sitegov

Sitegov is a governance framework designed to guide the management and policy-making of online sites and networks, including community portals, government portals, and multi-site ecosystems. It emphasizes formalized processes for decision making, accountability, and stakeholder engagement to balance open participation with site reliability and safety.

Core components include governance model (centralized, distributed, or hybrid), roles and responsibilities (site administrators, moderators, community representatives, and end users), decision mechanisms (policy proposals, consultations, voting or delegated authority), and enforcement mechanisms (moderation, sanctions).

Policies typically cover content standards, privacy and data handling, accessibility, security, and interoperability. Sitegov encourages versioned policy development, public discussion, and transparent logs of decisions.

Implementation can be adapted to small communities or large federated networks. It often relies on tools such as code of conduct, issue trackers, governance charters, audit trails, and compliance dashboards. Open standards and APIs facilitate interoperability between sites.

History and adoption: The concept emerged with the growth of online communities and the need for structured governance beyond informal moderation. Various communities have adopted site governance frameworks to manage content, elections, and resource distribution.

See also: platform governance, digital governance, community moderation.