I'll talk about a few specific fields, but perhaps what I say be be more generally applicable.
There are more of us who could upgrade science articles than would want to undertake writing them. I do not think of it strictly copy-editing in the traditional print sense--it's editing, but with a broader remit--in the terms used above, it's content editing, which is different from content writing. Speaking only of biology, there are several non cooperating groups acting as if the others did not exist--many of the articles in the parts I know might best be done by merging the content of a group of competing articles. Many people seem to think they know biology, and some, even without much academic background, are quite knowledgeable in their own particular subjects. Others have more general ambitions, with or without knowledge. Some other fields I know are similar to biology: there are 3 different tracks of library-related material, and a group of quite disparate editors. Merging is what they need, with a planned upgrade where there is outside material to work from, such as library history. Publishing is worse--everyone thinks they know it, when they know only a part. Chemistry is different. There is a small group of about a dozen people who have been doing work, and it's not enough. The general articles could be quicly upgraded; the specific one are most of them stubs and need doing from scratch, which will take longer. Fortunately, chemistry is the sort of subject where those who don't know enough are well aware of the fact. I'm not sure there is a general rule. I think we should do a few as soon as possible and find out. On 10/3/06, Paul A. Tanner III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >From: "Larry Sanger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: <[email protected]> > >Subject: [Citizendium-l] Approval and copyeditors > >Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 20:16:00 -0700 > > > >Now back to the copyeditor question. Suppose the above describes what it > >means, operationally, for an article to be "approved." Suppose next that > >we > >say we *also* want the approval of a copyeditor (i.e., anyone from a large > >stable of competent, interchangeable, volunteer copyeditors) before the > >article can be considered "approved" by CZ. . . . By the way, there is > >still a problem associated with the copyeditor role. > >Namely, would having people play this role, and making a copyeditor's OK a > >condition of an article's approval, "pay for itself" in terms of better > >articles? It *would* be more rules, more bureaucracy, another role, more > >complexity. Therefore, it needs *heavy* justification. > > > > When I read about CZ considering the possibility of having copy-edit > approval *and* content approval before an article can be considered CZ > approved, I immediately thought of a potential problem. > > I have seen many articles in professional mathematics journals that are not > grammatically perfect. (I've noticed this even though I'm no expert in > English grammar.) Some of these articles are even in some very prestigious > journals, some of these articles containing some very important results. > > These articles are readable only by people with a rather high level of > mathematical sophistication. Even mathematics (and science) articles that > are written for a general audience can require a relatively high degree of > mathematical sophistication to read. > > How many people who consider themselves "good at English" also consider > themselves "good at math (and science)"? > > Based on one possible answer to this question and based on the above > observations, I think that there could be quite a few technical articles at > CZ covering mathematics (and science) topics, some taken from Wikipedia and > some written at CZ, that would not even be looked at by most people who > consider themselves "good at English". It seems to me therefore that because > of the volume of mathematics (and science) articles (14,000+ mathematics > articles already at Wikipedia) and because of a possible relative lack of > people qualified to give copyedit approval and also willing to try to read > these articles, it is possible that some if not many good and important > mathematics (and science) articles with some minor grammatical imperfections > would escape CZ approval. Could CZ accept this as a consequence? > > If CZ wants to make copyedit approval part of its approval, then maybe it > could have two categories, "content-approved" and "copyedit-approved", > allowing the CZ user for any given article easy access to the last > content-approved version and to the last copyedit-approved. > > Cheers, > > Paul > > > _______________________________________________ > Citizendium-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l > -- David Goodman, PhD, M.L.S. _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
