Justapedia:Policies and guidelines

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Overview

These policies and guidelines have been adopted for Justapedia's use by the Board of Trustees in compliance with the Justapedia Foundation's Terms of Use. Equally as important is the fact that Justapedia's PAGs have been developed in the spirit of objectivity and neutrality by volunteers with the benefit of hindsight. Articles are required to include all substantial views, with priority given to the verifiability of facts cited to reliable sources. No personal opinions will be presented in JPVoice; rather, they will be presented using JP:In-text attribution cited to a reliable source. Articles that have been reviewed and cleared by the Editorial Review Board (ERB) will be protected from vandalism and similar types of drive-by editing.

We credit Wikipedia and its many volunteers, which includes some of our own, as the source where Justapedia's content originated. Among those millions of articles, a substantial number are considered contentious topics, many of which are neither neutral nor objective. As a result, Justapedia volunteers are tasked with bringing those articles into compliance with Justapedia's policies of neutrality and objectivity. Justapedia also maintains a more welcoming and collegial editing environment, and having a qualified Editorial Review Board making decisions about content. This ensures a higher quality of articles by avoiding contentious debates about content. Administrators oversee editor conduct only, and will not be involved in making any content decisions. Justapedia has far less bureaucracy, fewer rules, and less complicated guidelines. Policies and guidelines work best when applied with logic and common sense.

(See Justapedia:List of policies and Justapedia:List of guidelines for a comprehensive listing of individual Justapedia policies and guidelines.)

Derivation

Justapedia is hosted and operated by the nonprofit Justapedia Foundation—see Terms of Use for information about the services and responsibilities of the Justapedia Foundation, the mutual agreements by and between users and the Foundation, and user rights and responsibilities. Justapedia is operated by the Foundation as an open source encyclopedia anyone can edit. Volunteers contribute to building the encyclopedia which is a perpetual work in progress, and are encouraged to create their own specialized projects and organize user groups within the community in an effort to help the Foundation achieve its mission and goals.

The Board of Trustees (BoT) is a 7–member volunteer Board whose members are initially appointed by the Justapedia Executive Committee (JPF). The BoT serves as the community liaison and oversees the editing community to assure compliance with Justapedia's policies and guidelines as well as protecting the founding principles of the Justapedia Foundation, and its mission to host and operate a free and open encyclopedia in perpetuity per its Code of Conduct and Terms of Use.

Role

Further information: Justapedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays

Policies describe standards all users should normally follow. All policy pages are in Justapedia:List of policies and guidelines and Category:Justapedia policies. For summaries of key policies, see also List of policies.

Guidelines are sets of best practices supported by the BOR who make determinations based on input and suggestions from registered users. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense; occasional exceptions may apply. Guideline pages can be found in Justapedia:List of policies and guidelines and Category:Justapedia guidelines. For summaries of key guidelines, see also List of guidelines.

Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors for which PAGs have not been established. They do not speak for the JPF, the BoT or entire community, and may be created and written without approval. Essays the author does not want others to edit, or that contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace. (For more information, see Justapedia:Essays.)

Adherence

Use common sense in interpreting and applying policies and guidelines; Rules have occasional exceptions. That said, those who violate the spirit of a rule will first be advised of the behavior and asked to desist. Justapedia has a zero tolerance policy for any form of incivility or noncompliance with JP:Terms of Use.

Whether a policy or guideline is an accurate description of best practice may be brought up on the Talk page of the Board of Trustees.

On discussion pages and in edit summaries, JP:shortcuts are often used to refer to policies and guidelines. (For example, JP:NOR (no original research), JP:NPOV (neutral point of view) and JP:BLP (biographies of living persons)). Similar shortcuts are also used for other types of project page like essays and how-to guides. Thus a shortcut does not necessarily imply the page linked to has policy or guideline status or has been widely accepted by the community. Additionally, the shortcut is not the policy; the plain-English definition of the page's title or shortcut may be importantly different from the linked page.

Enforcement

Enforcement on Justapedia is similar to other social interactions. If an editor is in conflict with standards described in these policies and guidelines, and Terms of Use, other editors may try to persuade the person to adhere to acceptable norms of conduct in order to maintain a collegial environment and proper decorum. If ignored, the disruptive user will be subject to administrator sanctions imposed by an administrator. In the event of blatant incivility, administrators will first issue a warning, and if ignored by the user, the administrator will act in accordance per JP's zero tolerance policy. It is normally unacceptable to go against the principles set forth in JP:PAG, particularly policy pages, unless civil discussion on the respective Talk Page determines an exception should be made, and the BoT or ERB, who have editorial control over content, also agree with the prevailing view.

In cases where it is clear a user is acting against policy (or against a guideline in a way that conflicts with policy), especially if they are doing so intentionally and persistently, that user may be temporarily or indefinitely blocked from editing by an administrator per zero tolerance.

Life cycle

Many of the most well-established policies and guidelines have developed from principles which have been accepted as fundamental since Justapedia's inception and before, especially in light of the combined experience and hindsight of individual users, the BOR, and Justapedia Foundation have brought with them. Others developed as solutions to common problems and disruptive editing. Policy and guideline pages are seldom established without precedent. Policies and guidelines may only be established with approval by the JP:BOR through new proposals, the promotion of existing essays or guidelines, and/or reorganization of existing policies and guidelines through splitting and merging.

Essays and information pages may be established by writing them and adding {{essay}}, {{Information page}}, {{Justapedia how-to}}, or a similar template to the page.

Conflicts between advice pages

If policy and/or guideline pages directly conflict, one or more pages need to be revised to resolve the conflict so all the conflicting pages accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice. As a temporary measure during that resolution process, if a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, editors may assume the policy takes precedence.

Advice pages do not generally conflict, but may provide multiple options. For example, Reliable sources says newspaper articles are generally considered to be reliable sources, and Identifying reliable sources recommends against newspaper articles for certain technical purposes. Editors must use their best judgement to decide which advice is most appropriate and relevant to the specific situation at hand.

If in doubt, make a request to resolve ambiguous guidelines at Ask an Admin or start a discussion at The Exchange. Changes to policies are deliberated by the BoT and their decision is final.

Naming

The page names of policies and guidelines usually do not include the words "policy" or "guideline", unless required to distinguish the page from another.