CZ Talk:Biology Workgroup/Biology Week/Pending decisions

need for extra constables during workgroup weeks 24/7

I'm sure if we advertise big enough, we will get people signing up for workgroup week to try and spoil it with vandalism, etc.

We will need a massive constable effort during the first rounds of workgroup week.

We may want to recruit more constables so we can have them on 24-7. Tom Kelly 17:51, 9 June 2008 (CDT)

Reaction to this

These are all excellent goals. But I disagree that we must have accomplished them before we can have a Biology Week. We have quite simply spent too long "getting ready" in this way, and we could probably do so for a couple more years. It's time to expand our ranks. --Larry Sanger 22:14, 10 June 2008 (CDT)

The reason I set the page up is that we need a basis upon which to structure the announcements (and the PLoS article in particular, as it will have a publication lag of about 8 weeks and should still be reflecting the cornerstones of CZ policy when published). So what we need is not necessarily final decisions but suitable phrasing for external use. -- Daniel Mietchen 04:09, 11 June 2008 (CDT)

I'm not sure what you mean by "basis upon which to structure the announcements." If you simply mean text that we can adapt, that's under development (see the "letters" listed here), and it looks like you've already made a start on the PLoS article. None of that requires that the pending decisions you've listed be made, does it? --Larry Sanger 09:47, 11 June 2008 (CDT)

What I had in mind was how to structure (and phrase) the PLoS article. Not all of the topics given in the list will need to have had their final diction before we submit the article but it certainly does make a difference to most PLoS readers that consider contributing to CZ whether CZ contributions are citable or not (the impact factor game is most passionately being played in precisely these biomedical fields) and whether original research is allowed or not. A molecularly or computationally interested subgroup of readers will also be attracted (and next to nobody repelled, at least in this audience) by fact-picking bot assistance. So we do need some guidelines before starting to structure the article. From what I gather at the various discussion venues here at CZ, I would summarize the situation as follows:

• citability is intended as one of the major goals of any reference work, but details are being worked out, and for the moment at least, only approved articles are considered citable in principle
• original research will not be allowed in the main namespace but might be so in subpages or other namespaces, details being discussed
• bot assistance for fact picking will not be allowed in the main namespace but might be so in subpages or other namespaces, details being discussed.

We will need phrases at this level of detail in order to attract people to the project, and if we agree on the phrasing of these three central points, we can start writing the article. -- Daniel Mietchen 08:14, 17 June 2008 (CDT)

I am puzzled why we need to declare a decision about whether an article is citable. If someone wants to take credit for an article, why should we stand in the way? Re original research, sounds correct. Re "bot assistance," if I understand correctly, that would be decided on a case-by-case basis, I'd say. We don't have any policy that says we don't allow people to create or enhance articles using bots, if that's what you mean. --Larry Sanger 10:57, 17 June 2008 (CDT)

What I meant was the format for giving credit. At Scholarpedia, they state, at the bottom of an article, things like "Brian N. Pasley, Ralph D. Freeman (2008) Neurovascular coupling. Scholarpedia, 3(3):5340, (go to the first approved version)". Their number of authors per article, however, is usually much more limited, and applying the same system at CZ would bring about the question as to what the threshold is above which a contributor qualifies as an author in the (traditional) academic sense. Despite a lot of discussion and the pilot, however, there are no clear rules on how to give credit to authors when citing a CZ article but since citations are (at least currently) one of the major currencies in academia (and especially in the life sciences), the way we handle this issue will influence the decisions of many PLoS readers whether to embark on CZ or to shy away from it. That's why I would like to have clarification about this issue before presenting the project to such an audience. -- Daniel Mietchen 11:35, 17 June 2008 (CDT)

There is another relevant proposal on this, from Lee Berger, I believe. I think it's simple enough. Something like this (we should consider and debate other variants):

"Foo bar," encyclopedia article draft from Citizendium, retrieved June 19, 2008 from <http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Foo_bar>.

Or (for approved articles):

"Nudder one," Citizendium, retrieved June 19, 2008 from <http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Nudder_one>.

Then we might add a small link to a page where we can say, "Here is how you can cite yourself as co-author of the article..." That's where we use Lee's suggestion of et scriptori (or whatever it is). Sorry this is so vague...I am hoping that someone will make a proposal out of this! --Larry Sanger 14:40, 19 June 2008 (CDT)

I have started defining a structure for the PLoS article. In the absence of decisions at the horizon, further discussion on these points should perhaps better take place on that talk page. -- Daniel Mietchen 11:46, 19 June 2008 (CDT)