WikiCODOPN:About

From WikiCODOPN

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WikiCODOPN was created in 2006 as a collaborative tool to assist a group of volunteers in the Rocky Mountain Region who are developing a working regional model of the proposed U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the site, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions, such as protected articles and the main page).

Each page may contain links that guide you to associated topics, with more detailed information. You are welcome to add further information, cross-references, or citations, so long as you do so within the CODOPN Model Project editing policies and standards.

WikiCODOPN is built on the same open source "engine" as Wikipedia. As a result, our CODOPN Model Project can benefit directly from the Wikipedia experience base. Much of the Wikipedia infrastructure has been adapted for use on our project.

Instead of writing an encyclopedia, we are creating a virtual model of a regional Department of Peace and Nonviolence. Pending Legislation provides the basic "Blue Prints" for this model DOPN. Our goal is to use the proposed design of this new Cabinent-Level Department, build a working model of a small regional portion of this Department, illustrate how it would operate, reduce levels of violence, increase opportunities, and verify (or not) that the DOPN can add value to our community, State and Nation.

You do not need to fear accidentally damaging WikiCODOPN when you add or improve information, as other WikiWriters are always around to advise or correct obvious errors if needed, and the WikiCODOPN software, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because WikiCODOPN is an ongoing work to which anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source or a physical model in some very important ways. In particular, older sections tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer sections may still be incomplete, provide limited perspectives, or contain significant misinformation. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed. (See WikiCODOPN:Researching with WikiCODOPN for more details). However, unlike a paper reference source, WikiCODOPN is completely up-to-date, and contains the "Latest Information" - some of which may have been created minutes before you logged on.

If you have not done so, we invite you to take a few moments to read What WikiCODOPN is (and is not) and Researching with WikiCODOPN, so that you have an understanding of how to use, rely upon or contribute to WikiCODOPN as you continue. Further information on key topics can be found below.

Happy building!

See also: WikiCODOPN:Introduction.

For help topics, questions and contact information, see Help:Contents.

For news about the site, see WikiCODOPN:News.

Contents 1 Making the best use of WikiCODOPN 1.1 Exploring WikiCODOPN 1.2 Basic navigation in WikiCODOPN 1.3 Using WikiCODOPN as a research tool 1.4 Summary of strengths, weaknesses and article quality in WikiCODOPN 2 Contributing to WikiCODOPN 2.1 Who writes WikiCODOPN? 2.2 Editing WikiCODOPN pages 2.3 WikiCODOPN content criteria 2.4 Handling disputes and abuse of process 3 Feedback and questions 3.1 Frequently asked questions (FAQ) 3.2 Giving feedback 3.3 Contacting individual WikiCODOPN editors

Making the best use of WikiCODOPN

Exploring WikiCODOPN

Visitors may come to this site to acquire knowledge, others to share knowledge. At any instant, information about the Model Project and it results may be updated. You can view the changes at the Recent changes page. New articles are also being recorded. Many different kinds of people help to write WikiCODOPN pages.

WikiCODOPN also has many ongoing projects. The hope of any contributor is to provide useful and accurate information to others, and the projects help coordinate efforts. Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles.

Basic navigation in WikiCODOPN

WikiCODOPN articles are all linked, or cross-referenced. Wherever you see highlighted text like this, it means there is a link to some relevant article or Wikipedia page with further in-depth information elsewhere if you need it. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where a link will take you. You are always one click away from more information on any point that has a link attached.

There are other links towards the ends of most articles, for other articles of interest, relevant external web sites and pages, reference material, and organized categories of knowledge which you can search and traverse in a loose hierarchy for more information.

Some articles may also have links to dictionary definitions, audio-book readings, quotations, or the same article in other languages.

You can add further links if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.

