User:Tom Morris/Charter Draft

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The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.


Here follows a review by Tom Morris of the draft (permalink to version I reviewed - see change log at the bottom of the document for discussion of subsequent changes) of the CZ:Charter drafting. Some of my views regarding the draft are made clear in the position statement I completed during the election for the Charter drafting committee.

For each section, I will note whether I find it satisfactory, broadly satisfactory, unsatisfactory or highly unsatisfactory. The meaning of these terms is pretty apparent - when I say something is broadly satisfactory, I mean that I have no opposition to the ideas being presented, but think that the text or the thinking behind it could do with a little bit of refinement. I will vote for the charter if I can find nothing that is highly unsatisfactory and less than three things which are unsatisfactory in the final draft. I will vote against the charter if I find anything which is highly unsatisfactory.

Commentary

  1. Mission statement
    • This is satisfactory.
  2. Fundamental policies
    • This is satisfactory.
    1. Professionalism
      • This is satisfactory.
    2. Real names
      • This is broadly satisfactory, but I do think that the Editor in Chief or the Editorial Council should be allowed to approve pseudonymous accounts if the person is in a situation of widespread political repression which makes it otherwise impossible to participate freely under their real name. Similarly, if someone is broadly known by something widely considered to be a pseudonym - Malcolm X, Banksy, "Atrios" (the political blogger before his real identity was exposed) - but can otherwise be accountable to the Citizendium community, I see no reason to allow some exceptions from the real name policy. If a person would be either pseudonymously attributed or left unattributed in an equivalent academic publication, I see no reason to not allow that in the Citizendium.
    3. Expertise
      • This is satisfactory.
    4. Collaboration
      • This is broadly satisfactory, although it would be useful if some clarification of what a "reasonable attempt to get other opinions" means in practice.
    5. Accessibility
      • This is broadly satisfactory, but could go much further. On the WWW, a comprehensive set of guidelines exists defining how to make content accessible - the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C. The Charter could specify that the Citizendium will conform to WCAG.
    6. Being Bold
      • This is broadly satisfactory, although as with my comments regarding Collaboration, I think it might be useful if a practical description of the consensus process (see Note 1). As currently drafted, the section makes it seem like negative feedback is all that would be necessary to make a large-scale refactoring of the wiki unreasonable. Surely, if someone posts an idea up and gets back 50 positive responses and one negative response, the one negative response is not enough to outweigh the 50 positive responses. It seems like this section and Collaboration is based on the Citizendium being small - where it may only be one person responding to a talk page comment. Imagine something on the scale of Wikipedia - then the veto of one heckler seems less useful.
  3. Governance
    • A minor language fix: "at a minimum of bureaucracy" reads very strangely to my British-English eyes. The sentence could be rewritten "The Citizendium is devoted to transparent and fair governance with the least amount of bureaucracy possible."
    • Other than this, I find the introduction to be satisfactory.
    1. Authors
      • I find this broadly satisfactory, although the reasons for which someone may be blocked from editing specific articles or topics ought to be spelled out - either the Charter should explicitly enumerate them or specify who holds the responsibility for deciding the general grounds for which someone may be blocked from editing specific articles (as opposed to be being banned from participating in the whole project).
    2. Editors
      • This is broadly satisfactory: it would be useful if the Charter were to give a number of examples as to the sort of questions and disputes Editors would preside over. See Note 1.
    3. Management Committee
      • This is broadly satisfactory. Are there any age or education limitations, as there are with the Constabulary, for membership on the Management Committee?
      • No mention is made of how the Committee is to communicate either between themselves or with the outside community. Some mention should be made about whether the proceedings of the Committee are transparent, or whether the Management Committee will subscribe to a unified executive principle of agreeing to be bound by the decision of the Committee.
    4. Editorial Council
      • This is broadly satisfactory. Are there any age or education limitations, as there are with the Constabulary, for membership on the Editorial Council?
      • No mention is made of how the Council is to communicate either between themselves or with the outside community. Some mention should be made about whether the proceedings of the Council are transparent, or whether the Editorial Council will subscribe to a unified executive principle of agreeing to be bound by the decision of the Council.
      1. Workgroups
        • This is satisfactory.
    5. Administration
      • This is satisfactory.
    6. Dispute resolution
      • This section is satisfactory except with reference to the Ombudsman, where I have some grave concerns.
      1. Ombudsman
        • I find the Ombudsman idea highly concerning - it is therefore unsatisfactory to me. I shall express my reasons as soon as I have distilled them.
        • It seems the primary problem for me is that it's a large concentration of power with a small group of people (or even one person: the draft seems rather ambiguous).
      2. Final arbitration
        • Provisionally, the appeal board system seems acceptable if the Ombudsman provisions are left in. If the Ombudsman provisions change, I shall have to re-evaluate my position on this section and the parent section.
    7. Electorate
      • This is satisfactory, although it should say "all registered Citizens" rather than just "Authors".
  4. License
    • This is unsatisfactory, but only mildly so. Does the provision that we can incorporate content into the Citizendium "if such reuse is permitted by the copyright owners" mean that we may end up having content in the Citizendium that is not subject to the Creative Commons licence - photos, videos etc.? If so, I do not support that.
    • This section ought to make mention of the fact that authors must agree by publishing their content on the Citizendium that they are bound by the CC licence.
  5. Legal status
    • This is broadly satisfactory, but there should be mention of: whether this non-profit organisation is a new non-profit set up specifically for the Citizendium, or whether it is part of an existing non-profit organisation (like the Tides Center or a university or something like that). If the former is the case, this should be made explicit. If the latter is the case, that should also be made explicit and the clause about it being "ultimately controlled" by the non-profit should be removed. If the Citizendium is to be legally established as an entity, then we should have some clue as early as possible as to where it would be done so, and what laws would be applicable to the organisation.
  6. Languages
    • This is satisfactory.
  7. Final clause
    1. Ratification
      • This is satisfactory.
    2. Entry into force
      • This is satisfactory.
    3. Interim guidance for the transition period
      • This is satisfactory.
      1. Editorial Council and Management Committee
        • This is satisfactory.
      2. Citizens with pseudonyms
        • This is unsatisfactory, since I think that users with pseudonyms ought to be able to be members given the limitations and provisos stated earlier.
      3. Inactive Editors
        • This is satisfactory.
      4. External partners
        • This is satisfactory.
    4. Future amendments
      • This is broadly satisfactory, although voting procedures should be elaborated somewhere.

Conclusion

Not too bad. I've seen far worse. Only two 'unsatisfactory' marks. I guess I'll be voting for the Charter then. It'd be nice if some of the issues I've suggested could be fixed though.

Note 1: On interpretation

In my comments, I have suggested that some practical examples be given. As the closest thing to a Constitution we have, I specify the need for concreteness not to limit but to give examples for future interpretation. Here is why I say this: if you have an old law which says "It is an offence to burgle a house, boat, dwelling or workplace" and then a judge has to decide whether or not someone stealing something from a tent is burglary or not, the list allows the judge to better decide on the basis of shared attributes whether or not the thing is covered by the spirit of the law or not.


Changes log

  1. I have just checked the differences between the first version I reviewed and the current revision. I am satisfied with the revisions - but none of the changes since my first review have given me reason to change any conclusions or stated issues in my commentary below. With regard to the Ombudsman idea, I am uncomfortable with it for reasons I cannot quite understand. If I cannot solidify my discomfort into some solid reasons before the time the Charter is submitted for public vote, then I shall not allow my discomfort to sway my decision on the Charter - I am trying to approach the Charter as rationally and dryly as possible. –Tom Morris 20:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
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