Discuss: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1093.0.html
All, I think we need to place an Article of the Week on the front page. So I propose that we start up an Article of the Week program. I would also like to start Contributor of the Week and New Contributor of the Week programs. I am going to assume I don't need to get approval for this from the Editorial Council; but, just in case, I am cc'ing them in case any of Editorial Council members would like the Council to discuss and vote on this. I think these should work well. But perhaps you have some ideas of other such methods of honoring people and work? I can do the initial planning for this, but I lack the time to get it started myself. So I am asking for volunteers to lead the charge. If you're interested, go to http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1093.0.html and declare your interest in helping to organize these programs. Note, at least on my proposal, only constables would be able to administer the contibutor of the week programs. If no one is interested, the programs just won't happen. Here's how I propose these programs should work. (1) Create a wiki page, one for each program, in which the rules are explained, the current and former honorees are listed, and the program's admins are listed. For the Article of the Week, there is another page in which nominations are made (see next point). (2) The rules for selecting the Article of the Week can be fairly simple. Anyone may make a nomination. At least for now--while the project is still small--you may nominate and vote for your own articles. Nominations are listed alphabetically at first, but then constantly re-ranked as different items garner different votes. Moreover, no one may vote for an article, if he or she has done significant work on the article. Each Monday, one of the program admins moves the article that is at the top of the list (i.e., the one with the highest score) to the front page, and announce it on Citizendium-L. (3) If an article has not been approved yet, the article of the week is labelled "Draft of the Week." The status must be 1 or 2 (i.e., only "Advanced Articles" may be nominated). (4) The votes of editors who are voting for an article that is in their area of expertise ought to have weighted votes: I suggest that their votes are worth three. Moreover, any editor may, simply by editing the nomination list, entirely cancel the nomination of any *unapproved* article in his or her area of expertise (if, for example, it contains obvious and embarrassing problems). (5) How would the "Contributor of the Week" and "New Contributor of the Week" winners be chosen? I propose that the Constabulary keep a running tally of the contributors and new contributors of the week, since they can keep track of nominations on their own password-protected wiki. I don't think we should vote openly for people on the main wiki; it is, obviously, not seemly that we should vote on and rank the merits of people in such a crass way. So nominees are neither listed nor ranked on the main wiki. Instead, we send our nominations to a special mailing list, operated by interested constables. An unlimited number of people can be nominated by a person in a single mail, but a person may not nominate himself. Then, on the (private) Constable Wiki, participating constables record votes in a way similar to the Article of the Week. A nominated person needs at least three votes to receive the honor; this means that three different people need to nominate the same person *independently*, since no one will but constables will know who's been nominated so far. I suggest that that really *is* an honor, far more than open (more gamable, politicizable) voting. Note, constables are bound to secrecy not only about how many votes have been received, but also about who has been nominated. Each Wednesday, the new winners are announced on Citizendium-L and the Project Home page. Old winners are archived on the main wiki. (6) We say that the Contributor of the Week should be chosen based on this criterion: remarkable service to the Citizendium project, either in terms of content contributed, constable or other administrative work, or helping the project in some other important way. Non-Citizens may be nominated; in that case, the honorific is Honorary Citizen of the Week. (7) We say that the New Contributor of the Week should be chosen on the basis of things we love about new contributors, such as large amounts of work ("diving right in"), boldness, getting involved right away. (8) I don't propose that editor votes count for any more than author votes, when it comes to selecting the contributors of the week. (9) Someone can be a New Contributor of the Week only once. A person can be a Contributor of the Week only every n months; perhaps n=3; similarly with the Article of the Week, except that perhaps n=6. n will increase as we gain more good articles and contributors. (10) I suggest that special subpages of CZ:COTW (for "Contributor of the Week"--do we want to write that out?) and of CZ:NCOTW be written honoring the person, explaining what we are honoring them for, and perhaps including a quotation or short interview. But my suggestion is entirely contingent on whether we have a FIRM COMMITMENT from the participating Constables to write such pages on a weekly basis. Otherwise, we simply link to the person's user page. (11) Redesign the main page in order to include the article of the week. (Again, I invite you all to work on making the main page simpler and more elegant. I've recently simplified it myself. Still Needs Work.) (12) Post the Contributor of the Week and New Contributor of the Week on Project Home, which by the way is going to become increasingly important, as we have moved many links off the main page and the sidebar. I would prefer not to list the contributors of the week on the front page, because we want to focus on content, not community, on the front page--and the honor of being a contributor of a week is of interest mainly to our community, not to the average non-contributing reader. (13) To be clear, anybody may sign up to be an admin of the Article of the Week program. He may do so on the CZ:AOTW page itself (which does not yet exist yet, so don't go looking for it). Questions, objections, additions to the policy, and other discussion here: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1093.0.html --Larry _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
