CZ:Proposals/Pilot to allow Citizens to take credit for pages/Archive 1

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Previous discussions

In Nov 2006 Andrea Moro wrote:

{snip!] The point I am trying to make is that a quality encyclopedia not only has to be certified by "experts" but also has to attract the best writers. Different types of academic work is recognized and rewarded, not only original, peer reviewed work. Any work where knowledge is disseminated is valuable to the academic author and to the university or institution that employe him or her. The problem with wikipedia is that it is very hard to recognize who did what in an article. Would it be possible to think of a way to recognize authoship of articles? Clearly an article has dozens of contributors, but there is a difference between those that do typesettings, and others who do the research and writing. One possibility is that the expert "certifier" upon certification, whenever possible also attributes the authorship to those that provided the most important contribution (perhaps in decreasing order of contribution, as some scientific disciplines do). It might also mention the others that heped with minor edits, typesetting, and so on...

The point of all this is to provide incentives for academics and experts to write and improve the quality of the articles. With the current model, academics have no incentives to contribute except goodwill…..

Replies were:

…I believe the governing idea is that there will be no article attribution on CZ, beyond what can be found in the History page. The main reason for this (which I agree with) is the tendency to be more reluctant to change an article "belonging" to another contributor.
Simon Rustad
The problem with attributing an article to a specific person, or even ranking all the people, is that it's nearly impossible to do…..
Zach Prukowski
….I showed a printout of approved CZ Horizontal gene tranfer article to a successful colleague. He started looking for the authors name. I asked him why and he replied: to check whether its worth taking seriously. ie credibility.
David Tribe

In January 2007 Tom Kelly opened a discussion about the way articles were written and edited, and how to reasurre people that their edits mattered. After some back-and-forth about how regular authors were just as smart as PhDs, it very quickly turned to discussing crediting of authors.

Points were:

“It's about contributing, it's about acquiring many competent people for CZ and it's about brandmarking CZ.” Sebatian Breitschaft. He went on to say that it was too difficult to see who had written and approved CZ articles, and suggested how this could be done. He said that the advantages to CZ would be consistent quality and incentive for authors.

Steve Ewen supported the idea, Paul James Cowie suggested using the wikitravel system, where a list of contributors appears at the end of the article, Jason Potkanski discussed some technical methods. Markus Baumeister supported the idea because it would give academics incentive, and pointed out that we would need to avoid people doing edits just to get to the top of the list.

Larry Sanger began this January 2007 thread in response to a Slashdot article that asked why unsigned articles and why allow anyone to edit.

Larry outlined why uncredited work and open contribution is essential for the success of the wiki.

An author called “Bennett” made a case for attribution.


David Goodman said that although wikis were supposed to be an improvement on the traditional editing model, what we were seeing was esstentially a traditional approach. Chris Day suggested that this was because most of us come from and are familiar with traditional models, but this would likely change as people got used to the wiki format and our numbers increased.

Anthony Sebastian proposed: Regarding the issue of crediting authors/editors of CZ articles:

  • Consider a non-editable tabbed subpage entitled "contributors".
  • Keep an automatically updated list of all contributors, in order of the date of their first contribution, or in alphabetical order.
  • Asterisk, or otherwise highlight, 'major' contributors--'major' in respect of volume of work or of importance of contribution.
  • Editor(s) who approved the article responsible for who gets asterisked or highlighted.
  • Since ongoing process; list of contibutors page should indicate date last updated.

This might satisfy everyone or none. Others may wish to suggest modifications of this idea, or different ideas.

Larry said he “might be able to get behind this. If it would help motivate people, without dismotivating collaboration, I'd be in favor of it.”. Greg Woodhouse encouraged him to think about it. Anthony Agryriou spoke to the difference between authoring and copyediting.

In March 2007 Anthony Sebastian amended his idea and suggested that alpha order would work better than asterisks for major supporters. Larry repeated that he generally liked the idea and might be in favour, but implementing the idea would need technical support and this would probably have to wait in a queue. Others supported. Thomas Simmons suggested we might consider noting the type of contribution.

Discussion

I'd be delighted if anyone would like to take this one on as driver. If not, I'll drive it on... --Larry Sanger 22:22, 12 February 2008 (CST)

A few questions:

  • Would Citizens be permitted to add other Citizens to the author list? For example, if Citizen A and B mostly write an article and Citizen C adds a comma, could Citizen A add Citizen C as an author to raise the number of authors over 3 and hence get credit for their work?
  • What happens if 100 people edit a popular article and all ask for credit? That won't happen during the proposed few-month pilot, but that would be an issue eventually as Citizendium grows.

With the current Citizens, I think this proposal would achieve its goals. However, I fear this proposal won't scale well.

  • Currently, if someone were to game the system and claim credit for a comma-fixing spree, people would notice and get annoyed. As the number of Citizens grows, more interactions will be with strangers, so gaming the authorship system will become more attractive.
  • As we scale, we'll get a lot more immature people of various sorts who are more likely to game the system. If as few as one in a thousand Citizens decide that claiming authorship for as many articles as possible is a fun game to play, the credit system would become worthless since the fake authors would drown out the real ones. Writing a good article takes days, but one can add a comma to a different article each minute!

--Warren Schudy 23:20, 12 February 2008 (CST)

  • Authors should be given credit according to how much approved additional content is added to the article. If there is an argument over authorship content, there should be some admin mechanism in place to resolve the issue. I think the idea of getting credit by just adding commas, is open to abuse. Meg Ireland 23:30, 12 February 2008 (CST)
  • I'm not in favour of it. I believe it diverts attention from the critical task of creating and editing articles. Any time spent squabbling over credit would be a time waster. If anyone wants to see authorship they can just check the History page. From what I can see, the problem with CZ is just a dire lack of people who are actively editing. I see the same names every day, there's like a dozen or so and that's it. If I thought this proposal would make a difference in attracting and keeping contributors, I'd be all for it. I'm just don't. My two cents, Shawn Goldwater 23:40, 12 February 2008 (CST)

The only way this is tenable is if a small group is authorized to determine authorship, and only of approved articles, and it were very clear that authorship of one version of an approved article does not equal ownership over succeeding versions (entire re-writes are even possible). Overall, I strongly believe crediting writers would add considerable fuel to CZ's growth, especially with a possible knol arriving on the scene where crediting to authors is a prominent feature. To me, carefully crediting authors of versions of approved articles is a wholly reasonable extension of the real-names policy. It will provide 1) the needed incentive for many people to overcome the barrier of using their real names in an otherwise open wiki project; 2) greater incentive for high quality contributions by authors (including Eduzendium students), since they can use their contributions as additions to their resumes; and, 3) greater incentive for expert involvement for the same basic reasons as with authors.

