CZ:Policies/Proposed Citizendium Policy Article 7 Details

This adjunct document includes a more extensive discussion of the Article 7 bullet items in the Policies/Proposed_Citizendium_Policy_Changes_2020.

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Article 7a: Allowing lead authors on an article, and allowing multiple articles on a given topic

Lead authors

A lead author is one who has a temporary license to determine an article’s structure, content, and style. Leads can generally be identified implicitly via an article's History. For example, an author who edits a lot on a new article or on one that has been otherwise mostly unchanged recently (within, say, 3 months), must be regarded informally to be the lead for that article. Leads may also be declared intentionally. For inexperienced authors, something as simple as declaring one's desire to lead an article in the article's Talk page can be used, after checking History to make sure no one else is already active there. Experienced writers could use either of two existing templates (Authors or Contribs) to list lead authors for the main article. Collaborators may (with permission from a lead) convert implicit leads to explicitly identified ones. No matter the mechanism, collaboration from others is always welcomed and encouraged, keeping in mind the special role of any lead(s) who are currently guiding the article.

Multiple articles about one topic

Multiple articles on one topic are already allowed in Citizendium, but only if done in certain ways. We propose adding a third method as an option when the two common methods of collaboration-by-division may not be working well enough—but it would generally be considered a last resort after the other two methods are ruled out as not appropriate for the case at hand. The three methods are:

Subpages

Subpages tend to work well in cases where a subordinate relationship exists between the main article and the subpages (shown as tabs to the right of the main article), but they have limitations in their use. Experienced authors have learned to break a large topic down into multiple pieces by using the subpages directive to create extra tabs on the article. Several types of manually created subpages may be used to segregate related long lists, catalogs or timelines, or perhaps to expand upon some aspect of the main article. However, subpage tabs must have a single word as their title, and creating new types of subpage tabs beyond those already in use is tricky (though theoretically possible). Examples of manually created subpages include:

• Civil society makes full and extensive use of subpages, including some uncommon ones.
• Acting/Catalogs Acting/Catalogs, an alphabetized, segmented list of actors under Acting
• Catalog of U.S. Presidents. under President of the United States of America, a list of Presidents in sequential order..
• See how, in the still developing Pali Canon article, the lead author is using an Addendum subpage.

Divide by using variants in terminology

Randomly dividing a topic has also been done a lot, sometimes motivated by a desire to curtail length of a main topic, and sometimes to carve out writing turf for a different authors (which is, perhaps, less desirable in the long run in terms of presenting a topic in an optimal way). Organizing these random divisions is not used consistently; sometimes the "Related Articles" subpage is used to relate them to a main topic, other times not. Sometimes it works well, but arguably at other times it results in fractured, scattered information and serious duplication of effort. Authors of the different articles may not even be aware of each other's prior work. Examples:

• Coal and Coal mining - This division was chosen, in part, to curtail length.
• Computers and History of computing - This division was chosen, in part, to curtail length.
• Cryptology/Citable_Version includes is subordinate articles within the main topic, whereas the editable Cryptology has moved those to a "Related Articles" subpage.
• Encryption, Cryptography, Cryptology, Cryptanalysis, Cryptographic key, RSA algorithm, Steganography, Asymmetric key cryptography, Cipher, Square (cipher), Block cipher, and many others—this very incomplete list of encryption-related articles might make sense if they were well coordinated with each other, but unfortunately, they were created organically by different authors at different times, contain substantial duplicated material that is not all that well organized, and even the naming conventions for the articles themselves are not consistent, resulting in what might be called a "hot mess".

Disambiguation for articles that overlap the same topic

A disambiguation page was traditionally used only to clarify between multiple articles that would otherwise have identical names but refer to completely different things. Citizendium now proposes an experimental possible use of the disambiguation page to point to parallel articles on the same main topic, as developed by different lead authors whose approach to presenting the topic are not reconcilable within one article. Such a disambiguation page might say, “The Citizendium has multiple articles related to (the topic), including: (a list of the articles)”. A naming convention for such parallel articles may be needed; or if the names chosen are very similar, a brief statement beside each article name could help readers differentiate them. Creating parallel articles via disambiguation should be considered only if the first two approaches described above are not enough. Should a parallel version of an article be forked by copying an existing article and then modifying it (substantially), the lead author of the new version should explain the reasons briefly in the new article's Discussion page. Authors of parallel articles, as probable enthusiasts for their topic, may (and are encouraged to) collaborate with one another, respecting each other’s lead role for the different articles.

Article 7b: Suspending the creation of Citable articles; allowing reversions to regular collaboration mode

An author may request that a Citable article be reverted to normal, collaborative article status. For technical reasons, the reversion will have to be done by the management team, assuming that reasonable reasons for the reversion have been provided. Citizendium will not create more Citable articles for the time being.

Article 7c: Nomination of articles as “Ready for reading”

An author may nominate an article as “Ready for reading”. Nominated articles might then be featured periodically on the wiki landing page or in advertisements about Citizendium, and will be available as a list on a special page.

Article 7d: Endorsing the use of Citizendium as a staging platform for other websites

An author is allowed to port Citizendium content to another wiki or website such as Wikipedia, in hopes of the material becoming available to a wider audience and having a longer guaranteed lifetime. Ported content is subject to appropriate attribution given to Citizendium at the target site (per the Citizendium site license), and the copied content should be left intact on Citizendium, although it may continue to be edited and modified. It would be a useful courtesy to note such porting in an article’s Discussion page on Citizendium.

Article 7e: Encouraging deletion of articles deemed not up to standard

Any Citizen may suggest that the management team delete an article, giving pertinent reasons. For example, an article might be a target for deletion if it is a stub, is a copy of what was (or is) over in Wikipedia, and has not been improved by anyone for a long time. Deletions are at the discretion of the management team and will depend on the validity of the reasons given by the author as well as the availability of a volunteer to handle the deletion.