CPOV
From aspwe.org, Wetland Engineering and Restoration
Community Point of View (CPOV) is a point of view shared by the vast majority of the community of ASPWE users. Articles should be written from the CPOV. If you are familiar with wikis then you should know that this is a common but not a universal policy, Wikipedia for example requires all articles to take Neutral Point of View. We do not, although we encourage representation of multiple points of view when a large enough body of users supports different approaches. We also allow Personal Points of View on User (personal) and Talk pages.
Personal opinions on ASPWE are allowed, but they are not allowed on document-like pages written from the third person. They should instead take the form of discussions, i.e. the starting statement should be short, to the point and written from the first person, responses should be found on the same page etc. This prevents them from looking like official documents.
This does not apply to proposals, which should be clearly marked as such ("This is a proposal for .. Please provide feedback on the discussion page"), and which need to meet community approval before they become official documents, standards, features, policies etc. Use your own best judgment to determine whether a new page you write is a proposal, or whether it reflects known community consensus.
Essays, policies, brainstorming pages, votes, and so forth should clearly have community support and not just be one individual's idea. For example, the ASPWE community is not open towards trolls and vandals. While trolls and vandals may be technically considered members of the community, they are more like uninvited and obnoxious houseguests who are kicked out at the next best opportunity.
As such, pages that are written from the point of view of trolls and vandals -- justifying trolling and vandalism and making this position look like the community view -- would not be desirable, as they do not represent community opinion. Such individuals are free to voice their opinion in discussions, of course.
When community opinion is split into different factions on a subject, CPOV resembles NPOV in that different views should be attributed, although here the space afforded to minority positions may be directly proportional to the size of said minority. Furthermore, unlike an NPOV article, opinions completely outside the CPOV spectrum need not be included.
Does this mean that CPOV is an instrument of censorship? Yes and no. The purpose of CPOV is not to undermine constructive criticism. That can continue as usual on discussion pages. Its purpose is to ensure that the documents you find here actually do represent relevant views within the ASPWE community, to prevent possible confusion and false impressions.
Don't worry too much about the policy -- when something you write in the third person is out of touch with community opinion, people will tell you soon enough. There might be a vote or a long discussion to bring the page into the CPOV, it might be moved into your user space, to a talk page, turned into a discussion page, or deleted.
Role of the editor
Some will say that the concept of an editor is completely out of step with the spirit of a wiki, and that is true. Please see the court of last resort page for an explanation on why we have an editor. The role of the editor is not to censure, but to organize the information as clearly as possible so as to be most beneficial to all users. The editor will also resolve disputes.
