Scholarpedia:Scholarpedia Index

Approved articles in Scholarpedia have Contributors - users whose contributions were approved by the article's curator and who have the privilege of voting to approve or reject revisions of others.

Each contributor is ranked according to how often his decisions to approve or reject coincided with the curator’s decision. The Curator Index is the fraction

Curator Index $ = \frac{A-D}{T}$

where

• \(A\) is the number of decisions coinciding with curator’s decisions (they both accepted or both rejected a revision). It also includes the implicit decisions, i.e., where the contributor submitted a revision for approval, and hence voted to ‘accept’ his own revision.
• \(D\) is the number of decisions that are in disagreement with curator’s decisions (the contributor accepted a revision but the curator rejected it, or vice versa).
• \(T\) is the total number of decisions that the curator made. \(T\) may include the decisions where the contributor did not participate, or the implicit decisions where the curator passively agreed with the decision of other contributors.

The index of the article's curator is always equal to 1, and the Curator Index cannot be greater than 1; it could be near zero when the contributor does not participate in the process of revision approval, or negative if his decisions are in stark contrast with the curator’s decisions.

Once the Curator Index becomes negative, the contributor loses his voting privileges. He can still modify the article, but his revisions will be treated as those of any other user (but with a caution).

The sum of a user's Curator indices across all articles forms his Scholarpedia Index. It reflects the user's overall contribution to the project and endows him with certain rights and privileges.

Any user can resign from being a contributor of any article at any time.