CZ:Managing Editor/2012/005 - Importing external articles: Step One

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Statement of the problem

In regard to the June 2012 passage of Referendum #2, CZ:Elections June 2012/Referenda/2, rescinding the Editorial Council’s restrictions on the importation of articles from other sources to Citizendium (Editorial Council Resolution R-2010-013), it is noted that:

• the referendum specifies a 30-day period for meeting certain conditions before the article can remain in Citizendium;
• no specification is made as to the location in Citizendium where the imported article is to reside during that 30-day period.

Existing applicable policy

Charter

• Article 36

• The Managing Editor has the following duties:

1. to ensure by means of executive decisions that the principles and policies of the Citizendium are effectively and coherently observed; such decisions shall be based on established policy where defined;
2. to make interim decisions on behalf of the Editorial and Management Councils when established policy does not provide guidance; these decisions shall be overridden by the establishment of relevant policy;
3. to represent the Citizendium in its relations with external bodies, such as the mass media, and academic or non-academic institutions.

Number 2 applies in this decision.

Decisions by the governing bodies

Editorial Council

No decision about the problem stated has been made, nor is currently on the active agenda.

Draft decision

The text below is what I plan to decide in this case. Feel free to edit the text if you think this improves it. If your edits require discussion, please use the dedicated section below. Editing and discussion in this "Draft decision" section shall stop 24h after my last edit to it.

For the 'probationary' period of an imported article, the external article will be imported into a subpage of the importer’s user page. The importer will specify on that page that it is available for Citizens to work on. Further notification of the imported article's availability for improvement editing will be made through contact by the Approval Manager to the members of the pertinent Workgroups and through announcement on the Citizendium-L mailing list. Because the imported article resides off the main namespace and off the radar to search engines, this decision extends the time of the probationary period until no substantive work on it has been done by the importer or other users for 18 months, whereupon, if not approvable, it will be removed.

The subpages needed when the imported article moves to main namespace (Bibliography, External Links, etc.) are to be temporarily made subheadings of the worked-upon article in userspace.

Intent of this decision

The intent of this decision is to eliminate the possibility that one or many inferior, and only partially worked-upon external articles appear as Main Articles before having met the conditions specified in the referendum.

Some members might import multiple external articles, thinking they have 30-days to upgrade them, while some might come from inappropriate sources, others unsatisfactorily worked on.

In time there might be many Main Articles at any one time that CZ would not be proud to show.

Another, important, reason for importing to the importer's userspace: to make sure that the imported article meets all of the reuse license requirements, including required attribution, before moving to main namespace. Articles imported directly as a Main Article that fail to meet reuse license requirements renders Citizendium vulnerable to censure and possibly legal action, not to mention public criticism.

Another, important, reason for importing to the importer's userspace: inasmuch as the imported articles will remain in the importers’ userspace until approved for relocation as a Main Article draft, this decision serves the Editorial Council’s quality control mission. The approval mechanism will be considered in a separate decision.

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