CZ Talk:Editorial Council Resolution 0014/Member p

Position of Milton Beychok
I agree with Roger Lohmann [see here] that this proposal is long overdue and I enthusiastically endorse having subgroups implemented in Citizendium. It will be a useful navigation tool and will also encourage the registration of new users.

For example, we have an Engineering Workgroup that encompasses dozens of disciplines such as mechanical engineers, civil engineers, electrical and electronic engineers, chemical engineers, environmental engineers, petroleum engineers, safety engineers, industrial engineers, aeronautic and aerospace engineers, etc.

Currently, John Doe, a newcomer to Citizendium who is an electrical engineer seeking articles in his discipline can only navigate to the Engineering Wiorkgroup and must search through the hundreds of articles there to find any devoted to electrical engineering. When Resolution 0014 is implemented, an Electrical Engineering subgroup can be formed ... and newcomers John Doe can navigate directly to that subgroup to find Electrical Engineering articles.

The same is true of the Chemistry Workgroup which encompasses disciplines such as inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, chemical thermodynamics, atmospheric chemistry, etc. I am quite sure that the same situation applies to biology, physics, history, healing arts and many, many other of our current workgroups.

The pilot Chemical Engineering Subgroup, created some months ago, now has 122 articles and 18 of those are Approved articles. The pilot Environmental Engineering Subgroup, created fairly recently, now has 39 articles in it and 5 of them are Approved articles. Thus, it can be said that the subgroup concept works quite well.

Many articles in the Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering subgroups are also categorized (in their Metadata templates) in the Physics, Chemistry, and Earth Science workgroups as well because they are inter-disciplinary and authors from those workgroups did in fact provide some edits, critiques and collaboration.

In summary, subgroups will serve as a useful navigation tool, encourage newcomers to register as Citizens and will provide more opportunity for inter-disciplinary collaboration. Milton Beychok 01:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)