CZ:Policies/Proposed Citizendium Policy Article 7 Details

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This adjunct document includes a more extensive discussion of the Article 7 bullet items in the draft policy document].


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 be identified implicitly via an article's History. For example, an author who edits a lot on an article that has been otherwise mostly unchanged recently (within, say, 3 months) or is new, must be regarded informally to be a 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 (we ought to pick which template, though). Collaborators could (with permission from a lead) convert implicit leads to explicitly identified ones. No matter the mechanism, collaboration from others is still welcome 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.

Subpages

Subpages tends 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). 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. [1] Manually-created subpages are commonly used to segregate related long lists, catalogs or timelines, or maybe to expand upon some aspect of the main article.[2] Examples:

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 also 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). 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:

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 thigns. Citizendium now proposes an experimental possible use of the disambiguation page to point off 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 made only if the first two methods 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 Talk page. Authors of parallel articles, as enthusiasts for their topic, may (and are encouraged to) collaborate with one another, respecting each other’s lead role for the different articles. To our knowledge, no one has used this method yet.

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

An author may request that a Citable article be reverted to normal, collaborative article status. 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 may 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

It is allowed for an author to port Citizendium content to another wiki or website such as Wikipedia, in hopes of the material being 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. It would be a useful courtesy to note such copying in an article’s Talk page on Citizendium.

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

Any author may suggest that the management team delete an article, given 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 reasons given by the author as well as the availability of a volunteer to handle the deletion.

Footnotes

  1. The subpages directive is placed in the top of a main article for which "Metadata" has been created to display the standard subpages, entitled Related Articles, Bibliography, External Links, and more, which were created when the Metadata form was filled out for that topic.
  2. To use a manually created subpage, create a link to a new a page hanging off of your article, and then include the subpages directive in the top of that new page. It will show up to the right of all the standard tabs that got created along with the metadata.
  3. Because it's time-sequential and not alphabetized, the list of Presidents might better be called a Timeline rather than a Catalog
  4. The Addendum subpage to Pali Canon could probably use a more descriptive title, and at some point, the lead author might get around to deciding to rename it more appropriately. It makes sense, initially, just to get the information segregated away from the already long main article.
  5. Some of the encryption-related articles are also Citable, and thus are locked from further development, making the morass of disparate, oddly divided and inconsistently named articles more resistant to re-organization. This is one reason we propose to be able to revert Citable articles to become normally editable again, as per Article 7b of this Draft Policy.