CZ Talk:Approval Process

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Draft Approval Process For discussion

The meaning of editorial approval. Editors may approve Citizendium articles, i.e., certify that they meet article standards. When an editor approves of an article, he or she is explicitly claiming that that particular version of the article meets those standards, and that he is willing to stake his professional reputation on that claim. The relevant standards are outlined in Approval standards.

An author of an article is anyone who has made a significant contribution to the content of an article, rather than a contribution that is confined to copy editing, stylistic adjustments etc. Any author may, at any time, seek approval for an article that he or she has been contributing to, but may not approve that article himself or herself.

Approval thus requires the involvement of an editor, expert in the relevant field, and who has not contributed significantly to the article content. To secure the involvement of an editor, an author may approach any CZ editor with relevant expertise, or might place a call for approval on the relevant Workgroup page. A call for approval should be made when an article is approaching a state that the authors believe to be adequate, but not necessarily in a final polished state. The call for approval should be indicated by a 'call for approval' tag placed at the top of the article Talk page. An editor who accepts in principle the role of approving an article under development should also indicate this at the top of the Article Talk page.

The approving editor should place comments intended as editorial guidance at the top of the Talk page. These comments should address conditions still to be met before the article can be approved.

When the editor believes that the article is fit for approval, he or she should simply place an Approval Tag at the top of the article page. (When the software has been written to permit this, we will want to display the latest approved versions of articles to users by default, rather than the latest unapproved version.)

Not done yet

I'm finished editing this page for now. I'll be adding more info hopefully tomorrow. --Larry Sanger 03:01, 21 December 2006 (CST)

A couple of points:

1) Involving copyeditors (informally)

I would most definitely take this beyond a voluntary step. I think articles need to be signed off on by the Chief Copyeditor, his or her designees, the Copyediting Workgroup, whatever. Make that a required step in the article approval process. We can be utterly certain, for example, that the likes of Britannica have that as an essential step in their workflow. Thus

From Author(s) --> To Copyedit "department" --> To Editorial "department" for approval --> To Sysops for placement of the Approved template

It is only in this way that all CZ articles will be appropriately standardized, tallying to a unified "feel" of the aggregate product. Without it, articles will appear (and probably actually be) uneven in style, if only because editors may interpret differently or unevenly apply copyediting standards, or because some really are better writers than others. Moreoever, onlookers of the project, such as librarians and academics, will look upon such an additional step very favorably. The keyword in articles going from authoring to final approval should be rigor. This step adds importantly to that. It is a detail the importance of which ought not be minimized.

2) Who may nominate

At least in my reading, this is currently unclear in this policy. If authors can nominate articles for approval, then state so specifically within a brief section under the heading Who may nominate.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Stephen Ewen 00:36, 15 January 2007 (CST)

Stephen:

Re (1), please see the section of the Forums about copyediting. That's where to put this. But here's why I at least have been slow to add any copyediting requirement. We certainly wouldn't want any single person to have to approve articles for copyediting (what a bottleneck), and even any one of a large group of people officially having to approve the article's copyediting would tend to slow the approval process down far too much. Bear in mind that wiki editing, particularly when approval is going on, is a very open, public process, and, in time, I think you're going to see boatloads of people offering far too many copyediting suggestions (and making many minor, conflicting copyedits) when approval time approaches. The result will be quite good--not perfect, perhaps, but large, dynamic collaborations cannot be in the business of perfectionism without grinding their processes to a halt.

Re (2), perhaps all that needs to be said is that to nominate is to approve, and only editors may approve. Authors may not nominate. --Larry Sanger 09:55, 15 January 2007 (CST)

as per Larry's request

I tried to edit the page to reflect our Biology article experience. I do have a question- what happens to the old approved biology (and by inference-other articles being replaced by new editions).? Are they archived? In this case there is very little difference between the editions, but I can imagine cases where the preceding and newly current edition might be extremely different. I think we should have a way to save them so that they are easily retrievable.Nancy Sculerati MD 17:49, 25 January 2007 (CST)

It happens I worked on the what I have just dubbed "re-approval" section just before reading this, and before actually discovering that Larry has done a very good job spelling out the distinctions between sysop permissions and Constable roles and responsibilities , a clarification which significantly improves the practical and ethical guidance in the approval process page so that difficulties like the recent editing glitches in Biology (which I was in the middle of) can be avoided in the future.

