CZ:Managing Editor/2012/005 - Importing external articles: Step One
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Statement of the problem
In regard to the June 2012 passage of Referendum #2, CZ:Elections June 2012/Referenda/2, rescinding the Editorial Council’s restrictions on the importation of articles from other sources to Citizendium (Editorial Council Resolution R-2010-013), it is noted that:
- the referendum specifies a 30-day period for meeting certain conditions before the article can remain in Citizendium;
- no specification is made as to the location in Citizendium where the imported article is to reside during that 30-day period.
Existing applicable policy
Charter
- The Managing Editor has the following duties:
- to ensure by means of executive decisions that the principles and policies of the Citizendium are effectively and coherently observed; such decisions shall be based on established policy where defined;
- to make interim decisions on behalf of the Editorial and Management Councils when established policy does not provide guidance; these decisions shall be overridden by the establishment of relevant policy;
- to represent the Citizendium in its relations with external bodies, such as the mass media, and academic or non-academic institutions.
Number 2 applies in this decision.
Decisions by the governing bodies
Editorial Council
No decision about the problem stated has been made, nor is currently on the active agenda.
Draft decision
- The text below is what I plan to decide in this case. Feel free to edit the text if you think this improves it. If your edits require discussion, please use the dedicated section below. Editing and discussion in this "Draft decision" section shall stop 24h after my last edit to it.
For the 'probationary' period of an imported article, the article be imported in a subpage of the importer’s user page and that that page be made available for Citizens to work on, through contact by the Approval Manager to the members of the pertinent Workgroups and through announcement on the Citizendium-L mailing list. Because the imported article resides off the radar to search engines, this decision extends the time of the probationary period until no improvements have been made to it by the importer or other users for 18 months.
The worked-upon imported article’s Main Article's subpages (Bibliography, External Links, etc.) are to be temporarily made subheadings of the worked-upon article until and if the article meets the conditions specified in the referendum and can be transferred as a Main Article.
The intent of this proposal is to eliminate the possibility that one or many inferior, and only partially worked-upon external articles appear as Main Articles before having met the conditions specified in the referendum.
Some members might import multiple external articles, thinking they have 30-days to upgrade them, while some might come from inappropriate sources, others unsatisfactorily worked on.
In time there might be many Main Articles at any one time that CZ would not be proud to show.
Another, important, reason for importing to the importer's userspace: to make sure that the imported article meets all of the reuse license requirements, including required attribution, before moving to main namespace. Articles imported directly as a Main Article that fail to meet reuse license requirements renders Citizendium vulnerable to censure and possibly legal action, not to mention public criticism.
Imported articles should remain in the importers’ userspace until approved for relocation as a Main Article draft. This serves the Editorial Council’s quality control mission. The approval mechanism will be considered in a separate decision.