Using WikiCODOPN as a research tool

Main articles: Researching with WikiCODOPN, Citing WikiCODOPN

As a wiki, most information is never finalized. It is continually edited and improved over time, and in general this results in an upward trend of quality, and a growing consensus over a fair and balanced representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all pages are of the highest quality - particularly new pages. Based on the experience of Wikipedia, most information begins as a partisan piece, that after a long process of discussion, debate and argument, gradually takes on a consensus perspective.

The ideal WikiCODOPN information will be balanced, neutral and highly factual, containing notable verifiable knowledge. This maturation of information is a process and based on Wikipedia experiinece may take months or years to be achieved, as each user adds their contribution in turn. Some pages will initially contain statements and claims which have not yet been fully cited.

While the overall trend is generally upward, it is important to use WikiCODOPN carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since information will vary in standard and maturity. There are guidelines and information pages designed to help users and researchers maintain a high standard of quality.

Summary of strengths, weaknesses and article quality in WikiCODOPN

WikiCODOPN's greatest strengths, weaknesses and differences arise because it is open to anyone, has a large contributor base, and articles are written by consensus according to editorial guidelines and policies.

• WikiCODOPNa is open to a large contributor base - so it is less susceptible to retaining bias, is very hard for any group to censor, and is far more responsive to new information, especially information not widely known in the West, and it is more easily vandalized or susceptible to unchecked information later needing removal.
• WikiCODOPN is written by consensus - so eventually for most articles, all notable views become fairly described and a very neutral stance can be achieved even on emotive subjects, and the reaching of consensus takes considerably longer than a simple drafting, and is occasionally made harder by extreme-viewpoint contributors. (Articles also tend to be more fluid or changeable for a long time compared to other reference sources until they find their "neutral approach" that all sides can agree on.)

Key strengths: (WikiCODOPN:Why WikiCODOPN is so great)

• Having a very large number of active writers and editors, WikiCODOPN often provides access and breadth on subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible or little documented.
• WikiCODOPN can produce excellent articles and resources covering newsworthy events within hours or days of their occurrence.
• WikiCODOPN attempts to provide neutral, objective, perspectives of the value of the proposed U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence as it applies to the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States.
• In comparison with most web-based resources, WikiCODOPN's open approach increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be quickly identified and corrected.
• There is no one central point where censorship can be imposed, and therefore censorship by any given group, restriction to "officially reported" sources, or "pushing" of any particular viewpoint, whether official or unofficial, is difficult to achieve and almost always fails after a time.
• In contrast with many web resources, information added to WikiCODOPN never "vanishes", and is never "lost" or deleted.

Key weaknesses: (WikiCODOPN:Why WikiCODOPN is not so great)

• WikiCODOPN's radical openness means that any given article may be in bad shape at any given moment - for example, in the middle of a large edit, after a controversial rewrite, or if the page has been recently vandalized.
• WikiCODOPN operates a full editorial dispute resolution process, that allows time for discussion and resolution in depth, but also permits months-long disagreements before poor quality or biased edits will be removed forcibly.
• While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, WikiCODOPN is more subject to subtle vandalism and viewpoint promotion than a typical reference work.
• There is no systematic process to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, so WikiCODOPN may contain unexpected oversights and omissions.
• Information may be incomplete in ways that would be less usual in a more tightly controlled reference work, for example some aspects may be well covered but others briefly or not at all.
• WikiCODOPN articles may have a tendency to reflect the point-of-view (POV) of the author and by implication the author's cultural and socio-economic background. While most articles may be altered by anyone, in practice editing will be performed by a certain demographic (younger rather than older, male rather than female, rich enough to afford a computer rather than poor, Christian or Jewish rather than Muslim or Bantu etc.) and will thus necessarily reflect a certain degree of implicit bias.
• Some contributors may not comply fully with key editing policies, or may add information without citable sources.

Quality of information (Reliability of WikiCODOPN, Researching with WikiCODOPN)

While WikiCODOPN articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less well monitored, information may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information, although this usually ceases to be as significant a problem as articles mature. Inappropriate edits are often noticed and corrected within a relatively short time on most articles.

