[Cz-editcouncil] Inviting Public Comments for Resolution 0006

[Dr. S N Sarbadhikari]

Dear All,
This is to inform all that the Resolution 0006 has been closed for private
comments. 4 Comments have been received. I am placing them in the page on
Member position statements (after the Server is up from Routine
Maintenance).
Now it is open for public discussion in the forum
[http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1241.0.html] for 7 days.-
i.e., up to Friday October 05, 2007, 04:30 hrs UTC. EC Members may please
record their formal positions at
[http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Editorial_Council_Resolution_0006/Member_position_statements].
With warmest regards
Supten Sarbadhikari
Secretary, Editorial Council
Chair for the Motion as Larry is Sponsoring it.

The 4 Initial (Private) Comments received:-
1. David Shapinsky
Supten - The argument for this is very straightforward and I favor the
resolution. As with so many things, however, the question will be how to
manage the submissions, assuming they become numerous. And there is also
the question of style, consistency, etc. I know that all of us wish to
have Citizendium achieve the highest possible quality. That is a huge task
in itself. I would merely ask what impact this initiative might have on
the overall project - and whether this is where we should put our
resources at this time? I, myself, do not have an answer or a clear sense
of how well we are meeting our goals. That said I support the ideas
embodied in the resolution completely. ~Cheers David

2. David Goodman
I strongly object to this as in opposition to our fundamental goals.
Our goal is to make a reliable encyclopedia, not run a open site.
this is meant to attract people who may want to participate in the
encyclopedia--a worthy goal--but it does so by asking them to
contribute content that may be unsuitable for an free encyclopedia, or
any encyclopedia at all, to a site under our sponsorship and linked to
what we propose as reliable.
In particular i object to:
1. "License. You specify the license. If you do not, we will treat the
article as being exclusively copyrighted by you." Although we have not
decided on our license, we certainly are not considering one that will
no permit the reuse of content at all. I think we are not considering
one more restrictive than attribution no-commerical use, and we should
not accept content less free than that.
2. "Add...Category:WYA CZ no to indicate that we may not use it." How
does this even potentially help us build our real  encyclopedia?
3. "Business owners may write introductory articles about their
businesses. " This is providing a directory site, or a site for
advertising. What does this have to do with our goals. it's the
opposite of what we came her for.
4."You may make your article an introduction to yourself and your own
life. This project does not have a 'notability" or "maintainability'
policy". Again, the opposite of our purpose.
5."External links (including links to your own writings) are
permissible." Are we trying to compete with Facebook? They do it
better.
Everything here will presumable be searchable. Everything here will
come up on google with our project name attached or implied.
I think the publicity in this will either kill the project, or take
over the project entirely. Those who wish to do this should do it is a
way not associated with us. I have no opposition to the idea per se. I
do oppose it being connected with Citizendium. I thought we came here
to do just the opposite--a better and more reliable source of
information than wikipedia, not a worse. ~David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

3. Gary Giamboi
Dear Supten, I think this is a great idea. I would like to know how we
will handle articles with the same title? I wish you Health, Happiness,
Peace & Prosperity, Gary Giamboi

4. Larry Sanger
My statement: Briefly, the main arguments for these initiatives are (1)
they have the potential to attract a very large number of new
contributors, some from Wikipedia, some from elsewhere; and (2) "What's
Your Article?" has the potential to create a lot of new, high-quality (the
best people can do--which is usually quite good) articles, which might
serve as first drafts. The hope is that the open, inviting nature of the
program, together with personal recognition, will lead participants to
tell their friends about us, who will tell their friends, and so forth. A
large portion of this (hopefully) expanding body of contributors will make
their way into the main project. If I am right, CZ can benefit from the
same sort of peer-to-peer viral networking that builds social networking
sites like FaceBook. This differs from the Google-mediated viral growth
that built Wikipedia, and which we have experienced only to a limited
extent so far. Do bear in mind that none of these articles will be placed
in the main namespace; they should be very easy to distinguish from
regular articles and subpages. We may use a special template to achieve
this distinctive look. I think it's definitely worth a try, and I see
little downside. --Larry