2}} (example of use) or {{subpages9}} (example of use), on each article page;

(2) "default" subpages, links to which are listed even if there is no content on the page yet, are to include Related Articles (see example), Bibliography (see example), and External Links (see example);

(3) among a wide variety of other subpages, the Citizendium will begin to invite, and include, signed articles, according to the policy explained at Signed Articles (which see, and see also this example);

(4) all new subpage types will be announced to the Council, which will have the option of discussing and voting on them;

(5) when articles are approved by Citizendium editors, it will be understood that all of the associated subpages are being approved as well; and

(6) note that in coming months, when we reorganize and expand our leadership, we may well choose editors responsible for different subpage types.

Editorial Council Resolution 0005: English language etiquette

Whereas, Citizendium is in need of a protocol for managing international variants of the English language on its pages

Resolved, That the Council adopts the following:

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ETIQUETTE ON CITIZENDIUM

CONSIDERING that all international variants of the English language (e.g. US English, UK English, Australian English, Canadian English) have equal validity on Citizendium;

WHEREAS certain international differences of spelling, grammar and syntax are incompatible with each other within a single article;

DESIRING that CZ should be accessible to all users of the English language, whether as authors or readers;

The following rules should be observed by all authors and editors:

(1) Each article will be written in a specific variant of English, which will be determined by the first author who develops it beyond the category of stub. The English variant should be notated on the Talk page; the technical way to do this will be specified elsewhere.

(2) Subsequent contributors to that article should try to conform with the usage, where this is possible. Where it is not, authors should request on the Talk page for a native speaker to adjust the spelling, style etc. of their contribution.

(3) Alternative spellings and usages should be included in the article text when there is potential for confusion or ambiguity. This would not normally include trivial spelling differences, such as color-colour, labeled-labelled, paediatric-pediatric, etc.

(4) Where the topic of the article has different regional spellings, the first author (beyond a stub) will select the specific English variant, as in (1) above. Alternative spellings will redirect to that as the primary spelling, although it may be necessary to indicate regional differences of spelling or usage within the article. Whenever possible, authors are requested to use common dialect-neutral names for the primary spelling.

(5) Where the name of the topic of the article differs regionally, e.g. aubergine-eggplant, the first variant written beyond a stub will be the primary article and others will redirect to it. (Again, authors are asked to use available dialect-neutral words as the primary spelling.)

(6) In rare cases, when it is unclear that regional names refer to identical things (e.g. French fries and chips), there may be two separate articles, although they should refer to each other.

(7) As a transitional measure, for articles existing before the development of this policy, the language variant for each page will be determined and noted on the Talk page by area Editors or Authors.

(8) Exceptionally, the Editor-in-Chief has the authority to reset the language variant for any particular article.

Editorial Council Resolution 0006a - What's Your Article?

Whereas, there is no credible online project that invites everyone to submit his or her single best encyclopedia article; and there is no credible online project that invites people to impart the message they regard as most important to the world;

Whereas, collaborative communities such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube have grown because people want an outlet express their personalities, and this leads to viral growth; and the aforementioned projects potentially have this viral feature;

Whereas, we lack a program that allows people to receive personal credit for article drafts that they have created by themselves, and that there is some demand for such a program;

Resolved, That the Citizendium adopts the initiatives as described on What's Your Article?

Editorial Council Resolution 0009: Proposal on Recipes

Whereas, The Recipes Subpage and Accompanying Usage Policy states that a new subpages option will be added to the subpages template and an accompanying content policy will govern its usages, described on CZ:Recipes.

Resolved, That the Council adopts the document "CZ:Proposals/Recipes_Subpage_and_Accompanying_Usage_Policy," to be implemented by a group designated to do so.

Editorial Council Resolution 0010: Romanization

Whereas, The Romanization Proposal states that a page called CZ:Romanization will be created to deal with issues of how to romanize foreign words, place names and so on that are normally written in other scripts. Subpages for individual languages would be created, e.g. CZ:Romanization/Japanese.and an accompanying content policy will govern its usages, described there.

Resolved, That the Council adopts the document "CZ:Proposals/Romanization," to be implemented by a group designated to do so.

Editorial Council Resolution 0011: Stylesheets

Whereas, CZ wishes to promote a professional image, which requires some consistency of style and format of articles;

Whereas, different disciplines may require different approaches, thus ruling out a common standard for all articles, even within the same workgroup;

Whereas, general guidance for authors remains limited, and is easier to develop within workgroups;

Resolved, That Citizendium will develop a range of workgroup stylesheets for the guidance of authors and editors

Editorial Council Resolution 0012 Inactive Editors

Whereas, Editorship of the Citizendium should mean something more than that someone has set up an account here;

Whereas, Many of the persons listed as Editors have not done any work on behalf of the project;

Resolved, That a Citizendium editor may count himself an active Citizendium Editor if he or she has either edited CZ in the previous three months, or performed more than 500 edits in the previous year. If those conditions are not met, then any Citizen may change your various "CZ Editor" categories to "Inactive CZ Editor" categories, subject to correction by the Editor-in-Chief. For instance, the category on an editor's user page might be changed from Category:Chemistry Editors to Category:Inactive Chemistry Editors. Any editor will be empowered to delete the word "Inactive" him- or herself, once he or she has edited the wiki. (For simplicity, editing the wiki once every three months will suffice.)

Editorial Council Resolution 0013: Medical Disclaimers

Whereas, The Medical Disclaimers proposes to include medical disclaimer phrases on all articles relating to prescription drugs and medical conditions. Resolved, That the Council adopts the document "CZ:Proposals/Medical_Disclaimers," to be implemented by a group designated to do so.

Editorial Council Resolution 0014: Subgroups

Whereas the breadth of some workgroups is huge, and it makes sense to break them down into more natural subgroups; and

Whereas the academic disciplines have specialties and sub-specialties, there is also an interdisciplinary need for subgroups; and

Whereas having subgroups would encourage specialist experts in these fields to join the Citizendium; and

Whereas readers will be able to use the subgroup categories to focus on articles in a particular specialist field and will help readers come to learn the Citizendium's navigational tools;

THEREFORE be it

Resolved, that the Editorial Council adopt the document "CZ:Proposals/Subgroups" as policy.