[Cz-editcouncil] Inviting public comments for Resolution 0014

[Dr.Supten Sarbadhikari]

Dear All,
I am opening the Resolution 014 found at:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Editorial_Council_Resolution_0014
for public discussion for 7 days, i.e., up to March 20, 2009.
Howard will send you the details on where to post the comments at the Forum
and the "Member position statement" pages as also the exact time when the
period of open comments end.
Soliciting cooperation and active participation from all the members of the
CZ EC.
With warmest regards
Supten Sarbadhikari
The Chair, Citizendium Editorial Council

Here are the three Private Comments received by me:
*1. Simon Overduin:*
1) One of the stated rationales for this proposal "is that readers can
use the subgroup categories to focus on articles in their particular
discipline". Is there any evidence to suggest that readers currently
use categories to indirectly search for articles, rather than
searching directly for the article itself? Certainly I have never
thought to do so. At least based on my own experience, the sole
rationale for subgroups would seem to be the benefit it might confer
to editors and possibly authors, not to readers.
2) As currently framed, the other rationales need to be elaborated as
they do not make clear the benefit of the proposal to these editors or
authors. A clear argument for the advantage of subgroups is especially
important given that these subgroups could also complicate, not
simplify, the work of authors (e.g. in categorizing their articles)
and editors (e.g. in deciding who has responsibility for approving a
given article).
3) Both the term and concept of "subgroups" are not ideal if these
groups of people are suppose to span multiple workgroups, rather than
be subsets of individual workgroups. In the same way that "labels"
could become a more preferred organizational tool than hierarchical
"folders" (e.g. with GMail), we may want to apply a similar concept
here. That is, editors and authors and articles could be identified by
a more generous and overlapping set of category tags than is currently
available. Rather than requiring editorial consent to create these
category tags, perhaps these tags could be automatically approved once
they have been tentatively applied to some minimum number of articles,
say 100. Such a requirement would also limit creation of entirely
spurious or redundant category tags (which is a possible problem for
the subgroups as proposed).

*2. David Goodman:*
This needs an amendment about minimum membership. Perhaps 5 editors?
Otherwise it will become to much subject to small clique formation.
I'm not sure how to propose it at this stage, but perhaps those
submitting it will accept it as a friendly change.

*3. Milton Beychok:*
I very much endorse having subgroups implemented in Citizendium. It will be
a very useful navigation tool and it will also encourage the registration of
new users.
For example, we now have an Engineering Workgroup and engineering
encompasses  dozens of disciplines such as mechanical engineers, civil
engineers, electrical and electronic engineers, chemical engineers,
environmental engineers, petroleum engineers, safety engineers, industrial
engineers, traffic engineers, aeronautic and aerospace engineers, etc.
Currently, John Doe. a newcomer  to Citizendium who  is an electrical
engineer seeking informational articles in his discipline can only navigate
to the Engineering Wiorkgroup and must search through the hundreds of
articles there to find those that are devoted to electrical engineering.
When Resolution 0014 is fully implemented, an Electrical Engineering
subgroup can be formed ... and newcomers John Doe can navigate directly and
expeditiously to that subgroup to find the Electrical Engineering articles.
The same is true of the Chemistry Workgroup which also encompasses many
disciplines such as inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical
chemistry, chemical thermodynamics, atmospheric chemistry, nuclear
chemistry, etc. I am sure that the same situation applies to biology,
physics, history, healing arts and many, many other of our current
workgroups.
The pilot Chemical Engineering Subgroup which was created some months ago,
now has 122 articles in it and 18 of those are Approved articles. The pilot
Environmental Engineering Subgroup which was created fairly recently now has
39 articles in it and 5 of them are Approved articles. Thus, it can be said
that the subgroup concept works quite well.
Many of the articles in the Chemical Engineering and Environmental
Engineering subgroups were also categorized (in the article Metadata
templates) in the Physics, Chemistry, and Earth Science workgroups as well
because they are inter-disciplinary and authors from those workgroups did,
in fact, provide some edits and critiques.
In summary, subgroups will serve as a useful navigation tool, encourage
newcomers to register as Citizens and will provide more opportunity for
inter-disciplinary collaboration.
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