CZ:Managing Editor/2012/004 - Approval of Editor-authored articles when no appropriate nominating Editors available

Statement of problem

Existing policy regarding article approval does not take into consideration the not uncommon circumstance in which an Editor has predominantly authored an article to a stage ready for consideration of Approval but no other Editor is available to consider nominating it for Approval, owing a dearth of truly active Editors in any of the article’s Workgroup categories.

The question: Until Citizendium grows to the stage when the current dearth of Editors no longer exists, or no longer is of severity to present a serious problem finding appropriate Editors to nominate, or reject the nomination of, articles for approval, should Citizenium allow Editors with established track-records nominate for Approval the articles they predominantly authored, with following provisos:

1. The article belongs to one of the Workgroup categories for which the Editor has Editor status.
2. The Approvals Manager judges the Editor's responses to comments from authors-at-large to be satisfactory in terms of edits to the article and to rebuttals to critiques.
3. The Editorial Council concurs with the Approvals Manager's judgment.

Existing applicable policy

Charter

• Article 36

• The Managing Editor has the following duties:

1. 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;
2. 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;
3. to represent the Citizendium in its relations with external bodies, such as the mass media, and academic or non-academic institutions.

Decisions by the governing bodies

Editorial Council

From "CZ:Approval process" (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Approval_Process):

If the editor has worked on it [an article] herself as an author, he/she asks another editor to approve it; or, if there are several editors all doing significant work as authors on the article, then at least three of them can agree to approve it. (These rules are to prevent a single person from approving his or her own work without involving review by experts who were not authors.)

Those rules do not take into consideration the circumstance described above, under "Statement of problem".

Seeking outside reviewers is unsatisfactory at the present time (July 2012) inasmuch as the prestige ranking of Citizendium is not high enough to offer incentives to busy and career-oriented specialists to peer-review articles for Citizendium. In the future, the use of outside reviewers may be a practical option.

The Editorial Council’s regulation, EC:R-2011-027/ Approval process (http://ec.citizendium.org/wiki/EC:R-2011-027) likewise does not set policy for the particular circumstance described above, under "Statement of problem".

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.'

Yes: Until Citizendium grows to the stage when the current dearth of Editors no longer exists, or no longer is of severity to present a serious problem finding appropriate Editors to nominate, or reject the nomination of, articles for approval, Citizenium will allow Editors with established track-records to nominate for Approval the articles they predominantly authored, with the following provisos:

1. The article belongs to one of the Workgroup categories for which the Editor has Editor status.
2. The Approvals Manager judges the Editor's responses to comments from authors-at-large to be satisfactory in terms of edits to the article and to rebuttals to critiques.
3. The Editorial Council concurs with the Approvals Manager's judgment.

That affirmative decision will enable the Approval Process to accelerate without compromising article quality given the provisos stated that provide safeguards by both the Approval Manager and Editorial Council.

Indeed, quality might improve, as the Editor's reputation is more at stake.

Editors whose articles are being considered, and authors-at-large, may comment on the Talk Page of the article. An Editorial Council member who happens to be an Editor-in-consideration is expected to recuse himself/herself from concurring or not with the Approval Manager's judgment.

It is intended that this decision stay in effect until most Workgoups have adequate numbers of truly active Editors to support the Approval Process, or until overridden by the Editorial Council.

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.

This decision does not examine the purpose of "certification", which of course is to make sure that such articles are accurate, complete and well expressed. When there are very few or perhaps no editors at all that can be found to undertake a review, the logical thing to do, and the one most consistent with the objectives of certification, is to shelve this process in any situation where insufficient editors can be found.

The effect of "certification" is to make any revision of an article so cumbersome as to discourage any attempts at improvement. A revision of a certified article requires formal procedure, and where few or no experts are available, resistance to change prevents any improvement beyond fixing of typos. These observations are not hypothetical; examination of past attempts to revise certified articles shows that revisions are very, very difficult already, even where several contributors engage.

To "certify" an article based upon the assumed "track record" of reputable authors without expertise is very ill advised. John R. Brews 14:46, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

To make a point, I might nominate these articles for certification, all authored by myself, and in most cases on topics where I have no expertise. I am confident that most of them would become certified under the proposed decision. John R. Brews 14:55, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

To respond to your last point, this decision applies only to draft articles written predominantly by an Editor who nominates the article himself/herself. Because you are not an Editor in any of the Workgroups whose categories the articles you listed belong, the scenario you describe does not apply. You may suggest any of those articles be considered for approval, but it requires a ToApprove Editor in one of the article's Workgroup categories to advance the Approval Process.

Indirectly your point contributes, however, as I will now edit the 'Draft decision' to include the specific proviso that the article written predominantly by the 'self-approving' Editor belong to one of the Workgroup categories for which the Editor has Editor status. That would disqualify an Editor, say, with only Health Sciences Editor status as a ToApprove Editor for an article that Editor wrote in a non-Health Sciences category. That will give the decision a third safeguard to the two already stated.

I will respond to your other comments after I make that change. Anthony.Sebastian 22:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

+++++

Regarding your comment, "To "certify" an article based upon the assumed "track record" of reputable authors without expertise is very ill advised.": I would agree with you if track record were the only proviso. The decision provides safeguards much beyond that.

