Second Journal of Science/Editorial board/log/Guy vandegrift

Proposal to focus initially on republishing established Wikipedia articles

I propose we begin by focusing on established Wikipedia articles. I see no reason we can't discuss them openly. It's only when we consider Wikiversity articles and abridged Wikipedia articles that things get tricky.

If we adopt this strategy, the journal will be only marginally useful. The real reasons I created this journal were to:

1. Promote quality Wikiversity articles in a way that is independent of the Portal system. The portal system is fine, but it is a top-down entity. Journals are also have top-down management, but not if we have more than one journal.
2. Make the comprehensive Wikipedia articles more instructor-friendly by establish a static "peer-reviewed" version, and also eventually to begin to abridge these lengthy and sometimes rambling WP articles for the benefit of students. Only when you have a collection of short, focused articles, will instructors begin using WP as a textbook.

Having said that, the quickest way to start is with established WP journals. Giving instructors and students "checked" permalink and PDF versions is a small step foward.

A choice between two structure choices?

Aside from the cadre of referees, it seems to me that we have a choice between the following structures. I believe it is natural if not inevitable that the highest level of authority lies with the Wikiversity community at large. The situation may be evolving, but the the past few years, no article mainspace that was not a copyright violation or deemed somehow "dangerous" was banned. But marginal articles are often moved into subpages, tagged with {{Fringe}}, or occasionally relegated to userspace. If the number of Wikiversity Journals increases, the community at large needs to step in, perhaps by tagging unrefereed and poorly refereed journals with something analogous to {{Fringe}}. Here are the two options that I see for the hierarchy below the Wikiversity community.

Option 1

Editor in chief: makes all decisions unilaterally

Executive board: makes commendations at meetings; knows identity of referees.

Advisory Board: membership must be approved but this board need not be small

Option 2

Executive board (Chairman only collects votes)

Advisory Board: membership must be approved but this board need not be small

With two levels, the executive board almost has to consist of three members, one of whom is the chair. This way each member can act unilaterally on reversible decisions, and needs just one more "vote" to make an irreversible action. Irreversible actions include the decision of whether to accept or reject a submission because a bad decision to accept hurts the journal's reputation among the readers and a bad one to reject hurts it among the contributing authors.