User:Auggie/Statement of principles

From Encyc
Revision as of 08:35, 19 August 2010 by Auggie (talk | contribs) (clarify)

This is a statement of principles from Encyc founder 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
  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. [1]
  4. Encyc uses MediaWiki software - the world's most popular, and has essentially no control in how this software develops or changes.
  5. Encyc uses the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike License - to be compatible with Wikipedia, because we believe in sharing free content.
  6. Complaints are looked at as valuable feedback
  7. Encyc assumes visitors have average reading ability - It fills the need for an online, general-interest encyclopedia that is about as readable as USA Today. Encyc avoids jargon, academic terms, rambling sentence structures, and other language that gets in the way of effective communication.
  8. The Management shall stay out of the way - Wikis work best as communities of equals.
  9. Encyc should not hurt people - Users are discouraged from publishing personal information or conducting extended campaigns to present living people in a bad light.
  10. Encyc is a general-interest encyclopedia, but it is also not paper - Users should be given wide latitude to express themselves
  11. 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.
  12. Encyc strives to be as inclusive as possible - Want to write an article about your favorite Pokemon? Go ahead.
  13. Encyc is appropriate for high school students to use - We will do our best to remove objectionable content.

Notes

  1. This line is lifted straight from Wikipedia. Encyc shamelessly steals this idea, and will live by it.