However, the following should be struck from the proposal. Below I use "discriminatory" to mean "results in an injustice", each which creates problems much more severe than any problem the caveats are surmised to head-off.

  • "List the contributors to an article strictly in alphabetical order." - this is discriminatory and thus a disincentive against people who actually do the work and against or for people based upon mere family name (its placement in the alphabet). Instead, have a small group of people who actually mine the contributions of an article just prior its approval and make determinations about who actually did the writing, in order of importance.
  • "Names would appear only if there were three names in the list" - again, this discriminatory against and thus a disincentive against people who have specialist knowledge, Eduzendium students, and individuals who submit an initial wiz-bang article on a topic (e.g., Symphony). Just trust that collaboration will happen in most instances, instead. There is no need to try to so tightly control all these details.
  • "To avoid issues about what counts as an "important" edit, a person could take co-authorship credit for the very smallest of edits" - yet again, this is discriminatory and thus a disincentive against people who actually do the hard work of writing. Nowhere in the publishing world are trivial changes considered co-authorship and CZ should not spearhead the construction of such a false idea. Instead, the phrase "and other Citizendium contributors" should be added to the credit line to cover trivial edits.
  • "limited just to, say, the Biology and History workgroups" - instead, it should be limited to approved articles (both in a pilot and always), whatever they are.

Other comments:

  • "There would be a small notice wherever the template appears that pithily conveys the notion that, despite our having listed these names, the article is wide open and available to work on by any Citizen." - this should be just below the credit line, which should appear at the bottom of the article.
  • The approving editor(s) should have placement as such within the credit line.

Stephen Ewen 02:46, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I like the idea of giving some credit on the article page. I agree with what was said above about it possibly adding more incentive for others to join, and to use their real name. But, I don't like the idea of giving authorship credit for small changes/edits. Since the system keeps track of how large an edit is, maybe there would be some way of adding credit only when x number of bytes were contributed to the article (maybe 2k?). This, I think, will allow the proposal to scale as CZ grows. Just my $.02. Joshua Knapp 05:49, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I strongly disagree in giving credit for articles. I think we 'humble encyclopedists' should be like the men in the smoky backroom. Personally I don't want my name been plastered on the bottom of every article I've written on. Denis Cavanagh 06:47, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I disagree with this proposal, for many of the reasons stated above. We are here to create an encyclopedia and provide free, accurate data to the masses - not here to draw attention to ourselves and our individual efforts. I think this has the potential to de-emphisize teamwork, and promote arguements over article ownership. --Todd Coles 08:54, 13 February 2008 (CST)


Size limits for author credit won't work either. One can simply pull a large chunk out, and put it back in later to meet the substantial contribution limit, whatever size it is set to. Thus, it would need human eyes to gauge the contributions and that would be a waste of time, especially once hundreds of authors have worked on a large article. This is supposed to be an altrustic endeavor, not a claim to fame. David E. Volk 09:03, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I also never want my name on any article here in any circumstances. However I wouldn't want to absolutely disallow this, and if we don't do this then I think we might wish to find some other way of acknowledging particular authors in some circumstances (Eduzendium for instance). I would prefer the template to go on the Talk page though, but that's just a suggestion. I have no objection to a pilot. Gareth Leng 10:00, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I like Stephen's proposal to have authorship determined by editors when approval is done a lot better than counting every comma. However, I don't like the idea of sorting authors by importance of their edits. In my field (theoretical Computer Science), authors of papers are given alphabetically to avoid the bad feelings of importance sorting. I think authors should be sorted by some mechanical means such as alphabetical, date of first edit or random. Alphabetical is often used in academia, so that's my first choice. We could do a hybrid such as displaying the names in random order but ask people to cite the article using alphabetical order, but I don't think that's worth the confusion.

I don't think Larry's proposal would work long-term for reasons I stated previously on this page, but I think Stephen's proposal is worth a trial in a few workgroups. Warren Schudy 10:36, 13 February 2008 (CST)

You have to remember that in academia the only reason why there is credit is because papers are submitted under the guise of some original research or observation; here we synthesize aggregated information into a single referencial document which is vastly different. We are not research scientists in that sense; but we must have some level of scientific knowledge to disseminate our sources for inclusion. I used to believe that we should receive credit for this work, but now I'm not so sure. I think it's more important to recognize those who have certain knowledge in areas to produce a better article on a subject they know about. --Robert W King 10:50, 13 February 2008 (CST)
Well, Robert, if you recall the premise that there is no original research in the sense of "research paper" has been seriously challenged in the forums. In fact, the way CZ articles are currently being written is indeed in the form of research papers. Papers are getting more and more specifically research and academically-oriented (Eduzendium, for example). People start out to prove thesis topics. I find the "no original research" idea extremely baffling in this confused environment, and I doubt that I am the only one. Aleta Curry 15:43, 13 February 2008 (CST)

My general comments:

  • This has been debated ad infinitum on the forums. There is great support for a credit system of some sort. I know it is time-consuming for people to do some back reading, but it is equally time-consuming, as well as boring, extremely frustrating, off-putting and disrespectful for people who have been talking time out from their busy schedules for months crafting carefully thought-out lucid arguments to be asked to do it all over again.
  • I would like to think that we can expect CZ editors and authors to take the moral high ground here. I'm stunned by some of the comments--do ethics not count? People should have enough personal integrity, self-worth and a sense of fair play NOT to want to take credit for that which they have not earned. I would have thought it would be overwhelmingly apparent that one should not take authorship credit for drive-by editing of any sort.
If my personal conviction that we are all above that sort of thing is misplaced, then we should separate the "credit boxes" into "authors" and "editors". Those who want credit for a comma or two can list themselves under "editors".
  • I think Stephen's point about discrimination against people with expert knowledge is an important and valid one. It deserves due consideration.
  • People who object to their names appearing in any sort of credit form can simple elect NOT to have their names appear. This is not rocket science, folks.

