Public-Interest Charter

1 · The wiki stays free

Every article at /wiki/[slug] is free to read, with no signup, no paywall, no rate limit, no ad slot, no sponsored content. The catalog JSON (/wiki/catalog/json) and CSV (/wiki/catalog/csv) are CORS-open for secondary analysis. The ?asOf=YYYY-MM-DD permanent-citation URLs remain stable for the life of the archive (see methodology §6). If the project ever ends, the catalog will be archived to a neutral home (Internet Archive, Wikipedia's data dumps, or equivalent) with the same URL structure preserved as long as is technically feasible.

2 · Editorial independence from commercial customers

Catalog editorial decisions — which instruments to track, which topics to include, which confidence tier to assign a cell, whether to mark a topic contested or settled — cannot be influenced by who is paying us. The structural enforcement of this rule has four layers:

• Catalog-as-source-of-truth. Articles render from typed catalog rows in src/lib/international-governance/instruments.ts and sibling files. There is no per-tenant theming, no sponsor-injected content path, no commercial-flag branch. A paying customer cannot get a different article than a free reader.
• Public register of paying customers. Every customer appears on /wiki/funding §3 within 30 days of contract signing, with the relationship spelled out. A reader who suspects bias can check the register against the article in question.
• Recusal on topics with a customer stake. When the editorial board considers a substantive update to a topic where a paying customer has a direct stake (e.g. a firm regulated by the instrument), the customer-facing interaction is recused and the decision is recorded as recused in the changelog (see CorrectionRecord with type recusal).
• No private-only catalog content. The paid firehose serves the same catalog rows that the free wiki shows. It adds latency-SLA + structured-delta + webhook delivery on top — never private editorial content.

3 · Honest disclosure of editorial gaps

We publish what we know andwhat we don't. The editorial board (/wiki/editorial-board) is in formation — 1 of 6 slots filled — and we say so on the page rather than implying a fuller bench than exists. The /wiki/meta dashboard discloses every cell that is editorial-confidence pending rather than asserting uniform confidence. The methodology §6 page distinguishes catalog-determinism reproducibility from research-claim reproducibility — those are different things and we will not conflate them to inflate the trust signal.

4 · Commercial / editorial firewall (firehose design)

The paid SLA-backed JSON firehose for enterprise compliance teams is the primary planned monetisation. Before any contract is signed, the firewall design below is operative:

• Firehose subscribers receive the same catalog rows available at /wiki/catalog/json, delivered with structured deltas + webhook push + change-of-state metadata. No private content. No private editorial.
• Sales and commercial conversations are handled by the founder + future commercial lead; editorial reviews are handled by the editorial board. Until the board has ≥3 named editors, this firewall is structurally weak (one person wears both hats) and the firehose is not commercially marketed. However, the firehose may launch as a limited paid pilot with one named foundation or regulator partner before the board reaches ≥3, provided: (a) the pilot is disclosed on /wiki/funding §3 within 7 days of contract signing; (b) the pilot customer's identity + the editorial-influence-firewall terms are public; (c) the editorial-board recruitment timeline is published on /wiki/goals with concrete monthly milestones. This decoupling (iter-312) lets product evidence inform board recruitment instead of waiting for board to inform product launch — see board-recruiter Finding #8 in the iter-312 audit transcript for the rationale.
• Firehose contracts do not grant the customer any right to: request a specific instrument be added or removed, request a cell confidence be raised or lowered, embargo a catalog change, or receive advance notice of an editorial position. They grant: machine-readable access, latency SLA, technical support, audit logs.
• Any commercial customer that requests editorial influence (even informally) is recorded on /wiki/funding §3 with the request named, and the contract is reviewed by the editorial board for termination.

5 · Content licensing

Catalog content (article pages, coverage matrix, methodology pages) is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, redistribute, transform, and build upon the content for any purpose including commercial use, provided you attribute it to Policy Window with a link back to the source page and indicate any modifications. Code in the public repository is published under MIT licence.

Quoted primary-source text (e.g. excerpts from the EU AI Act) is reproduced under fair-use / fair-dealing for purposes of comment, criticism, and education; the underlying copyright of quoted text remains with its original holder.

