WikiBone:About:Editorial Policy

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Unreviewed Article Open for editing by all

While WikiBone is an open wiki, an editorial team reviews all articles in an effort to assure that they satisfy the project's comprehensive quality standards. All articles bear a badge in the upper right-hand corner of the page that indicates their review status. This page describes WikiBone's editorial philosophy and process.

Editorial Philosphy

When WikiBone was founded, the net was abuzz with debate about the quality of the information found in traditional wikis due to their open nature. Several notworthy projects emerged with the goal of building "reviewed" or "managed" wikis. Rather than employing the traditional open model, these projects typically imposed limits on who could create or edit content and often required authors to submit to a formal review process prior to publication. After studying the editorial policies of these sites, the WikiBone founders realized that there are essentially two models for a managed wiki: the review-and-publish model and the publish-and-review model.

The review-and-publish model mimics the peer review process familiar to academics and scientists. Assuming that articles are approved for publication by highly qualified content editors, the quality of the information in a review-and-publish wiki can be excellent. But the review-and-publish model is difficult to implement without assembling a formal staff and establishing a formal (and potentially stifling) review process. Depending on the complexity of this process and the availability and diligence of the volunteer editors, new content can be slow to appear in review-and-publish wikis.

The primary disadvantage of the review-and-publish model is that it sucks most of the fun out of building a wiki by imposing some kind of restriction on who may create and edit content. The WikiBone founders wished to retain the spirit and benefits of an open wiki, which is why they ultimately chose to implement the publish-and-review model. At the same time, they implemented a post-publication review process that requires a certified content editor to vouch for the quality of an article's content and a certified copy editor to vouch for the quality of its composition. By attracting content editors who are recognized experts in their respective fields, the WikiBone project team hopes that the reviewed articles in the wiki will come to be viewed by the trombone community as authoritative sources.

Review Status

All WikiBone articles display a badge in the upper right-hand corner of the page that indicates its review status. In the normal course of events, an article bears a red Contributed badge when it is first published and receives a green Reviewed badge when it completes the WikiBone review process, at which time it is locked to prevent editing by the general public. Sometimes a reviewed article will be unlocked to allow for revisions, in which case it will bear a yellow Modified badge until the revised version has once again completed the review process. This section describes the meaning of each of these badges and the process by which they are changed.

Unreviewed Article Open for editing by all		The article has not been reviewed and may be edited by anyone. Under normal circumstances, this is the default status of all new articles.
Reviewed Article Editing is locked. Suggest changes on the Talk page.		A certified content editor has reviewed the content of the article and determined it to be both appropriate and accurate. A certified copy editor has edited the article so that it conforms to language and style standards. The author and the content editor, whose names appear in a standard footer at the bottom of the article, act as the article's custodians and control its destiny. The article is locked to prevent editing by the general public and may only be edited by its custodians or by a certified copy editor. At the discretion of its custodians a reviewed article may be unlocked for revision by the general public. Requests to unlock a reviewed article for revision may be made on the its talk page, which is monitored by the article's custodians. When a reviewed article is unlocked, its status is changed to Modified until the revised version has completed the review process.
ANYONE MAY EDIT THIS ARTICLE		The article has been reviewed and subsequently unlocked for revision by its custodians. Anyone may edit the article. When the revisions are complete and the revised article has once again completed the review process, its status is returned to Reviewed.