Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Re: A Detailed Proposal - Mk I

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001 address@hidden wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Simon Cross wrote:
> 
> > - Getting reviewers:  My proposal has a kind of "Catch 22" problem
> > inherent in it.  How do we get reviewers when we have no articles, and how
> > do we get articles when we have no reviewers?  The solution to the
> > conundrum is that articles do not need any reviewers to be submitted.  I
> > stated in my proposal that authors would be responsible for the review of
> > their own articles.  It is, however, possible for reviews to be added
> > without the author.  Thus when the GNUPedia review teams get up and
> > running they can go around reviewing and approving articles.  We will need
> > to iron out the details of allowing people other than the author(s) to
> > organise reviews.
> 
> At first, I'm thinking that article writers in a particular category can
> review each other's articles.  In essence, the core of the article writing
> team is also the article reviewing team.  Later on, the two could diverge,
> with the article reviewing team probably being larger.

This is a good solution, and quite practical, and I agree.  I think this
would be the best approach to adopt right now, while software is still
being hashed out and developed.  The one downside is that in all
likelihood the various authors are not going to be sufficiently well
versed in each other's subject matter to give true, incisive
subject-oriented peer review.  E.g., Joe might be a premier expert (and
author) on Football, yet in reviewing the article on The Art of Flower
Arrangement, he might not be able to do much more than check grammar and
spelling.  ;-)

Later on, when we have attracted a wealth of florist experts, it would
be nice if there was incorporated in our process some means for
depricating or replacing Joe's review in favor of these others who know
what they're talking about.  

I don't know what kind of a system would do this.  The only one I know
of which is close, is the Advogato system (www.advogato.org).  There are
potential issues there, however it could be a starting point.  There is
an extremely interesting paper on the advogato site about the theory
and rationale behind this approach, btw, which I'd encourage people to
read if they haven't already.

Btw, I suspect that there is always going to be overlap between
reviewers and authors.  It is in author's best interests to participate
in review, and I imagine reviewers are going to want to share their
commentary too.  This seems like a Good Thing, although I suspect there
are potential abuses/factionalizing/cliquing that someone might want to
ponder solutions to if we choose to go this way.

Bryce