I have used the term "re-approval" deliberately because I have found the mechanics of a second approval are trickier than the first.

In that section I map out a proposal for placing version records at the top of the talk pages, and in it it is suggested that the urls to the source versions are kept in an area at the top of the talk page. Also annotation of the sysop saves of newly form re-approved articles is suggested.

These steps (or similar ones), will automatically preserve an index to old approved versions in the history logs, which are automatically preserved anyway - meeting Nancy's request - thanks to the nice properties of the Mediawiki history log (I know that Larry and others will realize this, but us newbies often don't).

These and similar procedural-ethical precedents that we are establishing seem to me to go to the heart of making CZ what we want it to be David Tribe 15:58, 28 January 2007 (CST)

Tags in the history log

In the forum Chris Day has opened up discussion of A and N , W and X tag fields used in the history logs . I assume these tags are being used by sysops, and think guidance should be expanded in this document. David Tribe 16:30, 29 January 2007 (CST)

Approval Timeframe

The timeframe policy is currently,

For DATE TO APPROVE, write down the day after tomorrow, or perhaps better a few days after that if to allow time for completion of last minute copyedits. You must give others at least 24 full hours to examine the article after you have placed the ToApprove template.

David Still has suggested that we give people more time to evaluate nominated articles, and I agree that 24 hours (the minimum) doesn't seem like very much time at all. Do people see it as important that this process be fast, or can we afford to give people more time to comment? How about 3 days (72 hours)? --Mike Johnson 21:17, 3 February 2007 (CST)

Redirecting the talk page as part of the approval process?

This discussion has been pasted here from Talk:Biology and User talk:Chris day

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Below from Talk:Biology:

As part of our approval process, we should redirect Talk:Approved article to Talk:Approved article/Draft, to avoid discussion being carried on in two places. Shouldn't we? Unless you have worked out a different solution (tell me if you have, please!), may I ask someone to (1) create an archive (see User talk:Larry Sanger for an example) of this page, (2) place both a link to that archive and the most recent entries from this page on Talk:Biology/Draft, and (3) entirely replace the contents of Talk:Biology (i.e., this page), which should have been copied either to the archive or to Talk:Biology/Draft, with this: #REDIRECT [[Talk:Biology/Draft]] For extra credit, update the article approval process page with these steps.  :-) Of course, if you have some way of understanding what goes on Talk:Biology and Talk:Biology/Draft, and you want to make that a general rule for the whole of CZ, please enlighten me! --Larry Sanger 16:00, 20 February 2007 (CST) Larry, check Talk:RNA interference talk. That's the way David had me do the last one. Matt Innis (Talk) 16:09, 20 February 2007 (CST) It's better to have a redirect page the problem with a note directing people to the new talk page is that some users will not notice it. Chris Day (Talk) 16:19, 20 February 2007 (CST) [edit clash] I prefer having one talk page only. With respect to the archive, I suggest we use the move function to preserve the edit history of this page at the archive too. This is important since any links to this page will automatically be redirected to the appropriate archive page. Currently there is already one archive for biology, but it was only cut and pasted from this talk page. The edit history for those edits are still associated with this page. I suggest we move this whole page to Talk:Biology Archive 1. Then copy and paste the content from Talk:Biology_archive_1 to the top of the new archive at Talk:Biology Archive 1. Then we should delete the old archive. Any continuing discussion can then be transfered to the Talk:Biology/Draft page. Chris Day (Talk) 16:15, 20 February 2007 (CST) So, am I right that there just isn't any rhyme or reason to the current confusing situation? --Larry Sanger 16:29, 20 February 2007 (CST) Yes, you're right. In the long term it is not viable to have two talk pages for every approved article. Once the approval has occured the article talk page should be archived and redirected to the draft talk page AND fully protected so it cannot be changed at a later date. If you unlock the move function then we can proceed. Unless others have a strong argument for not doing this? Chris Day (Talk) 16:39, 20 February 2007 (CST) It's fine with me. Nancy Sculerati MD 16:44, 20 February 2007 (CST) Sounds perfect. That way future editors will still have access to previous discussions and decisions on the same page and no-one will make the mistake of posting on the wrong page. I would ask that you outline the steps well for those of us who have do it. Matt Innis (Talk) 18:52, 20 February 2007 (CST)

Below from User talk:Chris day:

