Open Mediawiki Policy

Mission / Purpose
The ITS Open MediaWiki Service, like many campus computing resources and services, is provided to support the academic, research and public service goals of Binghamton University.

Information Technology Services takes a broad view of these activities, and we expect use of the Service to reflect this view. Wiki articles and "wiki projects" (sets of articles, categories of articles) may deal with a wide range of topics and serve a wide range of groups, including:
 * professors and students informally following a particular topic of study or interest,
 * faculty, staff and others in departmental, research-group or campus community social organizations,
 * students who live in a single residence hall or who simply share common interests.

Articles may describe services and facilities. They may act as reference material (unlikely to change) or describe upcoming events on campus (though the University Calendar is more appropriate for this purpose). They may also be related to personal interests we are passionate about, or reflect the interests of campus-affiliated groups.

We expect the diversity of article topics will "enhance our identity as a richly diverse and inclusive public University ... within a framework of academic freedom and respect" (see Building an Inclusive University Community).

Wiki Project leaders and the Wikiczar
Each "wiki project" supported by the ITS's MediaWiki must have a campus faculty, staff, or current student acting as "project leader" who manages the set of wiki articles and acts as a focal, single point of contact between the group's participants and the the wiki "sysop" (dubbed the "Wikiczar"). Each project leader plays a major role in the development and success of each project and may likely contribute most of the project's content. Wiki project leaders, collectively, will be final arbitors for determining who is given accounts on the wiki (within the constraints of other applicable University policies). The "Wikiczar" will play a minimal role in guiding wiki project development and will use the ability to block users and protect pages quite sparingly (ex. in instances of well-documented unacceptable use or harassment).

The Roles and Responsibilities of Participants
Wiki projects may solicite and engage large numbers of contributing participants (editors as well as readers). EVERY logged-in user of the ITS MediaWiki may contribute to ANY wiki project. ANY on-campus web surfer (any web browser in the world, currently - --Rhansen 14:56, 17 October 2006 (EDT)) will be able to view ANY page created on the wiki. Since a wiki's content is constantly changing and all participants are free to contribute as they choose, every participant is ultimately responsible for text and photos they contribute (NOT the project leaders, nor ITS).

Empowering a large number of individuals to edit and create wiki pages may make it difficult to enforce and educate users about the guidelines for University hosted web pages found here. Some of these guidelines are not directly applicable to wiki pages and newer policy may be in effect (see discussion at Personal Wiki Pages ). However, most guidelines especially re: copyright and other laws, University codes of conduct, and the rights retained by the University to deny access to this wiki service, are clear and simple and do apply to this wiki.

Anonymous editting and anonymous users on this wiki are not allowed. An exception to this rule (allowing dummy userids known to project leaders and the Wikiczar, but unknown and thus anonymous to most) may be added in later revisions of this policy (See also discussions re: Multiple Accounts on Sockpuppets). Multiple identities (more than one userid per person) will not be allowed (for now).

Articles (projects, and images) hosted here and the messaging capabilities of this wiki may not be used for illegal or non-University commercial purposes.

Participants' use of the wiki are subject to Acceptable Use, Policies. Monitoring for abuses is the responsibility of all wiki participants and specific instances of suspected abuse should be reported to the Wikiczar.

Off-campus organizations
People not directly employed by the University, and those who are not full-time or part-time students can certainly take part in wiki article discussions and development, but wiki articles (disk space and support) cannot be provided for the use of outside organizations without appropriate permissions.

Most wiki users will be identified by their Binghamton University userid (and no other personal identifying (or otherwise sensitive) information unless voluntarily provided by the user him/herself).

Participation (editting) for all wiki projects will be of the "opt in" nature. "Opting out" is equivalent to simply not browsing to any particular wiki article that is not of interest. It's recommended that project leaders communicate with their target participants regularly though not excessively. The activity of all participants (to identify inactive userids) will be monitored once or twice a year by the Wikiczar to maintain the integrity of the list of user identities, though a user is not required to 'edit' articles to retain his or her account on the wiki.

Wiki article content ownership / backup protection
Contributors to the Open MediaWiki should consider all original content contributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Commons Deed 2.5 (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/). Protected content (that has been gleaned from the web or other sources) may be added so long as the contributor ensures that the use of such material is in compliance with "fair use" guidelines (see BU Faculty and Staff Handbook Copyright Policies section on Fair Use).

Since the implementation of this software is experimental, NO BACKUPS will be maintained. However, barring hardware failures, vandalism, or security breaches, the software does keep a version history of hundreds of revisions to article content that can be retrieved by any logged in user.

New articles and 'Personal___' Content
'Personal' and 'unofficial' articles may present challenges to our community and stir controversy.

Consistent with the President's Commission on Free Speech and Academic Freedom (1992) all wikizens at the University have special obligations when they express themselves, in addition to protected freedoms (especially when they work on articles and projects that do not directly support 'official' academic and research functions and when they may be working outside their official roles). When articles address, promote or criticize existing institutions on campus, wikizens should "be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, {and} should show respect for the opinions of others".

New articles that are authored in an 'unofficial' capacity should also clearly indicate that the author is not an institutional spokesman. Apart from the General Disclaimer found on every page of the wiki, a simple mechanism to emphasize authorship follows:

Articles and projects that do not directly support publically stated missions and goals of existing University groups (Research Centers, Departments, Schools, Student Association Chartered organizations) should be tagged with a user's 'Personal___' category. This is a means of marking new content and associating it clearly with the person posting the information. At the same time, it should not limit a person's ability to create articles about personal hobbies or interests that have nothing to do with their roles and responsibilities at the University. For example if Joe Suny (with Userid: Jsuny) is passionate about gardening, he may tag his article on the topic as his own by placing the following at the end of it.

This guideline applies only to new articles. It does not apply to existing articles. A user may make substantial additions to existing articles without placing it in his or her own Personal___ category.

A new article review process (stemming from Wikimedia's Deletion Policy discussion ) may be added to this policy at a later revision. Until such policy is decided, the Wikiczar shall follow Wikimedia guidelines for "Speedy Deletion" to maintain a high quality and active wiki.

No articles on the wiki are 'private' (at this time), however, frequent unwanted editting of a User: page that is not your own may be considered 'inappropriate' use of the wiki.

Further discussion of personal pages is found here (Personal Wiki Pages).

Images
Images of limited size (150kb) and resolution may be uploaded. The names of all image files, however, should be prefixed by the user's userid. For example, Joe Suny may have a picture of his cat that is named 'cat.jpg' on his PC, but when he uploads it to the wiki, it should be called 'Jsuny_cat.jpg'.

A wiki article may not consist solely of a collection of images without explanatory text.

Size limitations and total space quotas per user will be considered in later revisions of this policy.

Policies and processes concerning inappropriate images will follow guidelines mentioned for new articles above.

Anticipated Changes to this policy
Wiki administrators have many choices for how the MediaWiki software can be set up. In addition, the software itself (MediaWiki, currently version 1.6) is continually undergoing modifications and improvements.(elaborate - so a second revision is likely... --Ralph 11:06, 20 Oct 2005 (EDT))

At this time (Spring 2006), creating private spaces (for article development or closed group discussions) is beyond the scope of staffing (and other) resources available to Information Technology Services. We would, however, encourage all University community members to experiment with this wiki as it is configured, and to participate in (open) discussion of this policy. Doing so will enhance the free flow of ideas in our communities and motivate new solutions and services benefitting all.