User:D. Matt Innis/CurrentDraft/RevisedStructure

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My CUrrent Draft

This draft document shall serve as the basis for public discussion. It represents a compromise amongst the drafters, who may have different individual opinions on some aspects of this Charter.

Preamble

The Citizendium is a collaborative effort to collect, structure, and cultivate knowledge and to render it conveniently accessible to the public for free. It is built online by volunteers who contribute under their real names and agree to this social covenant centered around trust.

Part I: Citizenship and Editorship

Article 1

Participation at the Citizendium shall be restricted to Citizens.


Article 2

Citizenship shall be open to anyone who

  1. meets a few basic conditions as defined by the Management Council,
  2. registers and contributes under his or her real name, and
  3. agrees to the Citizendium's fundamental principles as defined by the Charter.


Article 3

Citizens shall contribute freely within the limits of the project's mission.


Article 4

The Citizendium community shall recognize the special role that experts play

  1. in defining content standards in their relevant fields and
  2. in assuring that the site's content is reliable and meets high quality standards.


Article 5

Citizens shall act responsibly and in a civil manner: derogatory or offensive commentary will not be tolerated.


Article 6

Editors are Citizens whose expertise in some field of knowledge is recognized and formally acknowledged by the community. Official recognition of expertise — obtained through education or experience — and its scope shall be based on guidelines established by the Editorial Council.

Article 7

The group ofEditors shall have to assure the quality of the Citizendium's content. They shall review and evaluate articles and shall have the right

  1. to approve high-quality articles that treat their topic adequately,
  2. to decide in disputes over specific content matters, and
  3. to remove incorrect(ly) or poorly presented content.

Article 8


Article 9

WithdrawalRemoval of Editor status shall require a formal decision by the Editorial Council and shall enjoy the full rights of appeal.

Part II: Content and style

Article 10

An Editorial Council shall be empowered to develop policy on content and style, including but not limited to original content.


Article 11

The Citizendium shall welcome contributions to all fields of knowledge.


Article 12

All articles shall treat their subjects comprehensively, neutrally, and objectively to the greatest degree possible in a well-written narrative, complementing text with other suitable material and media.


Article 13

All basic material shall be intended for the general public. It shall be presented as clearly as possible, without unnecessary complications, and advanced topics shall be made as accessible as possible.


Article 14

Specialist material — including (within the limits set by the Editorial Council) original research — shall be welcome, too. It shall be put into context with background information and non-specialist material.

Article 15

High-quality articles shall be distinguished as approved articles and be protected and kept available permanently as citable references.

Article 16

The Citizendium shall remain free of advocacy, advertisement and sensationalism.

Part III: Organization and offices

Article 17

The Citizendium shall be devoted to transparent and fair governance with a minimum of bureaucracy.

Article 18

It shall be governed by two Councils:

  1. an Editorial Council; and
  2. a Management Council,

Article 19

The councils will be assisted by the following:

  1. a Managing Editor,
  2. a Constabulary, and
  3. an Ombudsman.

Article 20 (old 3637)

  • Each year, half the members of the two Councils shall be elected.
  • For newly elected members, the term of office shall begin on first of January for the Editorial Council, and on first of July for the Management Council.
  • Any Citizen may nominate and support one or more candidates for a Council.
  • A Citizen who is supported by another Citizen becomes a candidate by declaring the intention to serve for the whole term.
  • Any Citizen accepting a nomination shall retreat immediately from any involvement in the election's organization.
  • The candidates collecting the most votes shall be elected.
  • Citizens who received votes may serve as reserve members.
  • A Council member who becomes inactive or unavailable for a period of 90 days, shall be replaced by a the reserve member receiving the next highest votes.
  • In the absence of reserve members, interim replacements may be appointed by the Council concerned.
  • Any Council may propose a change of its size by an even number of members; this proposal shall be subject to a referendum held together with the next election.

Article 21 (old 3738)

The Managing Editor shall be elected by simple majority. For this election, up to four candidates shall be selected by the Management Council, taken from a list of Editors nominated by the community.

Article 22 (old3839)

Constables shall be appointed by the Management Council

Article 23 (old3940)

The Ombudsman shall be nominated by the Combined Councils and appointed by majority Citizen vote.

