CZ:Editorial Council Resolution 0014/Member position statements

Rules

This page contains the official positions of Citizendium Editorial Council Members about Editorial Council Resolution 0014.

The governing rules for discussion are found at Editorial Council Rules of Procedure. The following are reminders.

• Council Members should place their comments, limited to 600 words maximum, underneath their names on this page. Comments will be ordered based on when they first appeared on this page; new comments should simply be appended to the bottom.

• Members may edit their comments throughout the discussion period.

• Each Member will be required to read this page before voting.

• There are other methods of commentary on the resolution, but no commentary is required reading for Members other than this page.

• This page will be closed for editing when voting begins.

• The closing date for position statements can be found on the resolution page and will be announced on cz-editcouncil, followed by reminders. Note that Members may move to extend discussion.

Original Member position statements

Milton Beychok

This proposal is long overdue and I endorse having subgroups implemented in Citizendium. It will be a useful navigation tool and will also encourage the registration of new users.

For example, we have an Engineering Workgroup that encompasses dozens of disciplines such as mechanical engineers, civil engineers, electrical and electronic engineers, chemical engineers, environmental engineers, petroleum engineers, safety engineers, industrial engineers, aeronautic and aerospace engineers, etc.

Currently, John Doe, a newcomer to Citizendium who is an electrical engineer seeking articles in his discipline can only navigate to the Engineering Wiorkgroup and must search through the hundreds of articles there to find any devoted to electrical engineering. When Resolution 0014 is implemented, an Electrical Engineering subgroup can be formed ... and newcomers John Doe can navigate directly to that subgroup to find Electrical Engineering articles.

The same is true of the Chemistry Workgroup which encompasses disciplines such as inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, chemical thermodynamics, atmospheric chemistry, etc. I am quite 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, created some months ago, now has 122 articles and 18 of those are Approved articles. The pilot Environmental Engineering Subgroup, 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 articles in the Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering subgroups are also categorized (in their 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, critiques and collaboration.

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. Milton Beychok 20:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Howard Berkowitz

I saw it work in Chemical Engineering, but have been trying to understand how else to use it. One area is Military History, where it's sometimes hard to tell if something formally comes under academic history, but certainly was a military event of the past.

By establishing subgroups, it is now possible to go to some of the decent Projects at The Other Place (e.g., Military History Project, which has subordinate Task Forces such as Intelligence), and offer the idea of expert-assisted work in areas where they fight vandalism. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)