Hi all, I think the issue of whether to have, how to qualify, and how to use copyeditors is an important one. I agree with Larry that it's good to keep things as simple as possible in terms of positions and code.
It seems to me the two major reasons people have identified for having an official copyeditor position are 1). Identifying or verifying article versions for "approved" status (to get "approved" an article would need to be flagged as such by an editor and copyeditor); 2). Being able to do minor edits to an approved article version without changing its approved status. I'm not certain 2). is very important. There seem to be certain logistical complications with it for relatively modest gains. My view is that we could get most of what we want from the copyeditor position without forming an actual distinct position by allowing editors to self-select as copyeditors (perhaps via an announcement or checkbox on their userpage). I do like the tag-team approach to certifying articles; there's value in having evaluation include both a subject expert and a skilled writer. I'd suggest, then, that to get an article version approved it'd have to be approved by an expert attached to that subject, and another expert (not necessarily attached to that subject) who has self-selected as a copyeditor. This seems to allow for the process of official validation of an article version without adding much overhead, while getting around Nathan Rasmussen's suggestion that "deeply respectable specialists in any discipline may nevertheless be wretched writers" since these experts presumably wouldn't self-select as copyeditors. On the downside, this would rule out using non-experts as copyeditors. Larry's "large stable of competent, interchangeable, volunteer copyeditors" might not be as large as it could be. But I don't think Citizendium would need large numbers of copyeditors if their role is simply to vet articles for "approved" status, and perhaps it'd be a fun enough moonlighting opportunity for editors that we'd get decent turnout. Does anyone think we need official copyeditors for anything except the article approval process? Best, Mike __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
