CZ Talk:Election July-August 2013/Referenda/6

Unnecessary

'Approved' articles are hard to modify, and many presently 'approved' articles are sadly deficient. So far as I can see, the notion of an 'approved' article does nothing to enhance CZ, but does result in a poorer quality of article being touted as prime examples of what CZ stands for. This entire conception should be abandoned, not made easier to institute. John R. Brews 13:29, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

You could propose your own referendum on that. :) It would have to be a Charter-modifying one, rewriting Articles 15 and 22. John Stephenson 13:48, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe my reluctance to propose charter amendments is a carryover in habits from WP where no change is ever possible. In any event, I view this referendum as making the 'approval' of articles more common, and therefore to be avoided. John R. Brews 14:32, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Clarity

Wording should make explicit whether bullet-listed items are connected by "and" or "or". Peter Jackson 10:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Comments

In the olden days, there were fairly simple rules for Editor approval. Then the EC introduced a new system I find frankly unintelligible. Now Anthony's proposing this.

I don't think we should have been going along this route. WE shouldn't lower standards because of a shortage of personnel. In fact I think we should have fewer approved articles, not more. Approving Editors should set a time limit for the approval, after which the artilce would have to be reviewed to see whether it's up to date. If no Editor is available to review it, it should be unapproved.

What we could do instead is introduce a new grade below approved. Peter Jackson 08:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I have supported Anthony's other referendum, which does away with /Draft and locked main articles, even though it refers to the current approvals procedure because those are two separate issues. Otherwise, I am inclined to agree with the above. I do not like the idea that, in effect, a set of non-specialist Authors and an Approval Manager perhaps with an Editorship unrelated to the article under review can actually approve an article. (Yes, contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be a subject expert to approve articles on Citizendium.) The original idea was to have expert oversight, i.e. for citable introductory general-readership articles such as CZ's, someone with a background in at least a related field and who is an Editor should have approved it. It's not enough to just have someone try to fact-check and see if the citations look scholarly. The current approvals procedure effectively sidelines Editors, reduces the workgroups to mere article lists, and hands the final say to EC members and AMs who probably don't know much about the topic. I've a mind to introduce yet another referendum... John Stephenson 01:36, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe that certain experienced non-fiction writers, especially but not exclusively academics at the professorial level, capable of critical study of certain CZ articles on distantly related topics with sufficient competence to certify them as 'citable' articles, or not. That critical study would include checking whether in-text citations support the assertions made, whether sentence pairs possess logical cohesiveness, whether that cohesiveness delivers coherence of paragraph narrative, whether the paragraph sequences within subheadings also cohere in narrative flow, and whether the article as whole is free of overt bias, and is understandable to an educated layperson, including high school seniors and college undergraduates.

We have such capable Editors. As Approval Mangers they could judge which articles they believe they can evaluate for certification as 'citable' articles, or not—with the consent of the Editorial Council. By bringing a non-expert perspective to the topic they would ask questions and offer suggestions of the authors that might lead to clarifications and other improvements to the article.

Furthermore, the Editorial Council can evaluate the Approval Managers' review report and thereby add a second layer of judgement.

To expedite generating 'citable' articles, we might need several carefully selected Approval Managers from multiple Workgroups, to share the load and minimize the burden to any one Approval Manager.

Someday, when, for numerous (hundreds, thousands) closely related topics, we have more than one expert per topic, then we can relieve the Approval Managers of the serious responsibility of certifying articles on their own evaluation as 'citable' articles, or not. Anthony.Sebastian 20:50, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't object to this sort of approval in principle, but it's not the same as subject expert approval, and shouldn't be given the same status. Peter Jackson 10:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)