Mission, Principles

This page describes our mission and principles

Our Mission

Our Principles

1. We are a global community of volunteers working together to serve the common good.
2. We are not-for-profit. We do not charge for our information or services. We do not allow ads except in our Marketplace.
3. We regularly and sincerely thank our volunteers for their efforts to serve the common good.
4. We are open and accountable. All our plans, site changes and financial information are available for everyone to read and comment on.
5. We focus on substance rather than style.
6. We include science/evidence-based information.
7. We make our web site dead simple to use.
8. We ask for our visitor's feedback, make it easy for them to give it, thank them for it, make changes based on it and strive every day to serve them better.
9. We do not collect, store or divulge information about our visitors or their visits to our web site.
10. We do divulge information about our volunteers unless they authorize it.
11. We never send unsolicited e-mails.
12. We acknowledge receipt of our visitor's e-mails immediately and respond to them within 24 hours.
13. We add new information such as quotes, links, terms and news every day.
14. We flag new information ("New Dec 12") for 72 hours so our visitors can find it easily if they can't visit our web site every day.
15. We remove time sensitive information on conferences, events, workshops, retreats, vacations, etc. within 24 hours of the day it becomes obsolete.
16. We remove obsolete information such as ads for products that have been sold within 24 hours.
17. We fix or remove broken links within 24 hours.
18. We are obsessive about consistency, simplicity and clarity and fanatic about doing the fundamentals perfectly.
19. We make our information easy to read by using one font, one effect (bold), large text, increased space between lines, limited line width and dark gray text on a white background.
20. We write directly to our visitors using polite, personal, everyday language.
21. We spell check and proofread everything before it is posted to our web site to eliminate spelling errors, typos and grammatical errors.
22. We validate all HTML before it is posted to our web site to eliminate broken tags, missing tags and errors in presentation.
23. We use real people in our pictures rather than improbably young, slim, beautiful/handsome models.
24. We ensure our web site runs correctly on the current and two previous releases of Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari and on the operating systems Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and Max OS X.
25. Where there is a standard, we use it. Where there isn't, we work with others to develop one. Where the standard is a poor standard, we work with others to make it better.
26. We use English as our working language.
27. We give both metric (cm, meter) and Imperial (inch, foot) measurements.
28. We use the Gregorian Calendar with dates in the format "Dec 12, 2011".
29. We use Open Source software wherever we can since we have a limited budget and it is free and often excellent.