We could consider naming the archive "Version1" rather than "Archive1" because it is feasible that we will have archives of talk pages that are not associtiated with the saved version. Matt Innis (Talk) 18:58, 20 February 2007 (CST) So you think the talk page should be archived after every approved version? That might be a good idea, although this might result in very short archives? Maybe it is best to not have the archives linked to each version but have a visible marker to mark the points in the discussion that each archive occurred. Something along the lines of the following: Discussion for Version 1.2 stopped here. Please continue further discussion under this break. This would make it possible to associate the discussion with various versions without fragmenting the discussion into small packets. Chris Day (Talk) 19:13, 20 February 2007 (CST) That would work! That way the history of the decisions will be related to the versions that are associated with them. I know that Biology probably won't change much, but I can see how a controversial subject such as acupuncture or pseudoscience could end up going through some long discussions without making significant changes to the articles. That would work. Matt Innis (Talk) 19:30, 20 February 2007 (CST)

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Does this sound like a good plan? If so I will write a procedure into this help page. Chris Day (Talk) 19:49, 20 February 2007 (CST)

A suggestion

As the number of CZ articles, authors, and editors grows, it will be increasingly more cumbersome for authors to find the appropriate editors to approve particular articles. At the same time, it will be harder and harder for editors to keep track of all of the articles that might be approaching the approval stage.

I think we need a system by which authors can easily bring good content to the attention of editors with relevant expertise. A template (or maybe just a category) would do the job, I think. An author would insert the template with relevant workgroups. The article would then show up in a category of author-nominated articles that would be browseable by editors from the proper workgroups.

This way, I don't have to look through the bio page for each and every author in a workgroup to find the right person to approve an article. And an editor doesn't have to check every article that might conceivably fall under her area of expertise.

Thoughts? --Joe Quick (Talk) 16:54, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

I agree this is important. Above Larry says that authors may not nominate an article of approval. On the other hand adding the {{ToApprove}} may well be the best way to recruit editors. Rather than have a seperate proceedure for attracting editors why not just let authors use the ToApprove template? Chris Day (talk) 17:10, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, if we allow authors to use the ToApprove template, then we will eventually have to deal with a nomination that makes it to the deadline without an editor having seen it. It would then be automatically approved without an editor's input. (Is that right?) We don't want to deal with that, so I think it would probably be best to keep the two stages separate. --Joe Quick (Talk) 18:12, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Link to approval standards

At the moment, the section "When and how to use the {{ToApprove}} template" starts with the sentence

An approving editor (or "approver") should be of the considered opinion that the article satisfies the Citizendium article approval standards.

where the phrase "article approval standards" links to Citizendium Pilot:Policy Outline#Article Standards. Should this link instead point to CZ:Approval Standards? I'm asking because the way I read those pages, Citizendium Pilot:Policy Outline#Article Standards sets a much higher standard than CZ:Approval Standards. I'm assuming that the former is the ideal to which all articles should strive (like an A grade), while the latter is what is needed to be approved (like a pass grade). However, I'm hesitant to make the change. -- Jitse Niesen 07:55, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

approve article, not talk?

When I added the ToApprove template to the talk page of complex number, as directed, the "articles to approve" special page lists Talk:Complex number as the one needing approval. Code glitch? or did I do it wrong? - Greg Martin 20:09, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

This has been the convention, it's been added to the talk page, since usually that's where discussions about approvals have been and I think there were occaisons where -when put on the article- it was missed by the "talkers". Of course, putting it on the talk page leads to the silly list of talk pages up for approval. If you like though, we can put it on both the article and the talk page - or just the article. What do you think? Now's the time to set these conventions. Nancy Sculerati 20:38, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

The problem is: when the template is put on the talk page, then it's the talk page that's added to the "articles to approve" category and listed when that category is viewed. It really means the article, not the talk page, is being nominated. I think it's a relatively minor problem we can just get used to (at least until maybe special software is set up or something). An alternative would be to put one template on the talk page and at the same time a different template on the article page. The template on the article page could be invisible and just add the page to the category. This might cause problems if people made mistakes and didn't add or remove the two templates at the same time. --Catherine Woodgold 18:38, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

meaning of "worked on"

It says "If the editor has worked on it herself, she asks another editor to approve it; or, if there are several editors all doing significant work on the article, then at least three of them can agree to approve it." I think this needs to be reworded or clarified. To me, "worked on it" sounds as if it includes doing any edits to the article, even minor ones. --Catherine Woodgold 18:43, 30 April 2007 (CDT)