Article 24 (old 22)

All official posts shall be subject to the following conditions:

  1. All Citizens shall be elegible.
  2. The term of office shall be two years, renewable. The term of any replacement shall end when the original term ends.
  3. No Citizen may serve in two offices at the same time.
  4. All officials shall continue to contribute as Citizens throughout their terms.
  5. Each Council or official may appoint delegates to perform specific tasks for a specific period of time.
  6. The responsibility for the actions of a delegate shall always remain with the appointing Council or official.

Article 25 (old 35)

Elections and referenda shall be organized by the Managing Council and carried out by the Constabulary, qith the following conditions:

  1. Sufficient time Two weeks shall be provided for nominations and for discussions of the issues brought about during the nomination period.
  2. All Citizens in good standing — as defined by the Management Council —, regardless of status, shall be entitled to vote.

Article 26 (old 20)

All decision processes shall take place in a way that allows every interested Citizen to follow it and support it with feedback.

Article 27 (old 4041)

An official who seriously neglects the office may be recalled by two thirds vote of the Combined Councils. with exception of

  1. the Managing Editor, who shall be recalled if both Councils demand it (separately), and
  2. the Ombudsman, whose recall shall require a qualified majority of two thirds in a referendum.


Part IV: Community policy

Article 28 (old 23)

The Editorial Council is responsible for content and style policies. In particular, it shall

  1. vet, coordinate, and supervise the Editors and their activities activities of Editors, and
  2. encourage and supervise cooperation of Citizens in their effort to create, development and organization of the Citizendium's content.

Article 29 (old 24)

The Management Council is responsible for the community's environment and its technical and economic resources. In particular, it shall:

  1. nominate and supervise the activities of Constables,
  2. manage technical matters (software and hardware), and
  3. advise on matters of administration of financial and legal obligations of the Citizendium.
  4. It shall also establish and maintain public awareness, and
  5. invite and establish collaboration with external partners on any matters relevant to the project's mission.

Article 30 (old 25)

Each Council shall

  1. have a quorum corresponding to the simple majority of its members, and
  2. develop written guidelines to define and explain methods of communicating with that particular Council,
  3. consider any issue properly brought in front of it by any of its members or by a number of Citizens that meets its quorum.
  4. In the Editorial Council, a number of members corresponding to the quorum shall be Editors while the rest of the members shall be Citizens who are not Editors.

Article 31 (old 26)

The Managing Editor has the following duties:

  1. to ensure — by means of executive decisions — that the principles and policies of the Citizendium are effectively and coherently observed;such decisions shall be based on established policy unless required in the case of a policy deficit. They may be overruled by the appropriate Council.
  2. to represent the Citizendium in its relations with external bodies, such as the mass media, and academic or non-academic institutions.

Article 32 (old 36)

Citizens may demand that contested rules or guidelines are submitted to a referendum.

  • A referendum may be initiated by a group of Citizens corresponding in size to the sum of the quorums of the two Councils.
  • A referendum shall be decided by simple majority of the votes validly cast.
  • Any amendment to and any change of this Charter shall require a referendum and shall be ratified if accepted by a qualified majority of two thirds of the votes validly cast.
  • Creating any further office or special rôle shall require an excellent reason and a referendum.
  • Any change of the license shall require a referendum.

Part V: Behavior and dispute resolution

Article 33 (old 27)

The Constabulary shall enforce the Citizendium's rules of behavior as determined and centrally documented by community policy, covering equally all Citizens including those with official positions. In particular, Constables

  1. shall only intervene in matters of behavior but not in matters of content.
  2. shall act with reasonable pragmatism and leniency, and only in those situations where this is clearly covered by existing rules.

Article 34 (old 28)

An Ombudsman shall assist in dispute resolution.

Article 35 (Old 29)

Whenever possible, disputes shall be settled informally at the lowest possible level. Specifically, the following shall apply:

  1. Any party involved in a dispute may contact the Ombudsman for assistance in dispute resolution.
  2. When a formal decision is necessary or demanded, the Ombudsman shall facilitate the presentation of the issue to the appropriate body.
  3. The Management Council shall provide a formal mechanism of resolution that allows each disputant to fully and thoroughly present their relevant positions.

Article 36 (old 30)

Appeals of formal decisions shall be possible.

Article 37 (old 31)

Formal decisions will only be reviewed when a disputant can show an Appeals Board that either:

  1. New information is available; or
  2. A technical error was made during the previous formal procedure.

Article 38 (old 32)

An Appeals Board shall consist of previously not directly involved Citizens, as follows:

  1. one member nominated by the Editorial Council,
  2. one member nominated by the Management Council, and
  3. one member nominated by the Ombudsman.

