CZ:Nomination page/Editorial Council/Tom Morris

I have been a Citizendium author since October of 2007, and have made almost 5,000 edits to the wiki, mostly on topics related to philosophy, a subject I of which I hold an MA and hope to pursue a Ph.D, and computers (I am a self-taught programmer). I have participated in numerous Write-A-Thons and other initiatives. I have also given presentations on Citizendium to the Open Knowledge Foundation conference in London in 2010 in a paper co-authored with User:Daniel Mietchen, and to BarCamp London 4.

I seek nomination to the editorial council to ensure that Citizendium articles are kept to the highest possible quality.

I am conservative in the sense that I think that wikis like Citizendium should reflect the world rather than change it or judge it; I am liberal in the sense that I think wikis like Citizendium should reflect the world in its rich complexity and am thus, in Wikipedia terms, a pretty radical inclusionist.

Wikiphilosophy

I favour pragmatic and non-judgmental editorial policy-making that simply binds Citizendium to produce material that is excellent in quality, and in disputes it should roughly follow the editorial policy of printed academic works.

This kind of principle works out like this:

• On the 'family-friendliness policy' debate, we simply mirror the standards used by mainstream academic publishers. If a picture or description is too vulgar to find itself in, say, a first-year undergraduate textbook, we don't include it. This means that we are not brought into moral discussions about what is and is not vulgar or obscene but simply what is appropriate in an what aspires to be an academic work. This kind of thing is contextually sensitive: we do not need to have detailed images of every sexual fetish under the sun, we also do not need to censor our descriptions of works of art so as to not offend the hypersensitive. Citizendium is not a sex shop (nor is it a clearing house for child pornography as some on Wikipedia seem to desire!), but it isn't a prude who goes around putting underwear on nude statues either.
• On matters of pseudoscience, we should place significant weight on what is considered mainstream by the academic community as reflected by publications. This frees us from having to decide whether or not a particular purported psuedoscience is actually evidentially grounded or not, a task not well suited to wiki talk pages but to continued evaluation by experts in dialogue.

Healing Arts and Expertise

I support a comprehensive review by the Editorial Council of the current situation with the Health Sciences and Healing Arts workgroups. This is a historical accident that needs careful rethinking as it has attracted significant external criticism.

The original plan for the Healing Arts workgroup was to allow those working in anthropology, sociology and history to approve articles about historical medicine systems from the perspective of anthropological study. This was the intention of the group, but this has not been followed: instead, it has been a way for advocates of specific alternative medical treatments to get editorial veto over articles on those topics. And the problem is that many in those fields have qualifications that are not exactly mainstream. They can often by assigned by those within the alternative medicine bubble. We want experts, not self-credentialied advocates!

We need to really think what aims the editorial credentialing system serve. Consider: currently languishing in a prison in the US is a creation science advocate called Kent Hovind. He has a Ph.D that has been granted by a correspondence college, "Patriot Bible University". Said university is not recognised by the relevant authorities in the United States, and Hovind's dissertation manuscript is unfinished, filled with logical errors and is presented in the form of a personal rant rather than a unique contribution to human knowledge. On the other hand, I've written BA and MA dissertations on a closely related topic for a mainstream university. Under the current rules, Hovind quite possibly would be considered an expert as he has a Ph.D - albeit one from a phony university - while I have just an MA from a real university. On the specific area under discussion, I have quite strong views but I can fairly describe the arguments and positions of the experts in a reasonably fair way; Hovind is just a crank.

Just because the lunatics believe they are psychiatrists (and have created their own Ph.D programmme to prove it) doesn't mean we should let them run the asylum.

This problem has been addressed by some epistemologists including Alvin Goldman in an article called "Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?" which develops a pretty good set of standards which can be used by a non-expert to judge two competing expertise claims.

As for approvals: I think they should serve less of a 'badge of honour' role and more of a marker of stability. Once an article has reached a point of stability, it should be approved. Approval seems far too final currently.

What should Citizendium be doing?

Our primary intention should be working to produce comprehensive and useful articles on a wide spread of topics. A lot of time is spent worrying about Google rankings or internal politics: this time is spent much more productively writing content.

One policy change I think would be appropriate would be for the appointment of junior editors. In many workgroups, there are no working editors and articles are piling up waiting for approval. It would make sense to allow authors with a reasonable amount of education and a strong track record of editing to become junior editors (or associate editors or whatever term you prefer). A junior editor would be appointed on a short term basis on a narrow topic area until an editor can be found that would take their place. To use my own personal example, I might apply to become a junior editor in philosophy as I do not have a Ph.D in the subject, but have enough knowledge (I've read plenty of books and papers and attended lots of lectures and seminars) to be able to tell what would actually fly in an academic setting. Then when someone who is an actual expert turns up, I would step aside and they would take over. The junior editor system would be subject to a strict sunset clause and the Editorial Council would have to renew it for specific workgroups. It would also be closely monitored and treated as an experiment. Once active expert editors are working in a specific workgroup, the Editorial Council would drop junior editor roles for that workgroup.

Finale

I'm Tom Morris and I approve this message! ;-)