Time for Re-Approval guidelines

[Matt Innis]

We have several articles that are Approved (some Re-Approved once or twice), but they are sitting there with changes on the draft but no-one nominating them for re-Approval...  The dilemna seems to be that when an editor leaves as in [[Contraception (medical]], who will re-approve or who will spearhead a re-approval.  This one has mostly copyedit changes, but they do affect credibility and probably should have been updated a long time ago.  As a constable, I would like to see policy written that will allow me to apply some sort of rationale for re-approval.  Questions that need to be answered: 1) Do the same editors that nominated it need to be the ones that re-nominate? (surely not)  2) Can one of the three that nominated it in the first place re-nominate or does it take all three again? (think about this one) 3)  Can a constable make immediate copyedit changes?  4) Will this problem go away if an author could check a "attention editor" button?

This is a link to the latest conversation:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Talk:Contraception_%28medical_methods%29/Draft#How_long_to_get_a_simple_typo_fixed_in_the_approved_article.3F

[Stephen Ewen]

Let me give an example of when, under the Statement of Fundamentals section III.4. mentioning "common sense", I think a constable should just carefully step in to an approved article to make changes:

Let's say the approved article has been up for a month and the approving editor is on a long Safari in Africa.  An author comes along and says,

I don't know if you know it or not, but this article has some typos.  In the first paragraph it says "cihropractic" instead of "chiropractic".  Also, it says there "Both Robbins adn Martin discovered...." It should say "and".

How is leaving that up or bothering everyone with a long involved process to get it fixed using common sense?

[Lee R. Berger]

Did anyone like the concept of the automatic approval of drafts after a set period of time concept (as long as the last edition had been briefly "locked" so that vandals could not jump in..)?

[Matt Innis]

Did anyone like the concept of the automatic approval of drafts after a set period of time concept (as long as the last edition had been briefly "locked" so that vandals could not jump in..)?

This might well be the solution, or a solution.  It would work for 90% of the articles, but controversial articles like Global Warming, Intelligent design, or Lockness Monster had a tendency to have significant disagreements on wikipedia that resulted in edit wars.  Can we make sure controversial changes are discussed thoroughly on the talk page before the article 'timed out' for approval.

[Derek Harkness]

Going through Matt's list.

Point 1: Can't possibly insist on the same editors. Some editor leave, new ones come. The meaning of editor approval isn't that the editor is credited with creating and authoring the work but simply that the editor is willing to stake thier reputation on the factual accuracy of the current draft. It doesn't reduce the credit given to the origonal author of the work.

Point 2: If it's going beyond copy editing, then I think the same level of authority is required for the new edits or additional sections of text. Whither we need 3 editors to approve an article may be up for debate but the standard for approval should be consistent, no matter whither it concerns 10,000 words or 100 words.

Point 3: I see nothing wrong with a constable fixing obvious typos. Just make a little note on the talk page that you have done something. Common sense must be exercised with a great deal of sense however. Some grammatical errors, when altered, can change the meaning of the passage. It's not very common but I have re-edited two copy edits to my own articles as the edits, while correcting the grammar, changed the meaning and thus implied something was true that wasn't true.

Point 4: Maybe, but ultimately the lack or re-approval stems from the same source as the lack of first time approvals. We still only have 38 approved articles. Something's wrong here.

As for Lee's point of automatically approving articles: I feel it misses the point of what an approved article means. It can hardly be 'expert approved' if the process is automated such that no expert ever looked at it. Maybe I've miss understood what you were meaning, could you expand?

[Lee R. Berger]

I had posted this on the "proof version of articles" discussion which clarifies what I meant by "automatic" approval. I've added additional comments at the bottom.

I just came out of a brainstorming session with some of my graduate students as I have been pondering these five pages of discussion over the  last couple of days.  I wanted to share with you some of the thoughts and proposals that came out of this discussion.  Please bear with me as I know that much of this has been already said in one place or another during this discourse but I wanted to put our collective thoughts in one place while it was still fresh in my mind.

The problem - this is a wiki, not a paper encyclopedia which creates articles that are the "voice of authority" until the next print edition comes out (but we want to be that "voice of authority" also).  However, the relatively slow pace of publishing a paper encyclopedia protects the paper encyclopedia because  individuals cannot just jump in and replace any good information with bad information (except by defacing their own version that is!).  What is bad about the paper concept is that it is not dynamic, does not take advantage of large numbers of experts that could contribute and it is slow to change - something the wiki (CZ) is superb at.

Question - How to keep behaving like a wiki once an article is approved?

group opinion - there must be some sort of draft page.

We then discussed the various problems with a draft page.  Do you put a time limit where people can edit as they wish and then it automatically uploads once  an editor approves it?  How do you prevent last minute malicious edits etc. etc. (all of this has been brought up in detail in this discussion). I then posed the question:
Question - how do you move a draft page to approved status given the problems discussed.

Group opinion - The approved article sits as the main article and is clearly marked.  The draft sits behind it and is clearly accessable via the subpage buttons.  When one clicks on this one sees the generation 2 article (clearly marked).  The draft article also has a countdown clock in the upper right corner counting down (we suggested maybe four weeks).  Once the countdown reaches zero the draft is "locked" and becomes an "in press" article.  Another timer is started on the "in press" page (Say 1 week). - a clear template across the top says something like "this article is in press.  Please note that unless you are such and such a level editor you cannot make changes to this article - If you have substantive changes - please comment on this articles "in press" talk page. This draft page will will be replaced in (1 week or whatever the "in press" counter says at the time).  At that time you may edit directly on this page's draft page." All at the same time an email reminder is sent out to the original author, major contributors and all editors in that section that such and such article is "in press".  These people may view that article, and make comments in the discussion page - only editors of a certain status may actually make changes to an "in press" article.  If no editor intervenes the "in press" is automatically published when the timer runs out and a new draft page appears with the clock counting down.

In the worst case scenario - where a malicious edit gets through unnoticed through editor laziness (ok thats unkind!) an authorized editor could revert to the last correct version.  The students liked the idea of a countdown clock as it adds a kind of immediacy to edits and encourages "action".

Just thought I'd throw this in as it was an interesting discussion! At least we had fun!
 

So - to clarify "automatic" update - the purpose of the automated update is to ensure that accurate, high quality edits find their way into the  article in a timely fashion - as has been pointed out - we only have 38 approved articles and we're not keeping up with that - imagine 500,000! I don't care how many editors you have you'll never keep up - thus the automation - the reason for an "in press" article being locked for a week was to keep malicious last minute edits and at least alert a large number of people that this is happening.  After this correspondence, I also thought that maybe if we had a system in place that only allowed changes under a certain magnitude to be uploaded under a system like the above, then if larger changes were made, the automation would not automatically upload until an area approved editor had physically "ticked" the article with  major changes as acceptable?