Welcome to the WiserEarth Content Standards Proposition Discussion

The WiserEarth Content Standards that have been set by the WiserEarth community reflect the values and ethics inherent within. These guidelines provide the structure for the community to reflect itself. This discussion page is the opportunity to propose additional standards or challenge existing ones.

Rules
Each proposition will be discussed for seven days from its entry date upon which consensus will be drawn to conclusion.
Thank you for participating in this very valuable and important aspect of the community! Happy discussing!

To begin a conversation :
Label your idea with the heading <h2>Proposition Title</h2>, and give a two or three sentence explanation of the proposition.

To make comment about a proposition:
Please abide by the Values of the community AND always manually enter your username at the end of your comment. If you do not, your comments will be deleted. Begin your comment with either support or oppose and make sure a <br> is before and after your entire comment.

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Political Organizations

A section on political organizations needs to be added to clairfy what we mean. We've agreed that political parties don't get, not even the Green Party, but what about nonprofits that support liberal politics in a very obvious way. An example is America Votes.
User:michael

Support: In case any of you were wondering, I absolutely think this organization should get in. As much as we would like to think the organizations in the database are not political, it is just not the case. I would listen to arguments against it, but I think it is impossible to cut politics out of the majority of organizations in the database. AIDS organizations that promote condom use are political. Women's clinics that empower women and protect their rights is political. Food safety for consumers regarding pesticides and GMOs is political. There is a population of people out there that believe and will probably always believe, that regulating private enterprise is an infrigement on THEIR individual fundamental human rights as property owners, that regulation is unnecessary because the markets are perfect and consumers will decide what lives and dies in the market place. In fact, to prevent individual consumers from making those decisions is also an infrigiment on THEIR individual rights. This worldveiw is the antithesis of ours which believe if a community of people get together and a majority votes to protect themselves from something, they have every right to do that, and to do otherwise is an infrigement on their rights. That's my soapbox.
User:michael

Support: I agree with michael's basic argument. But I think we can define whether a group is 'political' more narrowly by if the organization exists to affects the outcome of elections. At this juncture, this type of organization is accepted into WE. Some examples of those are MoveOn.org and the League of Conservation Voters. So to narrow the definition to what is political to the point that it is 'too political' we can say that it is too political if it represents a particular party. This doesn't seem to be the case with AmericaVotes, unless one thinks they are using 'progressive' and 'Democratic Pary' interchangably. I think Mike might be saying that although WE is apolitical it has a philosophical compass that is, in many ways, progressive and so this org merits a place in WE.
User: pachadan

comment: I think that sooner or later our philosophical compass will start to trump the methodology we've created and need to decide if we think that gives us a legitimacy problem. The easy way out is to just put it to the community, knowing that the administrators we have in place are going to agree with us. User: sdlamm

support: I agree with mike's first point. WISER EARTH is political whether we like it or not. WISER EARTH is also progressive by its very nature: Social justice and sustainability as the core elements that bring this community together define us politically. However we can define WE beyond that. I agree with dan that we should draw the line at political parties, but nonprofit orgs that support human rights and social justice causes should be in, just as faith-based organizations with social justice objectives are in. As long as their political objectives don't overtake their social justice initiatives, I don't see any problem including a political-based org.
User: molly

Resource Criteria??

Should we set up basic resource criteria as well? As I'm adding resources I'm already questioning what is appropriate for the site. A great resource that's from a company/gvt program? A great resource that's funded by a trade org or a political party? We haven't defined this yet. User: molly

support: I think in the very least we should have a difference between resources that are available and those that we support. For example, the solar living institute has a huge store with all the products that they endorse. Anyone looking for information that they can trust on the topics that they carry would be obliged to shop there. Whereas what we have created is a repository of all information, whether it is certifiable by the community or not. It seems that it may serve the community better if we had a system of verification. This way, all the resources could still remain in the database, accessible, but with a simple clarification.
User:adam

comment: I think that's a great idea. Possibly a flagging system for resources as well? (ex: "This resource is funded by a for-profit entity..." or "The source of this resource is out of scope with our community's misison...") so that users can see we believe this is a valid resource but may not fully support the source. I wouldn't mind putting together a draft of resource standards...
User:molly