CZ:Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians

Welcome, Wikipedians and ex-Wikipedians!

This page will introduce some "dos and don'ts" of the Citizendium that Wikipedians in particular may have to bear in mind. You should also read about the really big differences between the Citizendium and Wikipedia, and also about how to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles.

Before we get into anything else, first a rule Wikipedians should be very interested to know. Absolutely do not simply copy content from Wikipedia here without working on it. The Citizendium is not a mirror of Wikipedia. There's only one sort of exception we've permitted, namely, that a person is the main author, or a main manager, of an article, and does intend (over time) to continue to work on and maintain the article(s) here. In such a case, you should probably put a note to that effect at the top of the article's talk page; otherwise the article are apt to be deleted.

New/unfamiliar practices

There are several practices that will be new and unfamiliar to Wikipedians:

• You must check "Content is from Wikipedia?" if any content of an article came from Wikipedia and you aren't the sole author of that content.

• Please place Category:CZ Live on articles that you have written from scratch, but not on articles you have copied from Wikipedia, unless you have made significant changes in at least three different places. Review the definition of "live," please.

• We should be placing The Article Checklist on all new articles. You can help in the effort by participating in The Big Cleanup.

• We are slowly developing an article approval process. This is one of our few editors-only functions. In time, we'll automate/properly code the process in the software. Right now, it's all done by hand on the wiki.

• User pages don't have userboxes and are pretty much just bios. Unlike Wikipedia, we actually have rules about how you can use your user space.

Behavior

Behave in a professional manner; we actually take our Professionalism policy seriously. This means, among other things, that personal attacks are not allowed here. Such attacks may not only be replaced with our {{civil}} template, which reads,

Text here was removed by the Constabulary on grounds of civility. (The author may replace this template with an edited version of the original remarks.)

they may also result in a warning or even a ban, depending on the case.

Moreover, if you have any complaints to make about other users, no matter how well justified, please don't make them on the wiki. They will (or should, anyway) be removed by constables and replaced with the {{nocomplaints}} template, which reads:

A comment here was deleted by The Constabulary on grounds of making complaints about fellow Citizens. If you have a complaint about the behavior of another Citizen, e-mail constables@citizendium.org. It is contrary to Citizendium policy to air your complaints on the wiki. See also CZ:Professionalism.

The procedure is to write to the Constabulary at constables@citizendium.org and let them take care of the problem. To take others to task on the wiki is aggressive behavior--"taking the law into your own hands"--and such unpleasantness is the burden of the Constabulary.

Wikipedia has a three-revert rule--we don't. We have a no-unexplained-revert rule--justify any reversion on the talk page. Reverting, or simply undoing someone else's work, is a very upsetting behavior to other people, and understandably so. So it definitely requires explanation. But we simply will not have edit warring here. If you disagree with another participant, the first step is to discuss the matter on the talk page; if no satisfactory compromise can be reached, the next step is to ask an editor in the relevant area and with the relevant expertise to adjudicate. Eventually, we'll have a more sophisticated dispute resolution process, but so far we haven't needed one, simply because we've been pretty good at actually collaborating and compromising.

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Notice that we aren't putting contributor-oriented templates, such as Wikipedia's neutrality templates, atop our articles.