Regarding your comment, "The effect of "certification" is to make any revision of an article so cumbersome as to discourage any attempts at improvement.": I cannot agree with that. Approved articles can be improved upon in its accompanying draft version, and re-approvals are often easier to obtain, certainly not discouragingly cumbersome. Anthony.Sebastian 23:23, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Anthony: Your suggestions for changes are an improvement, though not sufficient to reassure me. It is not possible for me to agree with you that changing approved articles is certainly not discouragingly cumbersome, as that claim contradicts my own direct experience. John R. Brews 03:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

My overall reaction to expediting the approval process is that this is a very bad idea, as it will serve two functions for certain: (i) making it hard to improve articles, and (ii) making approved articles even of lower quality than they are now.

What is the upside to this proposed change? It would seem that the only upside would be to present the appearance of CZ having actually in place an approval process that guarantees more reliable articles than, say, WP. I see absolutely no reason to believe any such thing. John R. Brews 03:33, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi John: Thank you for your challenging arguments. Of course, any of our Approved articles could be improved in some way or another, and it might be useful to think about those ways sometime. But an article subject to improvement can still provide a core of reliable and comprehensible information, and that is one of the big things we strive for in our articles. Approving developed articles that provide the core of the subject in a reliable, coherent, well-written way both contributes to our mission and gives incentives/rewards to our authors who are responsible for our productivity.

As usual, your remarks inspire ideas. We might consider rewording the banner above the text of an Approved article, which now reads:

"Article approved by an editor from the listed workgroup. The Biology Workgroup is responsible for this article. While we have done conscientious work, we cannot guarantee that this article is wholly free of mistakes...Help improve this article further on the draft page!"

I'm not feeling creative enough at the moment to rewrite it, but I suspect it could be rewritten to be more informative about the relationship between the locked version and its accompanying draft version. And more. Anthony.Sebastian 04:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

←Anthony: Thanks for your patience here. I belief the crux of the argument in favor of this proposal is your remark:

"Approving developed articles that provide the core of the subject in a reliable, coherent, well-written way both contributes to our mission and gives incentives/rewards to our authors who are responsible for our productivity."

I believe that approval of articles that "provide the core of the subject in a reliable, coherent, well-written way" do serve the mission of CZ. Unfortunately, we are not in a position at the moment to identify such articles because we do not have the expertise required.

For example, although we have a Music Group that might be aroused to propose my recently written articles Pitch (music), Tone (music) and Note (music), the Music Group has not so far made any commentary upon these articles, even though directly solicited on their Talk pages. They seem to have been inactive for years. That is also the case for finding editors for virtually all the articles on this list. On this basis, the proposal would have exactly no effect upon the status of these articles.

On the other hand, Set theory became an "approved article" based upon the opinions of a few collaborative and none-too-critical parties, and attempts to make simple improvements became impossible. The very few experts in command of this article have locked it up, a reflection of the natural tendency of authors to defend their prodigy against all revision.

CZ simply is in no position to implement its goals in this regard. It faces two problems: there aren't experts available to assess content in most areas, and there are so few contributors interested in most topics that approval is too readily obtained (or refused, as the case may be).

The motivation you suggest for approving articles:

"gives incentives/rewards to our authors who are responsible for our productivity"

may apply to some authors who have been almost entirely responsible for a particular article, and feel a sense of authorship. However, for those who wish to add to existing articles, possibly the majority of contributors, the opposite is the result.

The approved article status is best left unused under these circumstances where it cannot be satisfactorily implemented. John R. Brews 16:03, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

John, I commend you, with admiration, for your perseverance. I have no illusions that this decision, which the Editorial Council can override, will solve all the problemmatic aspects of the Approval Process. The problems you describe should not be ignored. If someone as productive as you are has problems with the Approval Process, they most emphatically should not be ignored. CZ seems to be now at a heightened level of self-reorganization. This decision, if it passes EC muster, might turn out to be just a temporary component in a trajectory to rethinking "Approval" at a fundamental level of inquiry, as part of that self-reorganization. Anthony.Sebastian 21:43, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Decision

Until Citizendium grows to the stage when the current dearth of Editors no longer exists, or no longer is of severity to present a serious problem finding appropriate Editors to nominate, or reject the nomination of, articles for approval, Citizenium will allow Editors with established track-records to nominate for Approval the articles they predominantly authored, with the following provisos:

1. The article belongs to one of the Workgroup categories for which the Editor has Editor status.
2. The Approvals Manager judges the Editor's responses to comments from authors-at-large to be satisfactory in terms of edits to the article and to rebuttals to critiques.
3. The Editorial Council concurs with the Approvals Manager's judgment.

That affirmative decision will enable the Approval Process to accelerate without compromising article quality given the provisos stated that provide safeguards by both the Approval Manager and Editorial Council.

Indeed, quality might improve, as the Editor's reputation is more at stake.

Editors whose articles are being considered, and authors-at-large, may comment on the Talk Page of the article. An Editorial Council member who happens to be an Editor-in-consideration is expected to recuse himself/herself from concurring or not with the Approval Manager's judgment.

It is intended that this decision stay in effect until most Workgoups have adequate numbers of truly active Editors to support the Approval Process, or until overridden by the Editorial Council.

Post-decision comments

How is "an adequate number of editors" to be decided? Instead, this decision should be reviewed on a regularly scheduled basis. John R. Brews 04:52, 10 July 2012 (UTC)