[Cz-editcouncil] private comments on Res. 0012

Mon Jul 7 11:07:54 CDT 2008

Dear EC member,

Resolution 0012 is now closed for private comments. Below is listed a compendium of comments received on Res. 0012, in reverse order of receipt.

With best wishes

Martin Baldwin-Edwards
Secretary
CZ Editorial Council

Larry Sanger:
This policy has been a long time coming, and it enjoys the broad support of the Executive Committee.  Here is why.  Our list of editors is mostly self-selecting and constantly growing.  They do not compose an Editorial Board, but instead a list of our editors.  Now, if this were a traditional publishing project, and a list of editors were the people officially hand-picked to be responsible for the project, that would be one thing.  But since CZ editors are self-selecting and because we impose no requirements on them, they are in a more tenuous relation with us.  A list of people who have been accepted for editorship by us is a fairly meaningless dataset, because it is very easy to sign up for an editor account and then do nothing.  And, unfortunately, that is all too often the case.  Editors who have been long inactive are not really CZ editors in the most meaningful, expected sense: people who actually do editorial work on CZ.  We should make main displayed list of editors more meaningful.  But we also want to make it easy for an inactive editor to become active.  Therefore, the basic proposal is to move all inactive editors (we can quibble about the definition of "inactive editor") to an "Inactive CZ Editors" category, and to allow them to move themselves back to the "CZ Editors" category as soon as they begin work (again, perhaps).  As for the label "Inactive," that is simply truth in advertising; we should not use "Advisory," for the quite simple reason that inactive editors almost never do advise us.  I'd be open to other labels, however.

k kay shearin:
This proposal piles pretension on top of pretense.  No matter how you
slice it, participating in CZ is a hobby, and the decision to list
hobbies on your résumé at all says more about you than whether you list
stamp collecting or working with retarded children.  The only
significant difference between claiming some title (such as "scribe"
or "jongleur") in the Society for Creative Anachronism and the title
of "editor" in CZ is that anyone who cares to can review (the quantity
and quality of) your participation in CZ on-line.  (I picture a
situation reminiscent of the "but then you STRENUOUSLY objected" scene
in "A Few Good Men" with a potential employer wanting to hire someone
based on their being a CZ editor and then deciding not to because
they're labeled "inactive.")  For its leaders to pretend that CZ is
anything but an avocation will do more to undermine its credibility than
to bolster it:  (a) Does it harm or enhance Harvard's reputation when
someone who didn't go there claims to be its graduate?  (b) Not being
able to distinguish reality from rôle-playing is not only a liability,
instead of an asset, when seeking employment/advancement/recognition but
also (and probably because it is) a symptom of a mental problem.

Gary Giamboi:
I have the following concern about placing quotas on editors: (BTW, the following is based upon my assumption that the editor's must make edits as editors and not just make edits which anyone can make. If I am mistaken, please tell me.) Some of the categories do not have enough articles in them to warrant placing a quota on the editors. For example, as of this moment, there are no articles waiting for approval in my category, Sports; and, there is only one draft article. There are nine editors. If all nine wished to keep their status, how many of them would be forced to edit the same article(s) in a short period of time? Also, in very broad categories, there may not be enough articles in the specific area of expertise of each editor to make this limitation justifiable.

I would rather see some kind of measure of an editor's (or any position's) contributions as a whole used as a measure of worthiness. I consider this similar to giving an author, musician, etc. a contractual deadline to produce X amount of work. It will only insure Quantity, not Quality.

If a particular work group has an unjustifiably large number of articles waiting for an editor to do something and nothing is getting done, then the editors in that group should be evaluated. So perhaps we need a committee to keep tabs on the article queue and editors in each work group.

Andrew Fleisher:
In my opinion, Resolution 0012 could use some structural and grammatical cleanup. Here are my five cents worth. (That's the smallest currency we have here in Oz.)

I attempted NOT to change the intent of the original author.

+++++++++

Whereas, the position of Citizendium Editor should indicate a desire to contribute to Citizendium rather than merely the effort to create a Citizendium account;

Whereas, Some Editors have not contributed to the project; 

Resolved,         

·        That a Citizendium Editor shall be deemed to be active if they have either edited CZ in the previous three months, or performed more than 500 edits in the previous year.

·        That if a Citizendium editor is not active, any Citizen may change the Editor's "CZ Editor" categories to "Inactive CZ Editor" categories.

·        That the Editor-in-Chief can review and/or reverse such actions at his discretion under rare circumstances.

·        That an Editor will be empowered to delete the word "Inactive" him- or herself, once he or she has edited CZ.

For instance, the category on an editor's user page might be changed from Category:Chemistry Editors to Category:Inactive Chemistry Editors.

Comments on the proposal:
1. Has the term "Citizen" been formally defined? If it has not, we should not use it in the Resolution, or should define it.
2. This resolution will facilitate a person who has deceased no longer being an "active Editor". What process do we have in place to have an account deleted due to long-term inactivity, which could indicate death (or other situations I guess)?

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