Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Nonpartisan Election Pages

Description
U.S. regulations restrict non-profit organizations such as The Wikipedia Foundation to terms of what they can post concerning candidates in U.S. elections. In particular they require that all candidates be treated equally. As a matter of convention Wikipedia editors have created a policy that treats candidates that are considered "major candidates" differently from other candidates. This systematic unequal treatment of candidates could be used as a basis of a complaint that could jeopardize the non-profit status of Wikipedia.

This project would create new guidelines that specify equal treatment of all candidates for public office and then apply these guidelines to pages about US elections so that Wikipedia complies with these regulations. Rockmhoward (talk) 00:40, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Support / Nonsupport
Please specify your support or non-support for this project. Feel free to add an explanation. If you support the project and are willing to work on this WikiProject, please sign as a member below.

Support:
 * 1) Rockmhoward (talk) 00:40, 7 September 2010 (UTC) (See my talk page for more of my thoughts on the matter.)
 * 2) Strangelv (talk) 05:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Fulner (talk) 14:34pm, 24 September 2010 (EDT)
 * 4) DJ Silverfish (talk) 16:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Non-support:
 * 1) Way too vague; give me some actual proposals before wanting to redo the rules.  Toa   Nidhiki  05  21:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) I have seen no evidence that Wikipedia is currently acting in a partisan way.Ratemonth (talk) 02:08, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) I don't see anything here that can't be better handled through WikiProject Elections and Referendums, and the sea lawyer assertions at the top are incorrect.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Overview
Creating Nonpartisan Election Pages for U.S. Elections


 * Goals
 * Create new guidelines for coverage of US elections that conform with US regulations that apply to non-profit organizations such as The Wikipedia Foundation.
 * Get the new guidelines approved by Wikipedia management and legal staff to aid in their enforcement.
 * Recruit editors to fix targeted pages that do not fit the guidelines.


 * Scope
 * The project covers all articles about elections in the United States. Since the regulations driving this project only pertain to information about U.S. elections, elections in other countries are not affected at this time.

Members

 * 1)  (interested in equal coverage for all candidates as per US regulations for non-profit orgs)
 * 2) DJ Silverfish (talk) 16:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC) (interested in ensuring nonprejudicial airing of political campaigns

Open tasks

 * Locate and distill relevant U.S. regulations.
 * Define relevant terms.
 * Create guidelines that confirm to relevant regulations.
 * Submit new guidelines to wikipedia management and the legal department for review.
 * Create an overview with motivation to help editors understand the new guidelines.
 * Create subtasks (i.e., improve election InfoBox) that might be required.
 * Tag pages needing attention.
 * Fix pages.