CZ:Charter drafting committee/Position statements/Joe Quick

The Citizendium charter will serve as a foundational document for the project's governance and future initiatives. As a foundation, it is meant to lay the ground work for the structures that will be built upon it: it does not need to address every detail of every concern of every member but it should be broad enough and specific enough to serve as a guide for whatever might come in the future. It should also provide for more specific policies and documents that will build upon and expand the ideas the charter expresses.

There are a few specific issues that the charter absolutely must address:
 * 1) It must contain a statement of rights and responsibilities
 * 2) For editors and authors
 * 3) For constables and editorial personnel administrators
 * 4) For editorial council members, executive committee members, and members of a judicial branch that is yet to be defined
 * 5) For the Editor-in-Chief
 * 6) For the Approvals Manager
 * 7) For technical personnel
 * 8) It must define how people in those positions are appointed/elected, how long their terms are to last, and how to add new positions if the need arises
 * 9) It must establish a clear vision for the project
 * 10) It must explain the Citizendium approach to content creation
 * 11) *On this point, the charter needs to engage the neutrality policy and perhaps rework it. I believe the concept of neutrality implies conflict where there need not be conflict.  I prefer to use the term "holistic", which to me implies an investigation of how all aspects of a topic interrelate, whether they conflict with one another or not.
 * 12) It should define approval, explain it's purpose, and set broad cross-workgroup standards of quality that do not interfere with field-specific standards.
 * 13) It should define the purpose, role, and responsibilities of workgroups; how new workgroups can/should be formed; and how existing workgroups can be reinvented.
 * 14) It should address who we are writing for, who we would like to recruit to the project.
 * 15) It should address whether and how Citizendium can/should/will be associated with other organizations
 * 16) It should explain how Citizendium would ideally fit within the broader internet community without simply asserting points of difference
 * 17) It should establish a Citizendium judicial system or at least lay the ground work for a separate initiative to do so.

Many of these issues are already discussed in different places. On some, I believe the charter drafters will be able to incorporate existing policies and practices as they are. For others, I expect the drafters will need to think creatively about how to improve what we have now.