Talk:Archive:Policy Outline

Do feel free to clean this up in the sense of making useful links, making spelling corrections, etc., and other small changes. One change that needs making is that the "Authors and Authoring Citizendium Articles" and "Policy regarding Individual Editors" headings need to be top-level whereas the ones immediately follow are subheadings. I think it might make the outline a bit more helpful if every paragraph weren't made an outline heading, i.e., if they were just bolded as per [1]. --Larry Sanger 01:21, 29 October 2006 (CST)

I changed sections 16 and 17 to not have fourth level headers "====" and instead make it bold. The TOC is more manageable now. -- Andrew Lih 05:33, 29 October 2006 (CST)

Link to Forum comment pages please

All, if you make Forum comments that are relevant to this document, or any policy document, please link from the talk page of the document to the forum page that has the comments relevant to the document. --Larry Sanger 19:43, 5 December 2006 (CST)

Might it be more--well--wikilike--to divide this document into pages, and discuss changes & additions to eachparts on the talk pages for the part?DavidGoodman 14:29, 9 December 2006 (CST)

I'd strongly second that, having come to the talk to make the same suggestions. As it is, it's almost unreadably long for the standard short-attention-span web dweller. Any objections to me making a draft "summary style" of this with supporting pages to make it more concise? - brenneman 19:12, 27 December 2006 (CST)

About This Document The Citizendium's Foundational Policies The role of the Statement of Fundamental Policies The purposes of articulating non-negotiable policies Contributors Authors Author registration Author user pages Editors Editor role and selection Article decisionmaking / Management of authors Article approval Categories of editorship Topic informants Constabules Constable role and selection Checks on constables Workgroups Editorial workgroups in general Editorial workgroup formation and function Chief subject editors Articles Article naming and topic choice Article standards Conflict resolution Policies and procedures for constables The appeals process Editorial dispute resolution Behaviorial standards

There's a slightly compressed version now at User:Aaron Brenneman/Sandbox3 with supporting links to pages that contain all the original text, waiting to be edited mercilessly. This is a patchwork solution, I'd suggest that a re-structuring of the "from scratch" might be useful? Here's an initial thought as to how this page's outline should look, above. Please chop/change to suit and we'll find something we all agree on.
brenneman 21:04, 27 December 2006 (CST)

I never noticed this until now. I'm sure there are many ways to organize the material, and indeed we might want to reorganize it and to move some details to other pages. The job of properly editing the page, however, requires intimate acquaintance with what the page says, what is out of date and needs to be rewritten, what the essential policies are and what's less essential, etc. There's one suggestion above that I might roughly sum up as "separating information about roles from information about articles and conflict resolution." It's probably a good idea. --Larry Sanger 09:05, 10 March 2007 (CST)

Proposed additions

I added additions, viewable at the diffs HERE, which I self-reverted until there is agreement. Please feel free to do everything from remove them outright, critique them, or incorporate them. I have tried to take conventions we have seemed to reach on email, either by overt statement or inference, and placed them here. Stephen Ewen 06:34, 10 March 2007 (CST)

Perhaps a better place for some of these rules would be CZ:Moderator Group Home--I say that because rules about etiquette seem inessential here. Sure constables should behave well, but do we need to say so in a necessarily brief summary of constabulary policy? --Larry Sanger 08:54, 10 March 2007 (CST)

nicknames

please let the usage of nicknames be explained BEFORE people in their preference pages can use a nickname without any mentioned restriction. A rule on something thats apparently free to use makes no sense. Robert Tito |  Talk  01:38, 31 March 2007 (CDT)

This is just a stopgap measure, Rob, until we come up with something more solid. People were starting to swamp the Wiki with nicks, some pseudonyms and some just their first names. That will SNOWBALL if left unaddressed and we will look too much like WP on talk pages.

