openaustralia/publicwhip

* **Allow for as little interpretation as possible**. *“For healthy children”* is a bad example because it is a matter of opinion how a specific divisions relates to it. We could argue all day about it. *“For increasing funding to university education”* is a good example because it is easier to know how a supporter would have voted in relevant divisions.

* **Be specific.** Aim for a policy that can't be broken down into other policies. If it can be, maybe you should split it up. There are exceptions where it could be useful to have overlapping policies.

* **Don’t duplicate.** Check the [policies page](/policies) to see if the policy you are thinking of exists. The opposite of a policy is not necessarily a policy. For example “For maintaining a price on carbon” and “For removing a price on carbon” will probably produce inverted results and so have limited new value for people viewing the site.

* **Check whether relevant divisions exist.** All policies should have existing divisions that relate to them. For example, “Make Australia a Republic” doesn't work well as there haven't been any relevant divisions during the period currently covered by <%= Settings.project_name %> (<%= formatted_month(Division.date_earliest_division) %> – present).

* **Don't be shy**. These policies belong to everyone. If you believe that a policy is wrongly voting on divisions or is ill-defined, fix it.