All, Well, there's been some excellent discussion of the problem here and I think we're making some progress.
Andy Carpenter (a philosopher, I worked with him on Nupedia five-six years ago!) suggested: "An discussion of reasonable but self-directed length followed by a decision determined by majority vote, with those who self-identify as possessing relevant expertise, lack of bias, etc. choosing to participate in the dicussion and vote." I don't mean to sound disrespectful of anyone, but this is actually the only proposal that might solve the problem! I mean, without actually dismantling the fundamental proposal for CZ and replacing a wiki system with something closer to the old Nupedia system--which I don't want to do. Simply taking a majority vote of editors "who self-identify as possessing relevant expertise, lack of bias, etc." does on first glance seem to satisfy the constraints (i.e., (1)-(8) listed on https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2006-October/000520.html). I'll save a more in-depth review for later, but anyway, thanks, Andy! I would underscore something he also says: "I think that, for our endeavor to work, we need to develop a strong desgree of respect for each other and trust of each other's judgment." I actually think we did a pretty good job of developing that sort of respect when working on Nupedia, but working in a strongly collaborative way, on a wiki, is a different kettle of fish. Still, I do remember the early days of Wikipedia itself, particularly the first six months or so; I remember being amazed at how collegial we were, and for a while I was thinking that perhaps we had found a way to work together online that somehow was troll-proof. I was completely wrong, of course. But, well, CZ could be different, and there's reasons to think it might. Hasan Murtaza actually says something very similar: "I would furthur add, that the creation of a community of editors who agree with each other enough to cooperate, should be the primary goal of the citizendium project." I agree, of course (who could disagree?). But how do we *do* that? Having a robust neutrality policy, which all contributors are committed to, will go a long way (as it has on Wikipedia, despite its problems). But editors, working on the same article, *will* have disputes that can't be resolved by reference to that or any policy. How *should* they be resolved? I know that Andy and Hasan *aren't* saying this, but I'd just remind people: saying "everybody love each other" isn't a feasible way to achieve world peace. Jon Awbrey wrote: "We should not have to make up new rules for resolving disputes, as the norms that seasoned researchers and responsible scholars already observe in practice will serve us as well as any maxims." Well, I'm wondering what norms, in particular, you're referring to. We do have a practical problem to solve, namely, what to do when two or more editors (I mean people with Editor privileges, as opposed to Author privileges) disagree and can't be reconciled. It doesn't help to say "follow the old norms." Well, what are the old norms, and what process would those norms have us follow? And notice that it's not a matter of making up new *rules* but instead making up a *procedure*. The *rules or norms* might be in various ways the same as old ones; but we still need a clear decisionmaking *process* in any case. So what's the procedure (new *or* old)? Jon later suggested that perhaps we're trying to be "somehow exempt from the norms of the outside world," which is just completely wrong (at least, about *my* views). The problem is there is no pre-established way to apply "the norms of the outside world" to something that has never been tried before, at least on the scale we envision: to have experts collectively manage a large body of encyclopedia articles written in "the wiki way." David Goodman had a couple of intriguing suggestions. First, we should avoid "over-defining process" and "not making the process a formal part of CZ." That sounds similar to Jon's suggestion, and I have the same reaction. *If* we are to allow editors to make decisions about articles in their areas of specialization, *and* no editors are assigned to particular articles, so that collaborating editors will inevitably have to arrive at decisions about the same articles *jointly*, then it seems we can't not have *some* sort of process for settling disputes. If we leave the process undefined, then it seems we end up with Wikipedia's faux solution: we insist that people come to a mutually agreeable decision (even when they can't), so that the decision will be whatever the most *stubborn* editor wants it to be. The result is that disputes tend to drive away people, leaving the most persistent and bull-headed. Sound familiar, ex-Wikipedians? Second, David says: "I have the feeling that many WP disputes arose because there was no way to claim authorship for a particular view except to fight for it. If we sign our work, this will be less necessary." I'm not sure what signing work would entail, so I won't comment further. If you're not suggesting that we assign articles to particular authors, who then sign them, I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Next, a hearty welcome to Susan Awbrey from Oakland University! Some comments on her suggestions: "1. Have three 'areas' on the site....an open archive of approved articles, a place for working papers, and a talk page for the articles" That's precisely the plan, in fact! So hopefully you'll be happy on that score. "2. Allow authors to post an article in the working papers section but don't allow anyone else to change it...others would make suggestions for improvements of the article on the talk page...the author would decide if the changes were warranted." Well, then we're not talking about a wiki at all anymore, or strong collaboration. I would simply try to persuade you of the enormous benefits of strong collaboration. I won't do that here, because for most people on the list, I'd be preaching to the choir. I've tried to explain this in a few places, however: http://www.citizendium.org/how_openness_works.html (I still haven't revised this essay using comments from this very list, by the way...I intend to though...) http://www.textop.org/TextAndCollaboration.html#PartI (just the first part of "Text and Collaboration") Finally, several people (including the people behind the Encyclopedia of Earth) have told me that my memoir of the early days of Wikipedia sort of opened their eyes to the power of the wiki model: http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213&from=rss For those of you inclined to suggest assigned authorship, I would have you read the latter in particular. Anyway: granted, if we *don't* collaborate on work so much, then there won't be the same editorial dispute resolution problem(s) to solve! "3. I have also been frustrated by not being able to find articles on the web that were presented at conferences in the past. They don't get published many times and the conference sites only keep them up for a short period of time. If you invited people to enter conference papers that are no longer on the web into the open access archieve of approved articles, then having their articles available on the web might give them incentive to use and particpate in the site." Well, what you have in mind here sounds exactly like what David Marshall (David91) has proposed on the Citizendium forums (http://smf.citizendium.org/ sorry I can't find the exact place). I have little doubt that as we get a bunch of paper-publishing types (i.e., academics and scientists) together, some of them might very well want to create an open access paper repository. That's a different project from an encyclopedia project, but I have no objection whatsoever in principle to the Citizendium Foundation getting behind such a thing. I simply think it should be something that fits into a needed niche. There are many open access paper repositories, pre-print services, etc., already online. I wouldn't want to create another one just for the fun of it; there needs to be a specific purpose served, and off the top of my head I can't think of one for CZ (not yet anyway). Sarah Tuttle (welcome, too!) makes a suggestion similar to Susan's: "If editors edit in a process similar to the academic review process, ie, by submiting documented challenges/inquiries/clarifications to the author, then the process of editing is well documented." And my response is similar, too: of course, if we eliminate strongly collaborative authority a la the wiki process, then we eliminate the problem of editorial dispute resolution explained in my original post. But, frankly, I do not take the elimination of strong collaboration as worth considering at great length. I mean, I would have to see a good argument that we should reconsider strong collaboration, and especially an answer to the objection that top-down and/or assigned work is simply not as efficient as strongly collaborative work. This is why Wikipedia had 20,000 articles after a year, and Nupedia had about two dozen (even if it had a few hundred "in the hopper"). Anyway, this is why I have "The Citizendium will be a wiki" as item I.4. in the "Statement of Fundamental Policies." I don't mean to say an encyclopedia can't or shouldn't be done in another way, but it's the way I propose to start CZ. Any other solutions? The problem again: https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2006-October/000520.html --Larry _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
