WiserEarth Governance

At the WELL we used to say "tools not rules" which meant that the writer or poster usually could say or post or show whatever it was they wanted and the reader would have a variety of ways to either read, skip over or ignore it.

I still think this is the way to go. Luckily the law shifted a few years ago so that Stewart Brand's phrase "you own your own words" is essentially the law of the land. The operators of a system aren't liable for what people say on the systems they run - the poster is. So there is less to worry about on that front now. So, freed from that, the way to optimize good social relations is to set a tone, put up some sensible general guidelines (ad a couple of inevitable non-negotiable items), give the users good tools to manage things the way they want and then give good support so you are responsive to their problems and needs.

What would those tools be then?

First, good basic navigation paths for the user. Identify the five to ten things most people do and make sure they are bulletproof and lightning fast.

Second a way to ignore someone's comments if they bother you that much.

Third, make it easy for people to show or refer to the things that turn them on so there is a constant influx of material and ideas that is endorsed with enthusiasm by a user. That means embedding or doing it like the editor here at WE that allows things from YouTube and other specific sites. In other words, have so many good things going on that hassling becomes more marginalized. After awhile only the most serious issues make it to the attention of a large amount of the people.

Fourth, rating systems can help a lot. I personally think it should be tailored to the specific group. Rating people here on WE would not be such a great idea I think, but flagging posts or uploads or documents as being especially worthwhile would make the site mroe useful.

Hi John, Jon,

Both of you should be well aware of the things I'm about to say. But, just in case.

There's a page on "Flags and Reporting" @ http://www.wiserearth.org/index.php/article/tags/ which is not implemented yet I believe. In it are flags called "Content Guidelines?" and "Vandalism" which seems to relate to the concerns of inacuracy and dispute. And also, the ability of editors to "Flag for Review" a comment, and delete a discussion thread, a wikipage and other WE entities, will also be helpful to this end. The problem then, will be to make sure that editors don't abuse this privilege for their own interests.

On the other hand, we have currently the following guidelines:
WiserEarth Principles @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/ebae1d9f4f61d194ff3ee0e74f0ce929
Community Guidelines @ http://www.wiserearth.org/index.php//article/e6d1e607f6e29b9f3bf253d61edd9c92/

Maybe we can add the more humane Tech Soup Community Standards to the blend.

I like the idea of being able to rate entities by the way. This would make for a collaborative data mining and should increase the usefulness of WE's database.

Hi Jon,

I took the liberty of adding resources that relates to governance into this group. I hope that's all right with you. Please edit the connections as you see fit.

I'd also like to mention a page that deals with inaccuracy and dispute written by Michael Spalding: "Discussion : Feature One Pager" @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/0ab9d2b3703837ddaa77514bc0003e34
This article also mentions how Wikipedia handles this issue..

and two pages that relate to it:
"Page Status Descriptions" @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/f774081e28910e3041c932aa8db4c494
"WiserEarth Content Standards" @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/Methodology