Who can participate?
Anyone can publish an article on this website, which will initially go to the raw newswire. If you want your articles to go directly to the promoted newswire you can ask to become a trusted user.
If you wish to have a say in which articles become features and participate in the decision making of an editorial collective, and you agree with the principles of unity and can commit some time to a collective's activities please get involved! To do so please contact us and you should be invited to the next meeting nearest you. You can then participate in a skillshare to help you obtain the skills outlined below and after this you can become a member of an editorial collective. All new members of any editorial collective will be introduced to the Australian Editorial Collective by a participating member of their collective. Members who are inactive for three consecutive meetings without apology will be deemed to have left the collective.
The principle tasks of the collective are:
- Review articles on the raw newswire and decide if they should be promoted to the front page;
- Discuss and approve (or not!) proposed features;
- Contribute to the sustainability of the collective.
Everyone in an Editorial Collective must be competent in the basics of:
- Consensus decision making;
- Using and editing wiki pages;
- Using IRC/Chat rooms;
- Administering content through the website.
These skills are necessary for you to participate fully and equally in our decision making processes. Every reasonable effort will be made to help people for whom these barriers are too high.
Decision Making
The editorial collective makes all its decisions by consensus, although the Australian Editorial Collective has a 90% majority fallback if consensus cannot be achieved after reasonable effort. At the end of each meeting a meeting gimp is assigned for the next meeting: their task is to collect agenda items and organise the meeting. At the beginning of each meeting a facilitator will be chosen. Both these tasks should be rotated amongst the collective.
Features: Anyone in the relevant editorial collective can make a feature proposal for the relevant section of the site (Australia, Melbourne, etc). The proposer must be willing to research the background of the feature and be committed to updating the feature regularly with postings from the newswire and other relevant sources. After 12 hours or if two people support the proposal, and if there are no immediate objections, the proposal can become a feature. However, if any objections are received within 24 hours the article will be removed from the features column. In rare instances of important breaking news (e.g. major protest or revolution!) articles can become features by obtaining the consensus of everyone in IRC.
Raw, Promoted and Hidden Newswires: Decisions to move content between the raw and promoted newswire do not have to be notified to the collective. If there is disagreement within 24 hours of an article being placed on the front page it will be moved back to the raw newswire. Articles moved to the hidden section of the site will generate an automatic email to the Australian Editorial Collective, including the reason why it was hidden. All discussion about hidden or promoted content of the newswire will take place within the Australian Editorial Collective.
Process decisions: changes to these processes can only be made by the Australian Collective after at least 7 days has passed since the change was proposed.
Conflict Resolution
All attempts will be made to resolve conflicts between members through discussion and internal mediation.
If a persistent conflict arises that threatens the functioning of the collective a binding arbitration process with independent, mutually agreed mediators can be initiated.