Following a proposal by the administration (that technically took place before we even thought about a new library maintainer but was only voted on recently), comrade @420dengist has been named editor-in-chief of the English essays section by an 12-0 vote taken by the trusted editors. The admins voted but the comrade in question did not.
He was recommended for this position due to his tech background (also knowing MediaWiki quite well), which is necessary for the new essays space that relies on lots of templates and code. He has also been with us for a while, mostly active on project discussions over editing, hence why some of our editors may not have seen him often on the wiki.
The editor-in-chief will have the following tasks:
- Offer ideas and improve the essays section in terms of functionalities, UX, etc.
- Decide on a posting schedule for essays so that we don't get into a situation where 5 new essays show up in one day on the feed and then nothing gets uploaded for 3 months.
- With author permission, make corrections to essays. It was also decided that authors who have not been active for 6+ months can see their essays edited without prior approval due to the difficulties in contacting them.
- Editing also means adding the infobox template to essays as well as images to replace the placeholder image for essays that don't have any.
- We hope we will also be able to start harmonizing the writing style in the essays space so that they look cohesive and thus more professional. Publications (journals, magazines, etc) employ editors-in-chief for this purpose as well, to make sure the voice of each writer fits their publication's style, so this is a step towards developping ProleWiki essays as a space that can stand on its own.
- The maintainer should also eventually become the first point of contact for questions about the essays space, but this will come in time once he is properly onboarded.