Electowiki:Editorial policy
Electowiki has a policy somewhat similar to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. However, due to the subjective nature of the topics at hand, it's hard to have a strict NPOV policy without becoming a clone of Wikipedia. Thus, the policy regarding point-of-view is one of "EPOV".
"EPOV" is "Electowiki Point-of-View" policy. Basically, the editorial board serves as the arbiter for what belongs and what doesn't. Over time, we'll try to evolve more formal guidelines, but for now, here's some general guidelines we plan to use:
- We have a point of view. Electowiki tries to be a general resource for experts to get complete information, but makes no promises about neutrality. Other sources, such as Wikipedia, should be used to obtain neutral information.
- Err on the side of neutrality - while the EPOV will come out from time-to-time, it should be hard to distinguish it from Wikipedia-style NPOV in the vast majority of cases.
- Fairness to other points of view - we acknowledge other points of view, however far out we may think they are. We strive not to rewrite history, or misrepresent the support or lack thereof for particular positions.
- Latitude to editorialize on other positions - while acknowledging opposing points of view exist, we also reserve the right to comment on those positions in ways which may not be so flattering
- Controversial points of view should be vetted on election-methods list - if there's a dispute over editorial policy, take it up on the election-methods mailing list.
- Most jurisdictions need much better election systems - A common view, largely shared in the Electowiki community, is that the currently practiced electoral systems in many countries are woefully inadequate expressions of democracy.
- Privately-discussed ideas should be publicly well vetted - if you have a great idea for a new voting method, please don't immediately create a new Electowiki page in the main namespace describing the method as if it's an accepted fact. Instead, please vet the issue on the one of the well-known forums among election method activists, or restrict your publishing of the idea to your userspace on Electowiki.
Real-world voting reform advocacy and organizational work are also welcome, though we don't yet have a policy for how to organize it. We may want to add a bias template to advocacy articles in the mainspace, for example. As for your own userspace, anything is fair game, as long as it's election-related.
Please let us know your opinions of this policy on the policy talk page.
Editorial board
Since its January 2005 inception, Electowiki has had an ad hoc editorial board, with de facto membership based on momentum. History:
- 2005: User:DanKeshet and User:RobLa
- 2006 through 2018: User:RobLa
- 2019 to current time: User:Psephomancy and User:RobLa
User:RobLa would like to formalize this somehow, but as of March 2020, hasn't tried to play the BDFL card to declare a process. User:Psephomancy could have declared Electowiki a fork from wiki.electorama.com after migrating to Miraheze, but User:RobLa snagged the electowiki.org domain name before that became viable. User:Psephomancy and User:RobLa haven't had a lot of time to coordinate on editorial policy, because they have both been busy doing the tech work and hosting work associated with Electowiki.