User:Auggie/Statement of principles

This is a statement of principles from Encyc founder Emperor (a.k.a. Auggie). It is modeled on Jimbo Wales' Statement of principles on Wikipedia.

1. We need free content - Contributors who donate their time by offering quality writing are to be appreciated.
2. Administrators are here to provide a safe, pleasant working environment - They are not to use their powers to win content disputes.
3. "You can edit this page right now" is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred.
4. The Encyc MediaWiki uses MediaWiki software - the world's most popular, and has essentially no control in how this software develops or changes.
5. The Encyc MediaWiki uses the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike License - to be compatible with Wikipedia, because we believe in sharing free content.
6. Encyc has no official mailing list - because MediaWiki is sufficient for us to communicate. I will not suppress lists if users make them.
7. Complaints are looked at as valuable feedback - but nobody has to listen to them if they don't want to.
8. Encyc is meant to be readable - Ideally I'm thinking of something about as readable as USA Today, a general-interest newspaper that a high school student can read and enjoy. I dislike jargon, academic terms, and other language that gets in the way of effective communication.
9. The Management shall stay out of the way - Wikis work best as communities of equals.
10. Encyc should not hurt people - Users are discouraged from publishing personal information or conducting extended campaigns to present living people in a bad light.
11. Encyc is a general-interest encyclopedia, but it is also not paper - Users should be given wide latitude to express themselves
12. Encyc wiki code should be understandable by a layperson - Encyc shall not lose the wiki-way and make editing a page something that only a computer programmer feels comfortable doing.
13. Encyc strives to be as inclusive as possible - Want to write an article about your favorite Pokemon or your cousin's landscaping business? Go ahead.
14. Encyc is appropriate for high school students to use - We will do our best to remove objectionable content.