All, Three bits of news.
(1) After considering his ongoing responsibilities as President of the Digital Universe Foundation, Bernard Haisch has decided not to accept the post of Managing Editor after all. He and others with the DUF quite frankly did not realize that it would be a fairly active position, which would eat into the time Dr. Haisch has for his DUF responsibilities. Nevertheless, I will continue to consult with him; e.g., he and I will serve on the Citizendium Foundation Board (as placeholders, essentially) and is helping me set up the non-profit. To replace him, I am hoping to find a tenured (or emeritus) academic or a senior scientist who is well respected in his or her field, or a retired encyclopedia editor, and who fully supports the mission of the Citizendium. This mission includes (among much else) a commitment to efficiency and simplicity, very robust public participation, the neutrality policy (such as I formulated for Wikipedia here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neutral_point_of_view--draft&old id=756), a commitment to a non-profit and open content endeavor, the "rule of law" as defined by a project charter, the division of power between editorial authority and enforcement ("Constabulary") authority, and general dislike of needless bureaucracy. The person will almost certainly have to have some experience with Wikipedia. It will also take a fair bit of time and be, at least in the early months, unpaid, which is why I think that an emeritus professor might be excellent for the job. The Managing Editor answers to the Editor-in-Chief, to the general community, and, particularly, to the community of editors that he or she takes the lead in organizing. (2) I will be looking for leads, and applications, for the managing editor position, as well as other editorial positions, for the upcoming pilot project; please send them to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note that in the future, according to my proposal, editors will self-identify. But for the pilot project I want to select a relatively small, high-quality group myself. If you are interested, please let me know at that address. (3) We've also decided simply to pay for a dedicated server for the pilot project out of the $1100+ in donations we've received already. This means we'll be able to get started sooner rather than later, and be beholden to no one. I'm sorry to say that the hosting service we were negotiating with was dragging their feet and wanted us to display their logo. We have offers from other services as well; but in the interests simply of time and of maximal control, we've decided it's best just to pay for things ourselves, out of donated funds (which seems appropriate), for the period of the pilot project at least. I and the technical focus group should be making a decision about what service to purchase very soon. --Larry _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