Aleta Curry 15:43, 13 February 2008 (CST)

Aleta, I had no idea that this has been previously debated on some other forum. I didn't see any indication on this proposal page that I was supposed to refer elsewhere. I won't be contributing to any more of these discussions. As an author rather an editor, my comments aren't needed. cheers, Shawn Goldwater 16:00, 13 February 2008 (CST)
Wait a second, Shawn, there is no reason to get huffy. I did not mean to imply that new participants should just know somehow that there has been prior discussion.
Let me say this another way: I personally am frustrated by having to revisit the same territory over and over. I would like very much if we can cross-reference some of the previous threads and ask our newcomers to extend themselves to reading over some of the old comments. I recognize that this is a dull and mundane thing for people to have to do.
I don't have a clue as to why you think that "As an author rather an editor, my comments aren't needed." Who said that??? Everyone's comments are welcome/needed/appreciated/ at any time.
Aleta Curry 16:10, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I added a section on "previous discussions" with various forum threads I found searching for "credit". However, I haven't *read* those posts yet. It would help if someone summarized the points made in those threads. Warren Schudy 19:24, 13 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks, Warren. I have a meeting in a scant three hours that I haven't read the working papers for yet. I am therefore out of time and can't deal with this now. However, if no one has summarised the points raised by tomorrow, I shall. Aleta Curry 22:59, 13 February 2008 (CST)

You could feel free to do so in the Reasoning section above, for me, Aleta. But I will have to qualify some of the arguments, or add some arguments in favor of certain elements of my proposal (alphabetical listing, for even the smallest edits, only after three people have edited the page). --Larry Sanger 23:07, 13 February 2008 (CST)

I am not enthusiastic about copy-edits, for example, being credited. The inclusion of these, along with the exclusion of articles authored by one or two people, means that this is actually a statement of collaboration rather than a statement of authorship. Somehow, I doubt that this will satify anyone. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 23:41, 13 February 2008 (CST)

The best suggestion I read was that the approving editor write the citation for the article and would apportion credit. If the approving editor wants to give credit for copy-edits, then fine. Only approved articles should have names attached. The citation should be grievable. Personally, I don't think authors should add their own names to a citation. --Russell D. Jones 06:01, 14 February 2008 (CST)

"Statement of collaboration" vs. "statement of authorship" is an interesting distinction. I'm not sure I get it entirely, but if I do, I would say that I'm opposed to statements of authorship on principle. The main reason for this is that it encourages people to consider themselves exclusive owners: and if there isn't that implication, then what is the difference between a "collaborator" and an "author"? We don't need no steekin' authors, who proudly protect their turf and bark at strangers. This is very essentially a collaborative project. --Larry Sanger 07:00, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Well, I am all for the collaboration. My personal feeling is that I don't want or expect credit for the articles that I copy-edited; I am ambivalent about the [few] articles on which I have been a main author. I can understand, though, why some of our authors would appreciate credit where it is due. Perhaps a solution would be to identify roles? I am not sure about this idea, but merely offer it. On a different point, Russell has just commented on one of the ideas we had discussed: why not limit it to Approved articles? 'Twould be far less controversial, methinks...Martin Baldwin-Edwards 14:58, 14 February 2008 (CST)
I understand and appreciate Larry's core concern here but really think it is out of proportion to the need for actual concern. The way to see is to try a pilot along the lines as I've outlined above. The proof will be in the pudding. Should I create an alternative proposal? I'm apparently still unclear about how this system new works. Stephen Ewen 15:28, 14 February 2008 (CST)

I am somewhat concerned that this proposal may be intentionally "neutered" as to coherce the results of the pilot. I suspect it may not be given the full detail it deserves, in order to attain a "real" conclusion. --Robert W King 21:12, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

Robert's comment re implementation

For what it's worth--I've written a visual basic program that uses IE as a web interface to parse the HTML code in a given article to pull out some revision history data and save it into a text file. I wrote it sort of as a "proof of concept" in case this ever came around, however it would probably need more work. (it's also a lil buggy in terms of what edits are saved; there some error checking that needs to be built in) It can be done.

My idea was to programmatically convert edits into bytes for each user, sort by the amount of total bytes edited (obviously doing a comparison between edits to ensure there just isn't a big copy-paste) and then randomize the end result a little bit by some kind of seed value based on the total article size so you wouldn't able to determine what the actual percent of contribution was, but it would still provide a rough figure. --Robert W King 14:43, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks, Robert. I'll write the implementation procedure for my own proposal. I'll certainly consider yours, but if it doesn't actually implement the policy I favor, I probably won't want to use it. --Larry Sanger 15:45, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Reaction to #Reasoning

Oh, now, really. If you've already decided, what are we doing?
Before I start arguing with you about specifics, I feel compelled to say that I think you're doing the majority of us a very grave injustice.
You have said, Larry, that you expect to this project to attract (and keep?) the best of the best. Then you say that due to the very nature of human beings, we cannot be trusted to demonstrate morality and maturity. WRONG!
If you ask me (you didn't, but that won't stop me) the positions that have been presented show intelligent thought, honest responses and a desire to do what's best both for oneself and, I repeat AND for the project. We have people who have stated that they will NEVER seek or accept credit for their contributions, (I do not share their view but I absolutely admire their ideal) people who might accept credit under certain circumstances, people who will not seek credit if they believe their contribution is minor, people who will not accept credit for copyediting. People are thoughtfully considering what will and will not work, what might and might not cause problems for CZ. You have not crediting any of us with ethical thought but have lumped us all into this single category of greedy, selfish, disingenuous oafs and in my not-terribly-humble opinion that's just...well, it's...well, it is!
Larry, you are the editor-in-chief and to a very real extent what you say goes. If you do not wish to be engaged on this proposal, why are we taking time out on it? Just say you're implementing your proposal on a trial basis and there's no need for discussion. I'm not being sarcastic; I'm serious. I've had a long week that's not over yet and I'm not willing to waste my time arguing about a decision that's already been made--what purpose does that serve? Let's have done.
Aleta Curry 17:02, 14 February 2008 (CST)

I've decided that this is the only version of this sort of proposal that I can support; but that doesn't mean it's simply up to me. After all, the proposal could well be shot down (and I wouldn't be terribly broken up if it were, to be honest). I could see doing more only incrementally, and only after people had demonstrated all the virtue that you so graciously impute to them, but which I in my growing cynicism do not always see. I'm not about to plunge headfirst into the deep end, as certain people seem to want us to do.  :-)

I am not mainly concerned about the motives of the people in this debate, so please do not attempt to reply to my argument by saying, "But we're your friends and we're so virtuous!" Please...I'm not doing you (any of you) any "grave injustice." I am concerned about the problem cases (which will exist even if they involve none of you) and the long term, which are exactly the sort of things that one must think about in policymaking.