Contributing to WikiCODOPN

Main articles: Contributing to WikiCODOPN, First steps in editing articles, Bootcamp

Anyone can contribute to WikiCODOPN by clicking on the Edit this page tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute however, you should check out some handy helping tools such as the tutorial and the policies and guidelines, as well as our welcome page.

It is important to realize that in contributing to WikiCODOPN, users are expected to be civil and neutral, respect all points of view, and add verifiable and factual information. There are specific sections where contributors can add their personal views and opinions. "The five pillars of WikiCODOPN" cover this approach and are recommended reading before editing.

Who writes WikiCODOPN?

Main article: WikiCODOPN:Who writes WikiCODOPN

There will be hundreds of editors - everyone from expert scholars to casual readers. Anyone who visits the site can edit it, and this fact has encouraged contribution of a tremendous amount of content. There are mechanisms that help community members watch for bad edits, a few hundred administrators with special powers to enforce good behavior, and a judicial committee which considers the few situations remaining unresolved, and decides on withdrawal or restriction of editing privileges or other punishments when needed, after all other consensus remedies have been tried.

Editing WikiCODOPN pages

Main article, including list of common mark-up shortcuts: WikiCODOPN:How to edit a page

WikiCODOPN uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. These include automatic sections and subsections, automatic references and cross-references, image and table inclusion, indented and listed text, links ISBNs and math, as well as usual formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols. Most of these have simple formats that are deliberately very easy and intuitive.

WikiCODOPN has robust version and reversion controls. This means that poor quality edits or vandalism can quickly and easily be reversed or brought up to an appropriate standard by any other editors, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent upon good quality articles than any other kind, articles that are poorly edited are usually corrected rapidly.

WikiCODOPN content criteria

WikiCODOPN content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with external sources, and neutrally presented, with external sources cited.

The appropriate policies and guidelines for these are found at:

1. WikiCODOPN:What WikiCODOPN is not summarizes what WikiCODOPN is, and what it is not.
2. WikiCODOPN:Neutral point of view WikiCODOPN's core approach, neutral unbiased article writing.
3. WikiCODOPN:No original research what is, and is not, valid information
4. WikiCODOPN:Verifiability what counts as a verifiable source and how a source can be verified
5. WikiCODOPN:Citing sources sources should be cited, and the manner of doing so.

These can be abbreviated to WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V, and WP:CITE respectively.

Handling disputes and abuse of process

Main articles: WikiCODOPNa:Vandalism, WikiCODOPN:Dispute resolution, WikiCODOPNa:Consensus, WikiCODOPN:Sock puppet

WikiCODOPN has a rich span of methods to handle most abuses which commonly arise, which are well tested and should be relied upon.

• Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.
• Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through Wikipedia's comprehensive dispute resolution process.
• Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of Internet sock puppets or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other WikiCODOPN processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.

In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single purpose accounts.

Feedback and questions

WikiCODOPN itself is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose end result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should, in the first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. You are invited to be bold and edit the pages yourself to add information or correct mistakes if you are knowledgeable and able to do so.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

FAQ index: Index of all WikiCODOPN FAQ pages

Giving feedback

There is an established escalation and dispute process within WikiCODOPN, as well as pages designed for raising questions, feedback, suggestions and comments:

• Talk pages - the associated discussion page for discussion of an article or policy's contents. This is usually the first place to go.
• WikiCODOPN:Vandalism - to report vandalism (you're encouraged to fix vandalism yourself as well as report it)
• Dispute resolution - for disputes which remain unresolved within an article's talk space.
• Village pump - the WikiCODOPN discussion area, part of the community portal.

Contacting individual WikiCODOPN editors

If you need more information, the first place to go is the Help:Contents. To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their talk page. Standard places to ask policy and project-related questions are the village pump, online, and the WikiCODOPN mailing lists, over e-mail.