Article 39 (old 33)

Successful Appeals will be allowed to re-enter the Management Council dispute resolution process, limiting the discourse to the new information or addressing the impact of the technical error in the previous procedure.

Article 40 (old 34)

Normally, dispute resolutions should be heard in public. However,

  1. Participants may request that disputes be heard privately.
  2. Privately heard disputes forfeit their right to appeal on technical grounds.
  3. in exceptional cases, part of a dispute resolution process may be restricted to a smaller audience. Such an exception shall require public justification by the Ombudsman.

Part VI: Administrative matters

Article 41 (old 21)

All Citizens, including officials, shall be bound by the Charter, and no decision reached shall contravene it.


Article 41 42

  • As far as possible, special requirements of visually or otherwise impaired users and for responsibly exercised automated access shall be taken into account.
  • The Managing Editor shall intervene against article content that is inappropriate, in particular, if content
    • violates criminal or civil law or
    • is discriminatory or slanderous against persons or groups of persons, on the basis of religion, religious belief, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender.
  • Violations of the Charter shall only be tolerated when forced by external laws.

Article 42 43

The Citizendium adopts CC-by-sa 3.0 Unported (original source) as the license for its own original collaborative content.The Citizendium Foundation reserves the right to upgrade the license version number (not the license) on behalf of contributors. The licensing of content incorporated from elsewhere shall follow the conditions of the respective originators.

Article 43 44

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

Article 44 45

The official language of the Citizendium shall be English. Branches of the Citizendium in other languages shall share the same mission as defined by this Charter. All language versions shall require approval by the Management Council.

Part VII: Transitional Measures

Article 45 46

The community shall informally agree on a Citizen who is charged with organizing the ratification process and the initial elections until the Councils are installed.

Article 45 47

For the purpose of the ratification of this Charter and the initial elections to the Councils, all Citizens with an account that is not blocked shall have the right to vote.

Article 46 48

This Charter shall be ratified if accepted by two thirds or more of the votes validly cast in a referendum for this purpose. The Charter shall enter into force on the day following its ratification.

Article 46 49

The Editor-in-Chief shall officially certify the ratified Charter within a week after the closing of the referendum. This act ends his term of office.

Article 47 50

The former Editor-in-Chief Larry Sanger shall be awarded with the title Founding Editor-in-Chief in acknowledgement of his achievements for the Citizendium. (suggested in [1])

Article 48 51

The first elections to the Councils shall take place as soon as possible after the Charter has been ratified.

  1. The initial size of the Editorial Council shall be 7 members, that of the Management Council 5 members.
  2. A number of members corresponding to the quorum shall be selected, by lot or personal agreement, to serve shortened terms until the next regular election that is at least half a year after the initial election.

Article 50 52

  • 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 renew registration under their real names.


Article 53

MATERIAL THAT SEEMS MERELY TO BE LISTED AT THE END (!!)

Addendum: 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.

Review of previous policies

  • The Councils shall review all existing policies and vote on each of them which falls under their realm, in view of complementing the general guidelines in this Charter with an evolving set of specific policy guidelines.
  • The Editorial Council shall review the current list of Editors.
  • The Management Council shall review
    • privacy policies, including access by search engines, and
    • policy on licensing and republication of user and talk pages.

Constabulary

  • Constabulary tools include: advice and instruction on wiki or through Citizen email, removal of offensive text, and warning and banning of users.

Languages

  • The Management Council shall elaborate a strategy and policy on handling the establishment of branches in languages other than English.

Administration

  • The Management Council shall elaborate a strategy and policy on handling the legal, financial, and technical operations necessary for the project to fulfill its mission.

External partnerships

The Management Council shall develop and implement at its earliest convenience a policy for

  • interested external observers to provide feedback on Citizendium content in a manner convenient for them and the project.
  • 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 Citizendium.

Research and teaching

  • The Editorial Council shall elaborate a strategy and policy on incorporation of teaching and research into Citizendium.
  • Research results that have not been formally published should be clearly labeled as such. So should articles that have been part of student coursework.

Registration of new Editors

To streamline the CZ:Editor Application Review Procedure, applications for Editorship shall be processed in two consecutive steps:

  • All verified Editor applicants shall initially be registered as Citizens, enabling them to start contributing while the application is being reviewed.
  • The application for Editorship shall be reviewed by the Editorial Personnel Administrators (to be appointed by the Editorial Council) who shall strive to make a decision within one week.