Besides, Aleta, my argument isn't just a cynical one; I don't just say, "People are selfish and they will start competing with each other terribly." That's only part of the problem. The other part--and it might be larger, if the Encyclopedia of Earth experience is indicative--is that we are too nice. So, once our names go on articles, other people seeing the names there, will think, "Oh, OK...I'd better not get involved here, see Mr. Impressive College Professor and Ms. Wonderful Professional Writer are already involved...it's their article." You and I might see that this is wrong, but we cannot engineer how people will react to and use our system. Rather, we have to design the system with typical (and the most disruptive permissible) reactions uppermost in mind. --Larry Sanger 18:58, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Well, Larry, at least you've got me laughing. Responding to your paragraphs separately and in order:
This particular proposal may indeed be "shot down", since I don't see where it gives your virtuous friends all that much satisfaction. But that doesn't mean the issues raised will just go away. These are legitimate concerns, of major interest to a number of our learned companions, so it seems to me that the Indians will simply regroup and attack again.
Oh, but you are! And I never said that we were your friends. Okay, okay, I'm willing to allow that we're all your friends, but not that we're all so virtuous. My point was that we were not all so selfish, either. Look, the rest of the world sees the style of your argument as a very American one. I don't know if that's fair, I'm not a philosopher, but Americans do tend to argue in extremes: if we take ABC to the Nth degree, XYZ *might* happen, so we have to jettison the entire idea at the start. Of course "problem cases" will exist--so?!
You're doing it again. We're not *all* so nice! We're not all deferent, we're not all easily intimidated. Some of us are bombastic, some are egotistical, some are iconoclastic. Some will see Mr Impressive College Professor as past it and Ms Wonderful Professional Writer as staid and do everything they can to confront. You simply cannot equate what is typical and what is most disruptive.
Your virtuous friend, Aleta Curry 16:05, 15 February 2008 (CST)
Well, the strength of my argument, my dear virtuous friend, does not rest on overgeneralizations. This is ironic, because overgeneralization is a rhetorical move you so kindly stereotype Americans for making. Hmm.  ;-)
Policy is made in reaction to problem cases. This is why, for example, there are predictable calls to ban firearms in the United States after every mass shooting: we want to avoid such "problem cases" altogether. Closer to home, CZ has adopted (provisionally) a dispute resolution system largely in reaction to a fairly small number of disputes.
I've argued that if we were to credit people according to the amount they contribute, this would have the dual effect of making already aggressive people more so, e.g., shooing other people away from "their" articles; and making less aggressive people more deferential and more apt to "ask permission" (in effect, not literally) to work on an article from the "leading" authors. These are both already problems (think of how a certain editor who shall remain nameless "guards" "his" articles). In fact one of our recent proposals goes a small way to solving the latter problem (i.e., the one about not requiring people to "ask for permission first" before making major edits). Indeed, probably the best explanation I've seen for why certain classes of people do not edit so much on Wikipedia and CZ is that it requires a certain sort of aggressiveness.
Now, when I make this argument, I am not saying that everyone on CZ is aggressive, or that everyone is a creampuff. People have different ways of reacting to the same policies. What I do say is that the likely reaction is that work on articles will be less collaborative and more "silo'd."
I should probably add another whole argument to the above, an argument from culture. While we do recognize the knowledge of experts, here on CZ, and are to that extent less than perfectly egalitarian, in another respect we are very egalitarian, and this is essential to our success: we are strongly collaborative. In particular, our community is right now, in fact very much committed to the proposition that no one owns any article, that we have equal rights to change them or work on them--although, given the prerogatives of experts, not necessarily equal rights to make decisions in case of disputes, or to guide the general plan of an article. If we start differentially rewarding people for their authorship, some significant portion of these people, and perhaps everyone to one degree or other, will begin to think of articles on which they are credited as the main author as "their" articles. This would likely change our culture, and that's something you do at our peril. I really wish someone would try to address this objection head-on. I suspect that no one does, because no one can.
Just having your name there in lights, above other people's, will get you more invested in the article, more defensive about it, and will also make other people less apt to contribute. Why? Many reasons, all having to do with the culture of credit: they won't get the main credit, for one thing, and so they're working for your glory. Who wants to do that? And again, many won't want to touch "your work," that's your responsibility after all don't you know. They might be so bold as to offer you advice on the talk page, but since you're the main author, you'd be responsible for taking their advice, or not. Already we suffer from too much of the latter. Just think, to take one interesting example, of how you all regard the CZ community pages: I wrote them and so you treat them as "mine," and you don't want to do work on them because you think you might be stepping on my toes. Can you imagine what it would be like if my name were on those pages as the author? And once again, this is not speculation. I've seen this happen on the Encyclopedia of Earth and in other wikis. It's better if we do not flirt with the culture of credit at all, and instead remain firmly committed to the culture of collaboration.
Again, if you disagree with these arguments, I wish you would attack them head-on. Or, if you think someone else has done so elsewhere, could you please call my attention to the discussion? I don't want to say that I have all the answers, but I do say that this is really, really important--shutting down the collaborative engine that runs CZ would be an unmitigated disaster. It seems to me that some of us are running willy-nilly to do so, without believing or understanding how they are. --Larry Sanger 15:35, 16 February 2008 (CST)
Bennett Haselton echoed last year a lot of what Aleta has said. See http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/15/177258.shtml Stephen Ewen 00:31, 16 February 2008 (CST)
Big deal...  :-) He's clever, but I don't think he understands wikis as well as he thinks he does. --Larry Sanger 15:35, 16 February 2008 (CST)
solution: ask people to sign in only if they claim to have contributed 5% of the substance of the article. Those are the only ones who should be getting credit, and in general we can trust people regarding the 5% cutoff. (Although I recall an international food fair in Chicago. There were booths for all the countries of Europe, each with a national flag and a map of their historic territory. You could add the maps together and get about twice the area of Europe. But I don't see that as a problem.) Richard Jensen 16:46, 16 February 2008 (CST)

Here's a variant of Larry's proposal based on Richard Jensen's proposal. Replace the following lines in Larry's proposal

  1. Names would appear only if there were three names in the list.
  2. To avoid issues about what counts as an "important" edit, a person could take co-authorship credit for the very smallest of edits (e.g., removing commas).

with

  1. Names would appear only if there were two names in the list.
  2. Citizens are instructed to take credit only if they feel they have contributed at least 5% of the effort to the article (including non-writing tasks). To avoid nasty arguments, one may not challenge a Citizen's claim of credit. If a Citizen displays a pattern of claiming credit for articles that they unambiguously did not contribute sufficiently to, the Constabulary may take action.

"Author" already has meanings in Citizendium and in academia, so I propose we use some other word, such as "contributor". --Warren Schudy 18:40, 16 February 2008 (CST)