6 · Retraction + correction policy

When a catalog cell is found to be wrong, the response is to file a correction record (CorrectionRecord in the schema) with: the original claim, the corrected claim, the supporting source, and the date of correction. The correction is appended to the catalog row and surfaced on the article footer and on /wiki/changelog. Published article text is never silently mutated; the historical ArticleRevision snapshot remains accessible via ?asOf=<ISO> so readers can audit the change. Major retractions (e.g. removing an entire instrument or topic because the underlying source was misread) get a dedicated changelog entry with rationale.

7 · Out of scope

Policy Window does not, and will not, do the following — these are bright lines, not aspirations:

• Lobbying on behalf of any client, paid or unpaid.
• Political microtargeting, persuasion campaigns, or covert-influence operations.
• Issuing public "failed-reproducibility" verdicts on specific papers without human replication review — see the forthcoming /wiki/reproducibility-policy.
• High-stakes individual decision support (criminal sentencing, asylum determination, medical triage).
• Auto-publication of any output to a public surface without an audited human approval.
• Generating article body prose with an LLM and publishing it as a catalog row.

7.1 · What "no lobbying" does NOT mean

Editorial requests from affected communities are not lobbying. Policy Window accepts requests from civil-society organisations, affected-community networks, regulators, and independent researchers proposing: topic additions, instrument updates, coverage corrections, classification challenges, or new harm-narrative content. Proposals are evaluated on merit — does the primary source exist, does it fit the catalog schema, is there evidence of sufficient demand — not on whether the proposer is currently running a campaign. The proposer's identity is noted in the change record so a reader can see who suggested the change, but the proposer's campaign goals don't determine whether the change ships.

What this rule blocks is different: Policy Window will not author advocacy material, sign open letters as an organisation, take positions in regulatory consultations, publish targeted persuasion content, or otherwise act as a campaigning entity. We catalogue what regulators say, not what they ought to say. See /wiki/for-advocates for the structured contribution path.

7.2 · Disagreement-resolution procedure

Coverage cells, decision-support answers, and editorial classifications can be wrong. When a delegation, civil-society coalition, regulator, or independent researcher disputes a claim, the resolution path is:

1. File a structured challenge via a GitHub issue (or email to editorial@policywindow.org for those without GitHub access) naming: the disputed cell or claim, the proposed alternative, the primary source backing the alternative, and the disputing party's identity + any COI.
2. Initial editorial response within 30 days from the day the challenge is filed. Response is either (a) accept — cell updated, change recorded; (b) reject with reasoning; or (c) escalate to additional editors for review.
3. If escalated: at least 2 editors review, target second-stage response within 60 days. Until the board has ≥3 named editors, escalation reviews require an explicit acknowledgement that no fully-independent panel is yet available; the response will name who reviewed.
4. Published disagreement record:when a substantive disagreement persists after editorial review, it is published on the affected article's footer with both positions and primary sources. This is closer to a Wikipedia talk page than to a unilateral editorial verdict.
5. Auditable trail: the disagreement and its resolution appear in /wiki/changelog tagged disagreement so any third party can verify both the process and the outcome.

7.3 · Editorial independence statement

Policy Window's editorial decisions are made independently of any funder preference, commercial incentive, government interest, or partisan position. Specifically:

• No funder has veto power over article content. Past, current, and future funders are listed on /wiki/funding; if any funder requests editorial influence, the request is logged on the funding page and the contract is reviewed for termination.
• No commercial customer has cell-modification rights. §4 above defines the commercial-editorial firewall. Customer requests for catalog changes are evaluated by the disagreement-resolution procedure (§7.2), not as a commercial term.
• No government, party, or movement has standing preference. The catalog covers binding regulation (EU AIA, China measures), voluntary codes (G7, OECD), frontier-lab voluntary frameworks (Anthropic RSP, OpenAI Preparedness, DeepMind FSF, Meta Frontier), and civil- society work without privileging any sector.
• Editor identity + COI is disclosed. The /wiki/editorial-board page names every editor with their COI; the board is currently in formation (1 of 6 slots filled) and this is disclosed prominently.
• If we fail this commitment, point at it. File a disagreement under §7.2 citing "editorial independence violation" and we'll respond.

8 · How this charter can be amended

The charter is a public commitment, not internal policy. Amendments require: (a) a public PR against this file with rationale, (b) a minimum 14-day review window once the editorial board has ≥3 named editors, (c) a changelog entry naming what changed and why. Until the editorial board reaches ≥3 editors, amendments require a public PR + 14-day window + explicit acknowledgement that no independent review is yet possible.