Open questions

In this section, expanding on a suggestion by Daniel, I propose to look at issues that cross several articles and might allow compaction and greater clarity.

In the beginning

It appears there is overlap and lack of clarity among the Preamble, Article 1, and Article 3. Article 1 was not accepted, and I think we can do without it if we simply make sure the Preamble adequately defines Citizen. Article 1's reference to "participation" is troublesome, as it might suggest that non-Citizens are excluded from using the Wiki. Our intent, I believe, is that only Citizens add or change content.

Does Article 3 actually add information? My thought, at this point, is to strengthen the Preamble, get rid of 1 and 3 (but not renumber). Next, we'll deal with expertise and Editor matters. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:22, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I probably shouldn't write here, but I'll delete this as soon as I've finished. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't edit your votes in any way until I've updated the templates. --Chris Key 14:40, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
The original votes should never be modified. We will have a new round of voting when we need to, but each new round should be preserved separately. --Joe Quick 14:50, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

(undent) carefully not changing anything above unless I am very very very clear on the procedure,

I accept Joe's rewording of the Preamble. If we keep #1, I'd add "; one need not to be a Citizen to use Citizendium content." #3 seems superfluous to me, although it doesn't do any harm. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:14, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the idea your addition expresses pretty clear from the preamble: "render it conveniently accessible to the public for free"? Let's get the preamble and Article 1 nailed down before talking about other articles. --Joe Quick 15:26, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
You're right, Joe. Addition not needed. Preamble, 1 and 2 seem OK. Does #3 add anything now?

Election Cycle

Articles 20, 24, and 25 specify procedures for elections and seem to imply Annual elections. Yet the EC is seated in January and the MC is seated in July. Does this mean a six-month lame duck period for one council? Or are we envisioning semi-annual elections (MC in spring/EC in Fall)? (Note also that the current draft of Article 21, the current draft of Article 23, and Article 51 seem to imply semi-annual elections.) This is not clear. When this is resolved, Article 20, clause 10 should be revised to specify when a council referendum should take place. Russell D. Jones 21:34, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

This is an area that I am not good at and trust your thinking, Russell. Can you explain to me what makes one Council lame duck for 6 months? D. Matt Innis 12:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
If it's an annual election, one council shall be lame duck for up to six months. If it's a semi-annual election, then the lame duck period is much shorter (days, probably). In looking at your proposals for Articles 21 and 23, Matt, you seem to be thinking that we're having semi-annual elections. But the charter is not clear on this point. Russell D. Jones 12:41, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
I'd hate to have to have elections every six months. With all the election prep and verification crap, that means the constabulary will be working on election stuff for about 3 months out of the year. Not to mention people having to keep themselves abreast of issues and candidates to make informed decisions. There won't be any time to write articles! Rewrite it! D. Matt Innis 12:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
One way out here would in principle be a karma system replacing (part of) the election process. Technically not possible yet, but I suggest to keep it in mind while phrasing these rules. --Daniel Mietchen 00:43, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Parliamentary authority

