Akvopedia:Policies and guidelines
Akvopedia has developed a body of policies and guidelines to further our goal of creating a free source of content for water and sanitation.
Policies and guidelines express standards that have community consensus, though to differing degrees: policies are considered a standard that all users should follow, whereas guidelines are more advisory in nature. Both need to be approached with common sense. A user who acts against the spirit of them may be reprimanded, even if technically no rule has been violated. Those who edit in good faith, are civil, seek consensus, and work towards the goal of creating a great encyclopedia should find a welcoming environment.
Sources of Akvopedia policy
Policy change comes from three sources:
- Documenting actual good practices and seeking consensus that the documentation truly reflects them.
- Proposing a change in practice and seeking consensus for implementation of that change.
- Declarations from the Akvo Foundation Managing DIrector, the Akvo Foundation Board, or the Akvo Developers, particularly for copyright, legal issues, or server load.
Policies
Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard that all users should follow. The remarks below concerning amendment of guidelines are also applicable to policies, except that more care must be taken to ensure that the policy reflects consensus.
Akvopedia policies:
- [[Akvopedia:Privacy_policy| Akvopedia Privacy policy]
Guidelines
Guidelines are more advisory than policies. Updates to a guideline are typically discussed on its talk page, but it is acceptable to directly edit a guideline. Disputes over wording are often resolved by discussion and compromise toward developing a consensus.
A naming convention or Akvopedia:Style guidelines is a specific kind of guideline, related to proper naming, or the way articles should be written.
How are policies enforced?
You are an Akvopedia editor. Since Akvopedia has no editor-in-chief or top-down article approval mechanism, active participants make copyedits and corrections to the format and content problems they see. So the participants are both writers and editors.
Individual users thus enforce most policies and guidelines by editing pages, and discussing matters with each other. Some policies, such as vandalism, are enforced by administrators by blocking users. In extreme cases the Arbitration Committee has the power to deal with highly disruptive situations, as part of the general dispute resolution procedure.
Some features of the software which could potentially be misused, such as deleting pages and locking pages from editing, are restricted to administrators, who are experienced and trusted members of the community.