Warren has an excellent formula! Richard Jensen 19:00, 16 February 2008 (CST)
Works for me. This seems so reasonable, and the referring to Constabulary rather than challenging bit is a really good addition. Aleta Curry 23:06, 16 February 2008 (CST)
I think it's much better to have a third party do the "who wrote?" issue and keep this ONLY to approved articles, for reasons already stated. Stephen Ewen 23:36, 16 February 2008 (CST)
I disagree. We are going to sit here forever going back and forth with how to decide "who wrote". Larry has me pretty much convinced why this should not be limited to approved articles, though I was leaning that way anyway. If we have a fair system, there's really no need for such limitation. Besides, I thought the goal here was to provide incentive? We really need to avoid the kind of meaningless competition WP has fallen prey to. Aleta Curry 00:58, 17 February 2008 (CST)
Larry's created a strawman, a meaningless competition, and filled it. No one cares about credit for non-approved articles, and no one ever has. And no one has ever brought up this as a means to competition but him. Stephen Ewen 13:52, 17 February 2008 (CST)
Well, I don't think it's a straw man at all. I've laid out in some detail the reasons competitiveness on wikis exists; and you yourself engage in it regularly, Steve, and it's no great insult to say so, either. So my point deserves less perfunctory treatment. Why do you claim that no one cares about credit for non-approved articles? I think that many people do care about such credit, and some are asking for it even here on this page. We've seen many instances in which people discuss the desirability of credit of all sorts. I've also received a few mails from scholars who have said, in essence, "You've got an interesting idea, but I couldn't get involved because I need credit." They did not say "for approved articles only; I don't need credit for unapproved articles." Moreover, if we were to give them such credit, they would want it all the more. And if we were to offer people credit just for approved articles, they would suddenly be clamoring for credit for unapproved articles--based on my long experience working with people online, I have to say that that's just obvious to me.
A few of the people who are suggesting that we give credit only for approved articles couple this with the suggestion that only editors apportion out this credit. But this means that they are conceiving of the practice of giving credit as conferring special individual distinctions, setting some authors up above others. That is simply not a proposal I am willing to take seriously. The only proposal along those lines I have heard that I might be able to support is one that Lee and I developed some months ago; we said that we might recognize someone for having written the first draft of an article, after it had been approved, and we might do that on a separate page altogether, just so people could put CZ article drafts on their CV. Similar to Warren's "weird variant." --Larry Sanger 22:38, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I agree that this should concern only approved articles. For a start, the changing nature of any unapproved article makes the concept of who contributed to it meaningless unless it is updated every day. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 13:59, 17 February 2008 (CST)

the approval process does not yet work: we have only 49 approved articles! We can shift to an "approved articles only" policy when we have at least 1000 of them. Richard Jensen 14:10, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Your reply is a non-sequitur, Richard, Furthermore, a small pilot project is a far better way to test contentious proposals. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:46, 17 February 2008 (CST)

I can see how it follows. The point is that it won't be much of a pilot project at all if we limit ourselves to just a handful of articles. What can we prove (or disprove) with 50 articles?

Also, Martin, you say, "For a start, the changing nature of any unapproved article makes the concept of who contributed to it meaningless unless it is updated every day." I don't get this. If so-and-so contributed to the article, he remains a contributor, unless his contributions are all deleted; but that's a special case. I don't suppose I can expect you to have read everything I wrote above, but I want to make the point that it will work greatly contrary to the collaborative spirit of the wiki if we make distinctions among contributors. If we do not care about making such distinctions, beyond a very basic level (two sentences, 5%, whatever), then we can say: once a contributor, always a contributor. --Larry Sanger 22:38, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Weird variant

This proposal has two goals: rewarding contributers, and giving articles credibility based on their authors. I propose we use separate mechanisms to achieve these two goals.

For credibility:

  • put the names of the approving editors in the approved-page version of the subpages template

For rewarding contributers:

  • Upon approval, the approving editors decide on a list of authors.
  • This list of authors of a given article is not displayed anywhere. However, the "user contributions" page includes a list of approved articles a given user has authored.
  • When people cite Citizendium articles, the author list should simply read "Citizendium contributors" or something like that. People can indicate on their CVs that the exact author list is hidden by CZ policy and link to our explanation of why, but give a link to the user contribution page so that people can verify the person in question is among the authors of the articles they claim to have authored.

With these proposals, whether an article has one author or seventeen has no effect on ones CV or on-wiki prestige, so there's no reason to guard ones article from other Citizens. --Warren Schudy 10:37, 15 February 2008 (CST)

Very intriguing, Warren...I will have to think about this. --Larry Sanger 11:41, 15 February 2008 (CST)

A very interesting discussion. This is mainly about CVs, right? There is plenty of information available to an employer, in article histories and user contributions, without articles needing to be credited. I think it would be a dodgy distraction. Ro Thorpe 16:36, 16 February 2008 (CST)
Employers are way too lazy to do that. Tenure committees are more thorough than employers, but even for them spending 10 hours evaluating the contributions of an active Citizen is too much to ask. Warren Schudy 18:15, 16 February 2008 (CST)
Employers are way too lazy to check other CV items too. Just as long as it's there & verifiable...Ro Thorpe 18:45, 16 February 2008 (CST)
in the academic world claiming false credit is very dangerous. People get fired for that--even university presidents. Richard Jensen 12:36, 17 February 2008 (CST)
Any thoughts on this "weird variant"? I seems like it would accomplish the goal of motivating people without causing competition. Warren Schudy 23:33, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Larry's recent changes and comments

I think Larry's recent comments about "culture of credit" (in the "reasoning" section) are important. If my 5%/at least two proposal were adopted, if someone wrote 5% of an article that previously had two authors and then took credit for that, this would probably be looked down on a bit as unfair. Under Larry's 2 sentence/at least 5 proposal, taking credit for two sentences might be viewed positively, as it would help break the 5-author barrier. If authors spent some time encouraging other authors to come edit "their" articles to get 5 authors, that might be a good thing.

Under Larry's proposal, there would be such a wide variety in the amount of work involved in getting credited that the list of articles someone has authored would be essentially worthless as a means of evaluating people's contributions to Citizendium (e.g. for tenure).

I see three general options:

  1. Don't credit authors.
  2. Credit authors in a way that is too imprecise for evaluation purposes.
  3. Credit authors in a way that is an accurate enough measure of one's contribution to allow its use in tenure decisions. Accept a risk that Citizendium's culture will move towards an academic "culture of credit".

Larry's proposal is in the imprecise category. I suspect this compromise is worse than either alternative. I bet an imprecise crediting system would reduce contributions by interfering with the altruistic feelings more than it would help contributions by offering selfish reasons to contribute.

There is insufficient support for precise crediting for such a proposal to happen, I think. I therefore conclude that we should not credit authors at all.

I do think we should state the names of approving editors, not to credit their work, but rather to improve the credibility of approved articles.