I strongly recommend one be adopted -- Robert's Rules of Order is probably most common. There should be a provision, however, to have Citizendium-specific variants, which I think falls under the MC but possibly justifies ratification of changes or Combined Bodies action. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I added a line to one of the articles that says that the councils should have written rules for how to communicate with it. I was thinking that this would be a place where the councils could decide whether they need something like Roberts Rules or something similar. If we put it in the charter, we force them to only use Roberts Rules, suggesting that if they don't, then every decision that didn't ptoperly use Roberts Rules (and I don't think we have enough people that really know them well enough to even carry on a conversation properly using them) has grounds for appeal based on that alone. Maybe in Interim guidance we can suggest it? D. Matt Innis 12:34, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
Roberts would much more affect the way the Council operates internally, rather than how there is external communications with it. One would hope that it would be needed rarely, but, thinking of some of the problematic deliberations of this Committee, it establishes voting procedures, when a matter can be reconsidered, etc. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
The big problem with Roberts is that it was developed for parliamentary procedure well before this current revolution in digital technology. A couple of years ago I was charged with developing an procedure for my organization for conducting a business meeting by email. As our attorneys and accountants needed every resolution documented, I had to research how Roberts rules of order have been ported into email meetings. The answer is "not very well." There really is (at least in 2008) no standardized format for parliamentary procedure in a digital environment (I had to write my own). I'm sure people are working on it somewhere, but frankly to ask this bunch to follow roberts rules will be like herding cats. I think the best we can do is to say something like "The MC shall adopt its own rules and bylaws for the conduct of its meetings. Such rules and bylaws shall be readily accessible by the citizenry." Thus the easy way out for the MC and the EC is to find a copy of Roberts rules online and say "here it is" and then basically ignore them.
ON THE OTHER HAND, as this committee has amply demonstrated, the lack of clearly defined rules of procedure leads to chaos. So, each body should have a committee of rules to figure out how business is going to be conducted. Luckily for the EC we have a procedure in place already that seems to work on occasion. Jones 04:52, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
That's fair -- I am not insistent on Roberts, Jefferson's, etc. (although I'm sure Thomas Jefferson could have solved it if he were available).
Believe me, while I have been in political environments where a Motion to Postpone Indefinitely was used against a Motion to Table, both being preempted by a Point of Parliamentary Procedure, I really don't want that kind of nitpicking here. Nevertheless, part of the chaos, I suspect, was associated with different interpretations of the role of majority voting, the procedures associated with reconsideration, etc. At a high level, we probably have to face that consensus, while desirable, does not work and we may need voting, or we can examine organizations where consensus does seem to work and see if there's applicability. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:03, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
So, as long as we require that the Councils have a written set of rules, that is probably the most we can do. The committess themselves will have to want to make it work, or nothing will. They will have to develop their own way of dealing with their disagreements that is fair to the majority as well as the minority. We have to trust them. D. Matt Innis 15:24, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
The key matter is that they have to have rules, especially when dealing with voting. We can't have people making vague references to "legality" when it's not clear what legal jurisdiction or code would apply, if at all. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:58, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Revoking approval

We probably need to spell out a policy on whether and how approval can be revoked. --Daniel Mietchen 01:22, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean article approval or editor-status approval? Russell D. Jones 01:29, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
I meant the first. The latter is already covered in article 9. --Daniel Mietchen 23:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Recommended Practices

We've been kicking around a lot of ideas that really are editorial or managerial policies and not charter provisions. Should we recommend to the MC and EC practices that should be adopted? This could be a separate document and not ratified, or it we could put it in and get a mandate from the citizenry. Russell D. Jones 17:26, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could couple the referendum on the charter with on on the question of whether the new EC/MC should follow such a document. However, I am afraid that agreeing on this document might take us yet more months, so I'd recommend to bundle these ideas up as best as we can and to simply recommend them to the new bodies. --Daniel Mietchen 23:39, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Citizendium Foundation

Just a note to remember that art. 44 may require interim guidance. --Daniel Mietchen 23:42, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Special requirements / automated access

In the current version of article 42, it has been suggested to delete "As far as possible, special requirements of visually or otherwise impaired users and for responsibly exercised automated access shall be taken into account." Two points in here:

  1. Article 13 currently states "All basic material shall be intended for the general public." In my perception (possibly impaired), "general" may or may not include "visually or otherwise impaired users", but I think we should state explicitly, at some level, that such users are of course welcome to consume, produce, improve, approve, or redistribute CZ content, and having such a statement at Charter level would be a strong signal to these communities which are often not very well integrated with the rest of the world (online or offline), while at the same time providing CZ with expertise on these matters and with the possibility to play an active role in making knowledge accessible to them. I also think that advocating for taking into account the needs of blind or colour-blind users would not conflict with the content-centric meaning of "advocacy" in the current phrasing of article 16, "The Citizendium shall remain free of advocacy, advertisement and sensationalism."
  2. Similar reasoning applies to improving machine readability, so as to allow for (two-way and/or third-party) integration of CZ content with other kinds of open knowledge repositories online (think Semantic Web, Linked Data, or mashups with content from OpenStreetMap, Open Library, citizen science or open governmental data), and having such a passage in the Charter would likewise be a strong signal to those expert-led communities (and their funders). Since these areas are currently in very active development, being very open to such initiatives would be another important differentiator.

--Daniel Mietchen 01:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Article 42: I get it. Thank you for explaining. I've made some changes to it.

Russell D. Jones 01:36, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not sure we have it yet. Let's keep working on it.
Daniel, so you have some specific language for your second point? D. Matt Innis 01:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
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