Second Journal of Science/About/Guilds

Journal guilds are both feasible and necessary

Feasible

A guild of Wikiversity journals is feasible because journal editors must made arbitrary decisions on a relatively quick timescale. While lengthy debates about the acceptability of an occasion submission is tolerable, the majority of such decisions must be made on a somewhat timely basis.

Creation of institutions that engage in long debates and discussions must be avoided. Fortunately, journals should already be configured to make quick editorial decisions, and for that reason a guild of journals should be capable of quickly deciding which journals should be admitted to the guild. That might be the only decision a guild needs to make.

Necessary

Wikiversity differs from Wikipedia in that Wikiversity tolerates (1) parallel projects, and (2) student efforts (the latter including unrefereed research). The absence of such features on Wikipedia automatically decentralizes the decision making because once a title X is created, the editors of that project must agree on what does and does not belong in that article. The contents of that title are hotly debated, and that debate is almost always restricted to the talk page of that title. Wikipedia is massive collection of self-contained debates. Wikiversity has no such structure. One editors Matlab page operates independently of MATLAB essential. This freedom and independence make Wikiversity a haven for authors, but not a very pleasant place for readers who have to rely on indirect means to select which article to read first.

The inherently disorganized structure of this parallel-effort wiki can be alleviated by organizing Wikipedia using categories, schools, portals, etc. This organizational structure is absolutely essential and must continue. The question is whether it is sufficient. The question is whether a parallel and more decentralized approach can work in cooperation with the top-down organizational effort. By "accepting" only the best resources, a collection of Wikiversity Journals can help guide those engaged in the centralized effort to organize Wikiversity.

There are over 10,000 Open access journals, which suggests that we might someday see dozens of Wikiversity journals, each offering one editorial board's readers guide to articles on Wikiversity and its sisters. At some point a low-quality journal will emerge. Instead of engaging in the long and drawn out process of removing journals from Wikiversity, one or more guilds would simply ignore the journal by denying it guild status. Readers and Wikiversity page organizers could use that information as they please.

When and how we organize the guilds

We won't need a guild until the first low quality journal appears, and we might not see the first low quality journal until a number of journals have been created. Moreover, it won't be difficult to organize the journals into one or more guilds after they have been created. But oddly, all this does not imply that we should postpone the creation of a guild.

Wikiversity Journal was created to facilitate the creation of more journals on Wikiversity. But to inspire the creation of these journals, we need to convince people that a collection of journals might greatly enhance the effectiveness of Wikiversity. We need to convince people that this community will be wonderfully democratic and decentralized because each journal can choose its own standards. To reassure people that these journals will indeed help elevate the quality of articles that people read on Wikiversity, we need a democratic and decentralized say to ensure quality control of the journals. A voluntary association of journals into a guild, with no power except the good name of their guild, will provide this reassurance.

Thoughts on organization

The bug-a-boo against forming an online democratic society involves assembling people together for votes, which probably helped inspire the adage Wikipedia is not a democracy. For that reason, the members of the guilds be journals, not people. Journals have editors who have to make decisions on some schedule, and who often need to be accountable in some way to an editorial board. This greatly simplifies the process by which a decision by the guild is made. And, for the most part, only one decision needs to be made: Which journals are in the guild and which are not in the guild?

To facilitate this, the guild may choose to designate a single person to serve as a parliamentary president who simply collects the votes. Each journal should designate a person who will serve as the voting member. Journals need to make decisions, so requiring such a decision from each journal in the guild is not unreasonable. It seems to me that a majority vote (not a tie vote) should be the criterion for admitting or expelling a journal from the guild.

More effort to structure the guilds is probably not needed.