CZ:Policy on Topic Informants

For a general introduction to topic informants and interviews, see this section of the Policy Outline. The following provides details and processes.

Topic Informant Workgroup

The Citizendium shall set up a workgroup, with specific, designated members with specific terms, who will have oversight over biographies of living persons, and other articles that make representations about living persons. In particular, this workgroup will be empowered to enforce the policies that follow.

Composition of the workgroup will include at least 2/3 editor members. Members will be selected by sortition among volunteers, who must be Citizendium editors or authors in good standing. The workgroup cannot be considered active unless there are at least three members, and should not have more than twelve members.

The workgroup itself shall select its own group leader(s). Workgroup members will serve yearlong terms.

General policies regarding biographies of living persons

The fact that we have started an encyclopedia project does not give us the right to set

Therefore, the subjects of biographies may, with the permission of the Topic Informant Workgroup, request that their biographies be deleted. Unless a person is a well-known politician, celebrity, . These requests may be made privately, by e-mail, directly to the workgroup [ADDRESS TO BE SUPPLIED], or else on the talk page of the person's article.

The subjects of biographies, persons who have had unique and important experience of historical events, CEOs, politicians, judges, inventors, and others who are (or were) close to the subjects written about shall enjoy a special status in the Citizendium community as topic informants. While being a topic informant will not by itself confer the editorial privileges of decisionmaking and article approval, topic informants will enjoy two special privileges:

• They will enjoy the same right of editorial dispute resolution that editors do, i.e., if they do not feel their case is being heard fairly, they will be able to take it straight to the relevant editorial workgroup.
• They will have a special right to correct errors in the article, and collaborators, editors included, will be expected to respect and respond to these corrections promptly. Note, however, that topic informants do not have the right to offer original accounts and reportage previously unpublished elsewhere. The Citizendium may in the future, however, offer a publishing service featuring exclusive interviews for the precise purpose of collecting edited data for Citizendium articles.

No one may declare himself to be a topic informant; this status can only be conferred by an editor or editorial workgroup. That is, any editor in a subject may declare that a person is a topic informant for a particular article, subject to review by the relevant editorial workgroup. Editors will be expected to follow the policy on topic informants.