CZ:Managing Editor/2010/007 - Criteria for Editorship

Statement of problem

Please be brief and specific in your request (polar questions are best) and add relevant links if available. Please state a time frame in which you expect a decision.

Currently, there are no clear guidelines as to how expertise should be recognized in the framework of the project. These guidelines will have to be issued by the Editorial Council, and a request for them to do so was made a month ago, yet it has still not entered their formal process. I will thus collect ideas on the matter here and forward them to the EC when they are ready to handle the matter. --Daniel Mietchen 11:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, if an Editor has been banned, I would deem it natural to remove any Editorships he or she might have had. However, Art. 16 of the Charter states "Any change in Editor status shall require a formal decision by the Editorial Council and may be appealed." --Daniel Mietchen 00:38, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments of Citizens

Suggested basic considerations:

• If we stay with a Workgroup structure, possibly expanded with subgroups or additional workgroups, applicants for Editor status need to document their qualifications for only a single aspect of the broad subject covered by a Workgroup to receive Editor status in that Workgroup;
  • Editor status is renewable after the first six months, permanent thereafter consistent with Editorial and Management policies;
  • A flexible set of criteria for the nature of the documentation required for evaluation of an applicant's request for Editor status;
  • Authors whose contributions indicate potential Editorship capability may be encouaged to consider applying for Editor status, through Editorial Council vote;
• Qualifications for Editor status do not necessarily qualify the Editor to render an approval/non-approval ruling on an article nominated for approval, or to nominate or second/third a nomination of an article for approval;
  • Separate guidelines need developing for an Editor to qualify to render an approval/non-approval ruling on an article nominated for approval, or to nominate or second/third a nomination of an article for approval;

Anthony.Sebastian 01:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
++++

To follow up, very loosely, would an Editor qualification be "40+ years practitioner engineering experience in military command, control, communications, surveillance and reconnaissance as well as civilian network engineering including Internet core routing" but the specific might be "RADAR: specific component of military and commercial systems with which I worked, including Federal Telecommunications Standards Committee work on interoperability including air traffic control and military; currently system integrator for marine electronics (beachwerks.com) and author for Marine Electronics Journal; wrote general articles on radar and electronic warfare, and many specific radar systems." Howard C. Berkowitz 01:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Formal restatement of problem

This section defines the section structure of the decision.

Existing applicable policy

Charter

• Article 14: Editors are Citizens whose expertise in some field of knowledge is recognized and formally acknowledged by the community. Official recognition of expertise — obtained through education or experience — and its scope shall be based on guidelines established by the Editorial Council.

Decisions by the governing bodies

A complete review of "decisions" should also include failed actions. Withdrawing an action is a form of failure. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Editorial Council

• EC:R-2010-012/ Review of Editor status:

In case of reasonably well-founded doubts raised by any Citizen,

the Editorial Council may choose to review the previously awarded status of any Editor, either in principle or with regard to specific competences granted.

The decision shall be based on a report from a committee of academic experts nominated by the Editorial Council in cooperation with the Managing Editor and in agreement with the Ombudsman. For this purpose, the committee shall be given access to the application for Editorship and

shall have the right to request additional documentation from the Editor under review.

• EC:R-2010-002/ Public Editor qualifications

All Editorial Personnel Administrators, when considering the credentials of any applicant to be an Editor, shall, in accepting that person for an Editorship, make public those qualifications, including academic degrees, that led the Editorial Personnel Administrator to accept the applicant. Moreover, these qualifications shall then be made part of the text of the User page of the successful applicant for Editorship. No Editorial Personnel Administrator will accept for Editorship any applicant who does not qualify for Editorship based solely upon his or her publicly revealable qualifications. The text of the Editor's User page may later be edited and rewritten at the User's discretion, but the above-mentioned qualifications and credentials must always remain visible to the casual reader.

This is an additional requirement. The Editorial Personnel Administrators shall—when considering new applicants—(on an interim basis) continue to use precisely the same criteria that they have been using since the inception of Citizendium.

Because this proposed Regulation might be seen as creating an unfair difference between new and old Editors, it is further required that all existing Editors who give formal Approval to a Draft article or who make a formal Editorial ruling on any article must be prepared to state his or her own qualifications and justifications as being the basis of their ruling.

• EC:D-2011-008/ Editor status Howard C. Berkowitz

In order to settle questions raised publicly by several Citizens, the Editor status of Howard C. Berkowitz shall be reviewed on the basis of Editorial Council Regulations PR-2010-011 and PR-2010-024.

Auxiliary policy

• CZ:Editor Policy:

Editors are entrusted with the content management of Citizendium in their special areas of expertise.

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.'

Discussion of Draft decision

When reading or editing this section, please keep in mind that the current version of the draft decision might be different from the one referred to by previous commenters.