--Warren Schudy 13:52, 17 February 2008 (CST)

There's a serious flaw with a percentage-based authorship boundary, namely the fact that the overall effort of the article changes as time goes on, so contributers would need to remove themselves sometimes. How about requiring 250 words of first-draft-quality text or equivalent effort? --Warren Schudy 13:52, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Warren is of course correct on the flaw in %. I agree with his 250 word cutoff. Authorship at this level is serious enough to include in a CV or application to graduate school/law school. At the Assistant Professor level, writing enycyclopdia articles will not help a career at Yale, but it will help at thousands of smaller schools where the dean demands annual evidence of scholarly activity. (My wife, by the way, has been a dean at several small schools.)Richard Jensen 14:01, 17 February 2008 (CST)
Authorship at this level is serious enough to include in a CV or application to graduate school/law school. Of course it is. At least one CZer has recently used his CZ experience to help get a job. And even where that would not be helpful for a paid job, it might sway the balance in getting an important internship. And we all know where a good internship can get you. Further, let's not forget about those EZer getting university credit. So, okay, you say, their profs check the edit history. But wouldn't it help when they apply for jobs later? Really, there are some good reasons for this. Aleta Curry 14:38, 17 February 2008 (CST)
One can produce a first-draft of 250 words in an hour or less. For example, my post that started this section ("I think Larry's recent comments ...credibility of approved articles.") is 291 words. A publication (in Computer Science at least) is around 5000 words and takes weeks to months of full-time work. Biology is also about 5000 words. Approved-quality words probably take at least 5 times as long as first-draft words, so by my "250 words of first-draft-quality text or equivalent effort" standard someone could claim credit for 1/100th of the work that went into Biology. If we want authorship usable for CVs, I'd suggest a standard of at least 1500 first-draft-quality words. See NP_complexity_class for an article I made which is 1300 first-draft-quality words and is therefore almost ready for me to claim authorship. Fifteen-hundred first-draft-quality words corresponds to roughly 300 approved words, so by this standard one would need to do about 1/20th of Biology to qualify. --Warren Schudy 15:29, 17 February 2008 (CST)
I'm reviewing all comments just now...just observe the slippery slope in action here! First it was "no credit for copyedits"; then "no credit for just two sentences"; then "no credit for just 5%"; then "no credit for 250 words"; then it's 1500 first-draft-quality words! I couldn't have illustrated my point better than you did here on this discussion page itself! ROTFL! --Larry Sanger 11:49, 29 February 2008 (CST)
It all depends. The great New Yorker writer A.J. Leibling, who wrote about boxing, eating, and other topics, including reporting on WWII from Europe, once wrote: "I can write faster than anyone who writes better, and better than anyone who writes faster." I used to say the same thing,jokingly, until I thought of Bob Silverberg over in Oakland.... So I don't think we can reduce it to arbitrary definitions. Hayford Peirce 16:21, 17 February 2008 (CST)
we're talking about enyclopedia entries not scholarly journal articles. Lots of encyclopedia have word limits. For example on one paper encyclopedia I coedited in 2005 the great majority of articles were 500, 750 or 1000 words, with a few longer ones 1500 words. The contributors were paid $50 to $250 by the publisher (Gale) depending on length. The issue is not so much how many pages you publish, it's how much tolerance your readers have for long articles. Wikipedia for example has far too many very long articles that bury the information readers want. Less is more. Richard Jensen 15:43, 17 February 2008 (CST)
This is your opinion, Richard, and it is contrary to mine. Long articles are strongly to be preferred; the longer the better, until it makes sense to divide an article into a collection of related articles. The point is, I want as much valid information in CZ as people are willing to shovel into it, yes, even about decommissioned ships and video games. --Larry Sanger 22:59, 19 February 2008 (CST)
Further, we have and will continue to have approved articles with less than 1,000 words total. Some subjects are just...well, short, for lack of a better word. Aleta Curry 16:11, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Let me clarify something: by "first-draft-quality", I mean edited for spelling but not much else, like typical talk page posts. How about a standard of roughly 1500 unedited words or 250 approved words? (This proposal is of course predicated on us shooting for authorship that goes on CVs, which as I mentioned earlier I don't think there's sufficient support for to happen.)Warren Schudy 16:49, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Who decides the quality of a particular person's contributions? And are we to look down our noses at people who contribute "only" 150 words, just because some people want to get their CZ articles credited on their CVs? That sounds like a recipe for rancor and unpleasant, unnecessary bureaucratic decisionmaking.

Look, if it is simply a matter of taking credit for quantity of work done on a CZ article, official CZ recognition of your contribution is not really necessary. Only verifiability is, as someone said above. If you want to take credit for your CZ contributions, why aren't you doing so now? Is it only because your name isn't on the article? Well, if this proposal is implemented, you can put your name on the article. If your name on the article is not a big distinction, who cares? Why does authorship need to be a special distinction in order for you to credit yourself with your work on the article on your CV? Perhaps it's because you'll be embarrassed by all the other names that will be on the article, and thereby make your contribution look small. But do you now see my point about the culture of credit? You would resent your co-collaborators because you would be sharing credit with them!

The culture of credit can live on CZ. But it must take a role consistent with vigorous collaboration. So we should be willing to write letters to colleagues describing their CZ roles, and their work and its quality. We'll probably automate this eventually. Sooner, I hope, rather than later, because it could be a nice little inducement to academics to participate. Perhaps a Citizen could prepare a standard report of his activities on CZ, and then an editor could be asked to review and approve the report. If that wouldn't be useful on a CV, why think that a "250+ word, 'high-quality' contribution" to an article would be? --Larry Sanger 22:59, 19 February 2008 (CST)

after teaching history and political science to thousands of freshmen & sophomore US college students since 1966, I have discovered that the great majority are capable of writing a 250 word paper. In fact at RPI (where I had a grader), I required 8 papers a semester in the 250-500 word range and the kids came through just fine. Anyone capable of making a useful contribution to CZ is capable of writing 250 words. Richard Jensen 23:28, 19 February 2008 (CST)
I agree, Richard; but what's your point? --Larry Sanger 23:38, 19 February 2008 (CST)
I think 250 words is a good target to ask authors to hit if they want named credit. Less than that trivializes the status, and we want to encourage students and junior faculty to claim credit for working on CZ. For them to claim credit we have to give out credit (as by listing their names --perhaps on a subpage titled "significant contributors to this article". Richard Jensen 01:39, 20 February 2008 (CST)


Respectfully said, if we were to replace "credit" and "contribution" and "authorship" with "expert" and "expertise" in a lot of what Larry wrote above, it might just as well have been written by a staunch Wikipedian. But traditions have their reasons. Stephen Ewen 23:29, 19 February 2008 (CST)
Steve, I don't even know what you're trying to imply. It would help if you would spell it out, if you can. If you can't, I'll ignore it, because I don't understand it. --Larry Sanger 23:38, 19 February 2008 (CST)
One author's opinion: I am broadly against giving credit, mostly for reasons outlined by others elsewhere on this page. To those I'll add: 1) we already have the means to indicate authorship through the Talk pages and by a reader studying the history list; 2) on-line encyclopaedia articles don't tend to emphasise credit generally; 3) (possibly most important) we are still battling the misconception that this is an experts-only wiki. Adding credit will reinforce that view - to the casual reader, it may make it look like the authors are all expert authorities. Just my two pence. John Stephenson 01:18, 20 February 2008 (CST)
You've got a solid point with (3), John, but it's not really a knock-down argument, IMO. The danger can be mitigated with the appropriate notices/wording, I would hope. --Larry Sanger 07:59, 29 February 2008 (CST)
if two sentences makes on an author (and maybe two brush strokes an artist, or three pushups an athlete), then the status is laughingstock. Let's avoid the ridicule if we want to attract serious contributors. Richard Jensen 10:16, 29 February 2008 (CST)

