[Cz-editcouncil] FW: Article and contributors of the week

[John R Moffett]

Hello All,

This is a good idea. I do not think an editorial council vote is necessary
to start implementing it. This is not about rules and procedures, just about
honoring excellent contributions.

John M.



 

-----Original Message-----
From: cz-editcouncil-bounces at voltaire.citizendium.org
[mailto:cz-editcouncil-bounces at voltaire.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of Larry
Sanger
Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 3:03 AM
To: cz-editcouncil at voltaire.citizendium.org
Subject: [Cz-editcouncil] FW: Article and contributors of the week

Discuss: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1093.0.html

All,

I think we need to place an Article of the Week on the front page.  So I
propose that we start up an Article of the Week program.  I would also like
to start Contributor of the Week and New Contributor of the Week programs.
I am going to assume I don't need to get approval for this from the
Editorial Council; but, just in case, I am cc'ing them in case any of
Editorial Council members would like the Council to discuss and vote on
this.

I think these should work well.  But perhaps you have some ideas of other
such methods of honoring people and work?

I can do the initial planning for this, but I lack the time to get it
started myself.  So I am asking for volunteers to lead the charge.  If
you're interested, go to

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1093.0.html

and declare your interest in helping to organize these programs.  Note, at
least on my proposal, only constables would be able to administer the
contibutor of the week programs.  If no one is interested, the programs just
won't happen.

Here's how I propose these programs should work.

(1) Create a wiki page, one for each program, in which the rules are
explained, the current and former honorees are listed, and the program's
admins are listed.  For the Article of the Week, there is another page in
which nominations are made (see next point).

(2) The rules for selecting the Article of the Week can be fairly simple.
Anyone may make a nomination.  At least for now--while the project is still
small--you may nominate and vote for your own articles.
Nominations are listed alphabetically at first, but then constantly
re-ranked as different items garner different votes.  Moreover, no one may
vote for an article, if he or she has done significant work on the article.
Each Monday, one of the program admins moves the article that is at the top
of the list (i.e., the one with the highest score) to the front page, and
announce it on Citizendium-L.

(3) If an article has not been approved yet, the article of the week is
labelled "Draft of the Week."  The status must be 1 or 2 (i.e., only
"Advanced Articles" may be nominated).

(4) The votes of editors who are voting for an article that is in their area
of expertise ought to have weighted votes: I suggest that their votes are
worth three.  Moreover, any editor may, simply by editing the nomination
list, entirely cancel the nomination of any *unapproved* article in his or
her area of expertise (if, for example, it contains obvious and embarrassing
problems).

(5) How would the "Contributor of the Week" and "New Contributor of the
Week" winners be chosen?  I propose that the Constabulary keep a running
tally of the contributors and new contributors of the week, since they can
keep track of nominations on their own password-protected wiki.  I don't
think we should vote openly for people on the main wiki; it is, obviously,
not seemly that we should vote on and rank the merits of people in such a
crass way.  So nominees are neither listed nor ranked on the main wiki.
Instead, we send our nominations to a special mailing list, operated by
interested constables.  An unlimited number of people can be nominated by a
person in a single mail, but a person may not nominate himself.  Then, on
the (private) Constable Wiki, participating constables record votes in a way
similar to the Article of the Week.  A nominated person needs at least three
votes to receive the honor; this means that three different people need to
nominate the same person *independently*, since no one will but constables
will know who's been nominated so far.  I suggest that that really *is* an
honor, far more than open (more gamable, politicizable) voting.  Note,
constables are bound to secrecy not only about how many votes have been
received, but also about who has been nominated.  Each Wednesday, the new
winners are announced on Citizendium-L and the Project Home page.  Old
winners are archived on the main wiki.

(6) We say that the Contributor of the Week should be chosen based on this
criterion: remarkable service to the Citizendium project, either in terms of
content contributed, constable or other administrative work, or helping the
project in some other important way.  Non-Citizens may be nominated; in that
case, the honorific is Honorary Citizen of the Week.

(7) We say that the New Contributor of the Week should be chosen on the
basis of things we love about new contributors, such as large amounts of
work ("diving right in"), boldness, getting involved right away.

(8) I don't propose that editor votes count for any more than author votes,
when it comes to selecting the contributors of the week.

(9) Someone can be a New Contributor of the Week only once.  A person can be
a Contributor of the Week only every n months; perhaps n=3; similarly with
the Article of the Week, except that perhaps n=6.  n will increase as we
gain more good articles and contributors.

(10) I suggest that special subpages of CZ:COTW (for "Contributor of the
Week"--do we want to write that out?) and of CZ:NCOTW be written honoring
the person, explaining what we are honoring them for, and perhaps including
a quotation or short interview.  But my suggestion is entirely contingent on
whether we have a FIRM COMMITMENT from the participating Constables to write
such pages on a weekly basis.
Otherwise, we simply link to the person's user page.

(11) Redesign the main page in order to include the article of the week.
(Again, I invite you all to work on making the main page simpler and more
elegant.  I've recently simplified it myself.  Still Needs Work.)

(12) Post the Contributor of the Week and New Contributor of the Week on
Project Home, which by the way is going to become increasingly important, as
we have moved many links off the main page and the sidebar.  I would prefer
not to list the contributors of the week on the front page, because we want
to focus on content, not community, on the front page--and the honor of
being a contributor of a week is of interest mainly to our community, not to
the average non-contributing reader.

(13) To be clear, anybody may sign up to be an admin of the Article of the
Week program.  He may do so on the CZ:AOTW page itself (which does not yet
exist yet, so don't go looking for it).

Questions, objections, additions to the policy, and other discussion
here:

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1093.0.html

--Larry

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