What I am for long term: Requiring not "real names" but "legal names", and putting on the application a place where people can put "the name you go by": Stephen Scott Ewen > Steve Ewen. Then when the account is created for "Stephen Scott Ewen" we place "Steve Ewen" in the nickname box...which is further editable only by Sysops, period, so if someone gets married or obtains a PhD it can be changed. On that, I'd also like to see, e.g., Jorge Alberto Gonzalez who is a real M.D. be able to have "Jorge Gonzalez, M.D." as his nick.

What may be driving the use of poor nicks -- and this would certainly be the only legitimate beef -- may be that people have rightful concerns about their real name appearing on talk and user pages. We need to place Robots.txt in all talk and user pages to prevent spiders from crawling them, thus alleviating the concern. Publishing of this when done may be crucial to us achieving critical mass.

Stephen Ewen 02:34, 31 March 2007 (CDT)

Original research

May I put in a word for a different policy on "original research" than the one hinted at here (I note the term itself is still redlinked)?

One of the problems I had with WP was that, even though (for example) I did my doctoral training on the poetry of Chaucer and have taught and studied his poetry for decades, if I put in a claim about Chaucer (such as "Chaucer's choice of the English vernacular aligned him, sometimes uncomfortably, with the cause of religious reform"), that claim would be voided as "original research" unless I could locate and cite a source for it somewhere other than in my own work.

We ought to distinguish, though, between statements that represent expert opinion and are within the broad consensus of the community of scholars on a certain subject -- and the research that, in a broad sense, stands behind these -- and new claims, significantly beyond or in dissent with that broad consensus. I think Editors, in order to collaborate and make the best entries possible, do already in fact make such statements, which though not necessarily referenced (unless controversial) might, in the Wikipedia world, be classed as "original research'.

I think we actually *want* this above sort of orginal thinking. At the same time, we don't want articles to be twisted around to support someone's pet theory, or to be based on claims which cannot be verified (e.g., interviews, notes, etc. unavailable for public review), or to represent as consensus views which in fact are on some fringe of the general view.

We have a chance here to encourage a certain kind of expertise which, at least in my experience, was not welcomed at Wikipedia; I even had one article tagged for original research and flagged for deletion, simply because some person there, unfamiliar with the list of cited references given, thought that my entry was "too original"!

Russell Potter 11:05, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

I agree with you in general, Russell. Asking people to footnote obvious stuff is a practice that started after I left. I always found it ridiculous that Wikipedians would require footnotes for things that are known to any expert on the topic. I agree there. I also agree that interesting analysis that is neither biased nor so idiosyncratic as to require argument and review is part of what makes a good encyclopedia article good. But it's only expert who can identify such analysis and distinguish it from "original research"; to everyone else, it sounds like original research because none of it is familiar. Anyway, we've got to say all this on the "original research" page. --Larry Sanger 11:16, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Would like to note that I agree. I'd like to see the ability to "synthesize", something you can't do on Wikipedia. If someone claims the Earth is made of cheese, we shouldn't have to cite a paper saying it's not, to get them to back off. Likewise, if a group claims something antithetical to widely held beliefs within a group, but we can't find an article stating precisely WHY, presenting the logical argument by taking multiple non-trivial sources in tandem and combining their theses and points should be fine, no? Michael MacNeil 08:52, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Cancellation of Approval

These edits sure change the meaning of the Policy Outline. We have removed all traces of revocation of Approval from articles. Is that what we are looking to do? (Not allow revocation of Approval) Or is it time for us to decide on what to do when an editor does not approve of an already Approved article. --Matt Innis (Talk) 10:29, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Decisions by editors

At the moment, the page states:

"When an editor has expressed a decision on an article's discussion page, that decision must be followed by authors, even if it is under appeal."

As an editor, I always assumed that nothing I wrote on the discussion page is binding for authors, unless I explicitly say that this is a decision to be followed by authors, made in my capacity as an editor. If my assumption is correct, then I think the text quoted above should be clarified. If my assumption is not correct, then I'll know that I need to be more careful about how I formulate my comments on discussion pages. How should this text be interpreted? If this is discussed somewhere, please point me to it. -- Jitse Niesen 08:25, 3 August 2007 (CDT)