You're right, Richard. We shouldn't label the people who are contributing as "authors," we should call them "contributors," which is a better description of the class of people we want to honor. For reasons explained above--I would love to see a serious, direct response to that--I don't think we should make the contribution to CZ articles a "distinction." To single out people who have made significant contributions to the article will have various ill effects: do have a look. I would require two sentences just to discourage the "credit hounds" from changing a comma and then claiming to be a contributor. --Larry Sanger 11:07, 29 February 2008 (CST)

I agree that contributor is a better word than author. I currently believe that we should scrap this proposal but encourage Citizens to write recommendation letters for each other describing their contributions. I'll write up my reasoning this evening perhaps. Warren Schudy 11:27, 29 February 2008 (CST)
Good idea. I imagine there could be a template to generate such letters automatically. Ro Thorpe 11:56, 29 February 2008 (CST)
Warren, don't write your reasoning, and don't even write a proposal: find a programmer. That would be really useful. Also, are you on Citizendium-Tools? If not, maybe you should be. I made a detailed proposal myself and asked for programming assistance, but no serious bites, I'm afraid. --Larry Sanger 12:00, 29 February 2008 (CST)
I joined cz-tools a few weeks ago, right before I posted there about reader feedback. I didn't get any bites at first, but Jitse replied today. So you may need to be patient. I don't see how automation would help the recommendation letter process, so I'm going to concentrate on finding a programmer for external feedback instead.
Please see my post there about requirements. It's not (just) for a recommendation letter "system," it is for a system that allows us to present statistics about our work on a personally-crafted page, designed for our own specific uses. Think of it as a powerful automated wiki "registrar" system, that allows you to selectively display your achievements. --Larry Sanger 22:06, 29 February 2008 (CST)
The brief version of my promised reasoning: some people want authorship for CV purposes, some people want no crediting system, and some want credit for minor contributions. We are naturally inclined to compromise on the intermediate position of on credit for minor contributions. Compromise is usually a good instinct, but in this case I think the compromise is worse than either alternative, as it risks hurting the collaborative culture with insufficient benefit to Citizen motivation. Warren Schudy 19:17, 29 February 2008 (CST)
Put another way: who thinks that a system of recognizing people who contribute 2 sentences will make CZ better? Warren Schudy 19:43, 29 February 2008 (CST)
I guess we'll find out, when the decisionmakers--the Editorial Council--take this up. You seem to think that the only reason one might have for supporting the proposal is that people "want authorship for CV purposes." But that's not the only reason. Indeed, I spelled out in excruciating detail what the reason I, at least, have: it is a small motivation or inducement for people to write. It also does help support the goal of CV credit: if you claim on your CV, "I wrote 75% of this article," and then people see your name on the article, that supports your claim.
Also, if I felt that giving credit in the very modest way I propose was a significant threat to our collaborative culture, I wouldn't have made the proposal. Indeed, the specific parameters I've set out are designed to minimize the threat; in particular, saying that a person can be credited only when there are four others being credited at the same time might actually motivate people to encourage collaboration more than is already happening. I'd expect that to happen, in fact. --Larry Sanger 22:06, 29 February 2008 (CST)

Richard's proposed amendment

Taken from CZ:Proposals/Editorial Council (which will include all Edit. Council proposals, not just this one).

proposed amendment (as discussed on talk page): replace To avoid issues about what counts as an "important" edit, a person could take co-authorship credit for the very smallest of edits (e.g., removing commas). with "A person can claim co-authorship by contributing 250 or more words." Rationale. We want authorship to be valuable in the academic world, and a reasonable minimum effort is essential or CZ coauthors will be laughed at. (In warfare, if everyone gets the Medal of Honor, then no one gets true recognition.)Richard Jensen 14:33, 17 February 2008 (CST)
I strongly support Richard's amendment for the reasons he stated. Stephen Ewen 13:13, 29 February 2008 (CST)

You keep saying X, and I keep arguing why I can't support X; and then you complain that I am not supporting X, without refuting my arguments. This is not constructive, Richard and Steve. If you want to persuade me, you are going to have to refute my arguments. Sorry, I'm difficult that way.  ;-)

I can, however, refute your own arguments here. Making a "250 word minimum" will not make authorship valuable in the academic world. Why do you think it would? After all, the effect of a 250 word minimum is to give authorship credit only to those people who who write 250+ words. That makes the list of authors smaller, limiting it to people who have written around one notebook page of stuff. Its sole effect is to exclude people who have contributed less. Why would excluding them make authorship valuable in the academic world? Answer: it wouldn't. Authorship would remain collaborative. Tenure and advancement committees would still not be able to tell what you had done and what others had done. The committees will remain extremely skeptical about the value of any contribution to such an open system. Why think that excluding the "lesser" contributors from credit would make them take the system any more seriously? I'm sure it wouldn't.

You say that "CZ coauthors will be laughed at." By whom? Not by the tenure and advancement committees: if they are told that it's a collaborative project, and that this is an exhaustive list of contributors, not authors, why should they expect that it will include only "major authors"? I'm not sure who else you think will be laughing at them. By the general public? Why should they laugh, if it's clear that this is a simply list of everyone who has made any contribution? What's funny about that?

Your analogy, "Medal of Honor," is extremely telling. (And making it, without any further comment, makes me suspect that you haven't come to grips with what I wrote above.) If you think that authorship recognition is something that should be given out like a "Medal of Honor" on a strongly collaborative project, that shows that you want authorship credit to be, specifically, a distinction. Tell me: why should it be? Not for tenure and advance committee credit. As I just explained, they won't care if there's a 250 word limit or not. Besides, you can report the number of your words, or what percentage you contributed, on your own damn CV, if you must.  ;-) Why not?

