Most of you are probably already familiar with PhilPapers, which has now become perhaps the most useful database for professional philosophical work (does anybody still use Philosopher's Index?). It is an open access, entirely free service to the profession, which thrives on the basis of the dedicated work of its two founders (David Chalmers and David Bourget), crucial financial support by some generous institutions, and the good will of the many philosophers involved in the project. One of the things that anybody can do to help the project is to submit your own papers to the database; you can do this even with work in progress, unpublished material, which means that PhilPapers is also an outlet for cutting-edge research in philosophy.
Another very important aspect of the enterprise is the categorization project. The idea is that, on the basis of a very general taxonomy of different areas and sub-areas of philosophy (organized in a treee-structure, with main branches, sub-branches and leaves), papers can be placed in the appropriate category or categories (the same paper can belong to different categories) so that it's much easier for everybody to do their bibliographical research thematically. The people in charge of categorization are mostly the area/sub-area editors (though I think anybody with a profile can categorize a paper; the area editors are then in charge of approving the categorization), who volunteer to be in charge of their area of expertise for a certain amount of time. The area editors do not get any 'compensation' for the work they do besides the eternal gratefulness of the editors-in-chief and the satisfaction of providing an important service to the profession.
I have been area editor for History of Logic, Medieval Logic and History of Logic, Miss. (the last two are leaves of the branch History of Logic) for a while, and whenever I can, I go over to PhilPapers to 'populate' my categories, as they say. However, for all this time, the mega-branch Logic and Philosophy of Logic has been editor-less, which is of course not a good thing for the area in general. So in what is perhaps something of a kamikaze move, I volunteered to be area editor for Logic and Philosophy of Logic, only to discover that there are over 10.000 papers within the area, waiting to be further categorized! This is a daunting number, and certainly not a job for just one person. I figured, if I categorize on average 20 entries a day, it would still take me about two years to go through the whole thing! I'm hoping we will not have to wait this long for the area to be in a good shape...
So I'm writing this now to suggest that people should consider applying to become area editors and contribute to the project; there are still many areas in need of an editor. It is very easy to apply: all you have to do is to make a PhilPapers profile if you don't have one already, then check the list of all areas, where you can immediately see those lacking an editor. You click on the area, and right on top there will be a message "This category needs an editor. We encourage you to help if you are qualified", and you can click on "Apply" just under it.
Moreover, I am asking in particular the logicians among you to help me out with the Herculean task of categorizing over 10.000 papers in logic and philosophy of logic. If you would like to help out, do drop me a note so that we can coordinate things a bit (for example, by dividing the 'letters' each of us will tackle: A for you, B for me, C for her etc.). Any help would be much appreciated!
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