Policies and Guidelines

Key Policies
You don't need to read every policy before you contribute. However, the following policies are particularly important to this project, and the sooner you understand and use them, the better (OpenSourceMinistry will be shortened to OSM):


 * 1) OSM works by building a community of resources. Community is an inherent part of the wiki process.  This is the power of 'us.'


 * 1) OSM is a place for practical resources, not just theory or opinion.  This is about practical ministry, not splitting hairs over theology.  The discussion and theory on this site follows the maxim from experiential education: "Theory is meant to inform practice."  (If you want information, theory and theology go to Wikipedia or Christianity wiki)


 * 1) Respect other contributors. OSM contributors come from many different countries and cultures, and have widely different views. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively in building a free resource explosion.


 * 1) Diversity within the Body of Christ.  We encourage different perspecitves on topics with in fundamental beliefs of Christianity.  To encourage freedom, we lean towards openess.  However, this being a 'Christian' site will place certain limits on that freedom.   If you feel content is inappropiate, feel free to edit it.  If it comes from a different perspective, add your own perspective.  Please use good judgement and common sense and respect.  The administrators reserve the final say to remove inappropiate pages or to block abusers of the site.    (See Wikipedia pages on Civility, Etiquette, Dispute resolution for suggestions.)


 * 1) Don't infringe copyrights. OSM is a free resource licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Submitting work which infringes copyrights threatens our objective to build a truly free ministry resource site that anyone can redistribute, and could lead to legal problems. (See Open Source Ministry Copyright.)


 * 1)  Reliable sources. Where there is theory and articles (like under leadeship development), when sources are cited, they should be from reliable published sources, and these sources should be cited so that other editors can check articles.  Note that much wisdom will come from personal experience, which is encouraged.  (See Wikipedia:Attribution for suggestions on attribution).

What Open Source Ministry IS NOT

 * 1) OpenSourceMinistry IS NOT an encyclopedia. Its goals go much further.  It is a souce for resources.  Although many pages have discussion and feedback, and there is even a page for ministry research, this is not a website for theology battles, venting your opinion or putting others down.  It is a place where anybody can come for free, high quality, easy to use resources.