Besides, if we make a 250 word minimum, and given that only a few articles will have five contributors who contribute that much, only a few articles will get contributor lists. So you would have to add not just this amendment, but a further amendment that there should be no minimum number of authors. But then you have to confront certain other arguments made above, which I don't think anyone has yet done. --Larry Sanger 22:06, 29 February 2008 (CST)

I have sat on university-wide tenure and promotion committees (U of Illinois) and we looked carefully at every claimed publication for candidates from every department. Someone who claimed a 500 word book review did get credit (500 words is about the average book review in history). No one who claimed a mere 50 words would ever get credit, i'm pretty sure. If we trivialize the quantity needed to be an "author" we trivialize the award. Larry's language " on your own damn CV" suggests a deep distrust of academe, which is cointerproductive to CZ. The History page already lists everyone who has made a contribution so there is no need to have a special listing of people who have played very minor roles on an article, Instead if there is a cutoff they have an incentive to do some more work and reach the cutoff goal, which is what we really want. When my kids were young they were in sports "competitions" in which every one won a prize. By age 12 they were laughing at the system as childish. Richard Jensen 17:44, 6 March 2008 (CST)
I haven't made my mind up yet on this -- I see substance in both sides of the argument. One question that springs to mind, having been both a student for many years in which I was required to "write a paper of X number of pages", and later a pro. writer in which, for short stories, I was paid by the word, is that if there's a 250-word minimum, say, that it *may* tend to lead to some bloated writing by people who desperately want to get in under the wire. It's easy enough to say, "Well, in that case, someone else will just edit away the extra words." Which, in turn, could lead to acrimony and arguments. I don't say that this is a *major* concern, I just think that it *is* possible. Hayford Peirce 18:31, 8 March 2008 (CST)
A minimum is a guideline not a legalistic law. For short articles about to be approved, the person who would make the determination uses common sense! If the article is about to be locked with approval we should assume bloat has been killed. Stephen Ewen 18:39, 8 March 2008 (CST)
Hayford has a good point, but we do want to set goals that are reasonable. I taught many freshman history courses and always assigned 500 word papers. I discovered that the great majority of American college students can handle 500 words without excessive bloating, so the proposed 250 word target should be reasonable. Some history journals do publish 250 word book reviews by scholars which provide genuine credit (most journals have a 500 or 750 word limit.) Richard Jensen 19:29, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Richard wrote: "No one who claimed a mere 50 words would ever get credit, i'm pretty sure. If we trivialize the quantity needed to be an 'author' we trivialize the award."

My reply: you are still missing my point. My point is it would not make any sense for a person to put a certain article on his CV if he had contributed only 50 words to it. So it is the CV writer who is making the mistake, not the Citizendium contributor list, if the CV writer puts himself into the ridiculous mistake of taking credit for a 50 words contribution. You seem to be assuming that people will, or will be encouraged or "licensed" to, take "joint authorship credit" of an article for CV purposes if their names are listed in the contributor list. But why assume that?

Besides: the purpose of this proposal is not, as you assume, to honor the main authors so that they may get academic credit. That's simply not right. I won't repeat what I've said is the purpose of the proposal. Besides, even if that were the purpose, you haven't explained how it will particularly help a person get academic credit if there are fewer rather than more names on the contributor list.

You seem to be assuming that the contributor list will be (or contain or imply) some prescribed way of citing the CZ article. But I don't assume that. That's a separate issue entirely. Indeed, I wouldn't want to put any names on article for purposes of citing it--even the name of the approving editor(s). But, again, that's a separate issue. What this proposal addresses is quite simply what names will be credited as contributors on the article page.

If you are interested in how we will recommend that people cite articles on their CVs, there is this proposal. --Larry Sanger 23:12, 8 March 2008 (CST)

I fail to understand why we are not taking into account the value of the contribution. 50 words, 250 words mean nothing if they are largely superficially relevant to the topic. After all, someone could contribute less than fifty words (but likely between 50 and 250) and make edits that represent key important core points of the article. --Robert W King 08:09, 9 March 2008 (CDT)
In response to Robert King's good argument: the reason for the 250 word cutoff is that the contributors themselves can make the claim without controversy. If we use a value criteria then editors will have to spend the time to evaluate large numbers of entries, and we simply do not have the staffing to do that. Anyone is free to make a valuable 100 word contribution at any time, and be listed on the history page. If that person waants "author" designation, he or she has an incentive to add more text to get to the 250 cutoff (I think anyone capable of making a valuable contribution in 50 words knows enough about the topic to add more.)Richard Jensen 10:06, 9 March 2008 (CDT)
Has someone pointed this out? – What if Author I is given credit for an article, and then a year down the line Author II swoops in and alters the article in a way unfavorable to Author I. But Author I is unaware of the changes, and the bibliographical reference for the article remains in his/her CV. What follows next is . . . a potential job employer, scanning Author I’s CV, proceeds to eyeball the article in question on CZ, only to find that the article is somewhat embarrassing to Author I. And in short, Author I fails to get the job. This scenario suggests that an author would have to keep returning to CZ to ensure that his/her article is still suitable enough for a CV. Moreover, is it not too much to expect that a job employer is going to take the time to scan the “history” page? That, I think, is a very dangerous assumption. The "uncertainty principle" of author designation could even lead to qualified scholars staying away from CZ. All this recalls to my mind Jacques Derrida’s “The Word Processor” in Paper Machine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 24-32.Jeffrey Scott Bernstein 14:17, 9 March 2008 (CDT)
Jeffrey brings up a good point. The solution is for the author to cite the date of the version he takes credit for. ("retrieved on Dec 31, 2007"). This retrieval dating is standard practice in academe. Richard Jensen 14:52, 9 March 2008 (CDT)
Significant points:
1. Even if Author I’s contribution to an article is dated, the potential job employer may not bother to examine the article’s history to find out who wrote what. (I repeat, assuming the job employer will take the time to compare different versions of an article is a fantastically dangerous assumption.) What if the newest version of the article (featuring an unwelcome contribution from an Author II) is so offensive to the job employer, that he/she immediately shuts down CZ and tears up Author I’s job application?
2. What if Author I does not want credit for his/her article, then Author II swoops in, adds 250 words (a “trivia section”, say), and does request credit. Now, Author II will be seen, at least at face value, as the sole author of the piece, and can sustain this misrepresentation in his/her own CV.
3. A word on retrieval dating. CZ is nothing like, for example, Grove’s Music Online or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. Articles in those latter places cannot be changed by just anyone, and are, for the most part, static; hence, an author’s name is rightly appended to an article, because the author has the confidence that his/her work will remain unadulterated. In that case, retrieval dating is right and proper (and I’m leaving out supporting argumentation for this). Retrieval dating is not relevant to CZ, because of the spectre of an Unknown Author II, if not Unknown Author III and so on, who can swoop in, tinker with, and change things, without Author I knowing or the potential job employer caring to examine the fine details of the whole shebang.Jeffrey Scott Bernstein 16:03, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

I have previously stated that in my view this scheme should be confined to Approved articles. There would be, therefore, a definite version of the article referred to; furthermore, there would be an incentive for everyone to try to get articles approved, so that there would be visible credit. I think this scheme, in its current form, trivialises the contribution issue. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:28, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

Martin, I hope it would be clear by now that it trivializes contribution very intentionally. Please do have a look at my arguments, above. --Larry Sanger 17:30, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

Of course, the intentionality is very clear! Martin Baldwin-Edwards 18:56, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

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