free statistical software

[Paul Wormer]

I recall that there were long discussions on this forum about signed articles and that Larry (our editor in chief) was against it, mainly because he was afraid that it would violate the Wiki spirit of "anybody may step in and contribute to any article she fancies". He was afraid that undersigners would not allow edits and the cooperative spirit would go  under. As far as I remember he finally gave in and allowed a probational period with signed articles. Maybe somebody has a better memory than I and remembers the details? (Larry would know it, but he seems to give low priority to CZ these days).

[geneshackman]

Hayford wrote, about signed articles.
"If you go there, you will find only about a dozen of them," and "it is apparently a subpage "

It seems odd but all of the signed articles are subpages, and none are the main article. I don't quite get it.

I guess I'd like this to be a main article so forget about having it be a signed article.

thanks

gene

[Hayford Peirce]

That's what I was trying to tell you earlier: you haven't understood the concept of "Signed Articles" -- it's NOT an article that appears in the mainspace and that is written entirely by you and signed by you -- it is, instead, some sort of *subarticle*, as you've just found out.

Before you joined, there was a *long*, and actually somewhat acrimonious argument (discussion), as I recall, in various Forums and/or Discussion pages, about this whole concept of "Signed Articles". The prevailing feeling was that signed articles were basically contrary to the whole principle of CZ, which is to have expert, *collaborative* articles written in Wiki fashion. There was an acknowledgment that there probably *should* be a place for signed articles, written, say, by up to *three* experts, but at that point the discussions stopped.

And what is/was left, is what you now see -- a dozen or so subarticles, as tabs to be found under some *main* articles.

Other readers -- please correct me if I'm wrong in what I've written above.  Thanks!

PS -- Sorry, Paul, I wrote and posted this message in response to Gene without seeing that you had written an earlier reply, essentially saying, but better, what I have just said here.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

That's what I was trying to tell you earlier: you haven't understood the concept of "Signed Articles" -- it's NOT an article that appears in the mainspace and that is written entirely by you and signed by you -- it is, instead, some sort of *subarticle*, as you've just found out.

Before you joined, there was a *long*, and actually somewhat acrimonious argument (discussion), as I recall, in various Forums and/or Discussion pages, about this whole concept of "Signed Articles". The prevailing feeling was that signed articles were basically contrary to the whole principle of CZ, which is to have expert, *collaborative* articles written in Wiki fashion. There was an acknowledgment that there probably *should* be a place for signed articles, written, say, by up to *three* experts, but at that point the discussions stopped.

And what is/was left, is what you now see -- a dozen or so subarticles, as tabs to be found under some *main* articles.

That's rather as I remember it. In this case, Gene, I'd hope the system might allow something like you putting "Reviews of Free Statistical Software" as a signed article in your CZ, as a "signed article expanding on" along with a collaborative article on "free statistical software". Ideally, there might be a way to handle collaborative articles with a small number of main contributors, just as many articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals often have multiple authors.

I remember screaming when I was publishing the equivalent of a peer-reviewed article for the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the approving authority arbitrarily only allowed five coauthors -- yet there really were six.  I'd also note that in the IETF process, there is an active and open collaborative editing process, and indeed many more than the author were credited for assistance.

[Hayford Peirce]

Well, my own feeling, Howard, is that before Signed Articles become anything all different from what they presently are, there is going to have to be the same old discussion again AND formal proposals, considerations, musings, editorial meetings, etc. etc. -- in other words, a long, formal process.

To allow Signed Articles in any form other than they now exist is to change the entire original basis of CZ -- I'm not saying that it can't or shouldn't be done, I'm just saying that it will have to go through a major process of examining just exactly what CZ is.  To do otherwise, would be like a couple of people at WP suddenly deciding that all articles there would be approved by "experts" and then locked into place.

Yesterday Joe Quick and I set up a new user account for him, unique to him, I believe, called http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User_talk:Approvals_Manager so that Joe (the Approvals Manager) can handle some of the bureaucratic stuff that goes into this process without cluttering up his own user talk page. He had previously been told that the editorial people would look into it but nothing happened. So we set it up on our own, without, I'm pretty sure, violating any CZ guidelines or principles. It's no big deal, when you think about it.

But to completely revamp the entire Signed Articles sitution would be a big deal, for all the reasons that Paul enumerated in his message a little ways above this one.

[geneshackman]

Okay, I'd like to proceed and would like to ask that this article be reviewed as a regular article, not signed. Would that be okay?

thanks

gene

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Well, my own feeling, Howard, is that before Signed Articles become anything all different from what they presently are, there is going to have to be the same old discussion again AND formal proposals, considerations, musings, editorial meetings, etc. etc. -- in other words, a long, formal process.

I hadn't thought of Gene's material as being in anything but a subarticle of Free Statistical Software. The signed part, if it was separated at all, would be his reviews of specific packages. There would still be an unsigned article on Free Statistical Software, and I'd also like to see a higher-level article on Statistical Software.

[Hayford Peirce]

Well, I know. But Gene was apparently thinking that his article could be a stand-alone, signed article in mainspace.  As if I could get John Brock approved and protected as being *my* sole creation, with my name figuring on the bottom or the top, I suppose. *This*, I think, is the sort of thing that we were arguing about before and that would take a revolution in CZ to implement....

[geneshackman]

"But Gene was apparently thinking that his article could be a stand-alone, signed article in mainspace."
and
"I hadn't thought of Gene's material as being in anything but a subarticle of Free Statistical Software."

Well, I am now thinking that this could be a stand-alone, non signed, main article.  Signed seems like too much trouble and I think it could go in main-space. I'm not sure why it would need to be a sub-article.

That okay?

Gene

[Hayford Peirce]

Of course! All CZ articles, except these weird dozen "signed articles" that are floating around in one place or another, are stand-alone, non-signed, main articles. That's the whole purpose of CZ!

So what you want to do is ask Joe Quick, the Approvals Manager, to see if he can find some Editors to look at it....