CZ:Nomination page/Editorial Council/Howard C. Berkowitz

I came to Citizendium in May 2008, and was not shy about starting. Initially, I was a Computers, Military and Engineering Editor, and later became a History and Politics Editor. Not that it’s a crushing burden, but I am current Secretary of the Editorial Council. I served on the Charter Committee.

If I should be honored with election to both the Editorial and Management Committees, I shall accept the Editorial role.

My background is well detailed on my User Page, but I’ll comment that my most satisfying professional work has been interdisciplinary and collaborative.

While I don’t really keep count, I believe I have contributed at least 2,000 articles. In addition to my Editor fields, I write frequently in Health Sciences, and a variety of other subjects from Food Sciences (which I prefer to call Food) and Visual Arts. I have been a nominating Editor for a number of Approved articles, and I have at least two of which I was the primary author –- many more are approval-ready, in my opinion, but as the only active Military Editor, there was no one to sponsor them.

I promise to examine each issue, which comes to the Editorial Council, on its own merits, but I quite freely admit I have some strong beliefs on merit. Oversimplifying, I'm sure, but I believe there are two main views of a future for Citizendium. One sees breadth, and inclusion of every idea, as most important. The other is less concerned with number of articles, but sees the special contribution of Citizendium in providing contextualization, expert verification, and synthesis. Perhaps someone wiser than I can reconcile the two, and there would be far less of a conflict if expert resources were infinite. In the near term, however, they are quite constrained. Expert recruitment is among my highest priorities.

We have to face hard facts until we reach a much more critical mass, and among those facts is that diverting resources to metadiscussions that do not improve articles, or trying to find nonexistent common ground between essentially faith-based sides of an issue, is what one inactive but distinguished Citizen called a "time sink."

To put it in medical terms, for a period of critical growth, we have to practice triage. I think that's a much better term than "inclusionism" or "deletionism".

Workgroups, as established, were a good first attempt that have demonstrated problems. They are far too broad, in almost every case, for an Editor in a field to reasonably be expert in every subject of that workgroup. Some very legitimate subjects (e.g., social work, international relations, strategic intelligence) do not neatly fit into any single workgroup. So, one of the first projects is to work on a better taxonomy of knowledge, which, in turn, will improve the expert selection process.

I won't try to solve the taxonomy problem here, but I can say that I have experience with other methods, such as keyword-based systems such as MEDLINE, Anglo-American Cataloging Rules in library science, and great interest in emerging semantic and other models.

In passing, I will state flatly that the Healing Arts Workgroup, and especially homeopathy has become a travesty; the Religion workgroup manages to encompass atheism, the Politics workgroup can deal with anarchy, and the Military workgroup can address noncombatants. I am a firm supporter of the comment of Marcia Angell, past editor of the New England Journal of Medicine: “there are two kinds of medicine: medicine that works and medicine that does not work.”

I make no excuse that I favor a scientific, preponderance of expert opinion view of the content of Citizendium. While, in an ideal world of unconstrained resources, perhaps there would be more of a place for “fringe” topics, I note that they quickly turn into battlegrounds. To my direct knowledge, very well qualified people have refused to join Citizendium because, rightly or wrongly, they perceive it as fringe-friendly. I do not support articles on conspiracy theories being introduced, and it becoming the job of the non-advocates to disprove them. Scopes.com does an excellent job on debunking; everyone has a specialty.

Once the knowledge model is clarified, we can improve the guidance both for selecting and for guiding Editors. I have no precise formula, but various suggestions need to be examined. It concerns me that one may register as an Editor, indeed be a subject matter expert, but have no experience with lower-case-e editing conventions at Citizendium – yet have authority over them. We have gained a great deal of experience in judging expertise, although some of the criteria have tended to apply formal academic criteria to fields not especially academic in practice. I also believe that work here as an Author, judged accurate by established Editors, should be a possible route to Editor status.

Some suggestions have been made about my views on majority voting, and I want to make clear what they actually are. A majority vote, on a clear and actionable proposal, should be accepted. If, however, the proposal is only at the level of broad principles, it must not cut off thoughtful reexamination. No majority vote should exclude the subsequent presentation and consideration of refined views, introduced properly as motions.

I think my record of contributions, both of articles and edits, indicate I will be an activist.