Talk:President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Introduction
Does anyone object to reducing the descriptive text in the introduction? Specifically, I propose removing the paragraph:
 * "The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), founded in 1848, is the world's ... with membership open to everyone."

and replacing it with one or two sentences, such as the following - copied, in part, from the main AAAS wiki page:
 * "The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a general scientific society. The most recent Constitution of the AAAS, enacted on January 1, 1973, establishes that the governance of the AAAS is accomplished in part by a President and a Board of Directors. "

That would avoid the descriptive text that is better found and better cited in the main AAAS wiki page. It would also set the stage for the current 2nd paragraph, which describes the President's term & how they become the Chair of the Board. Aphzidos (talk) 19:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Descriptions of Recent Presidents
Any objects to the removal of the descriptions of 2008, 2009, and 2010 presidents?
 * "The 2008 president of AAAS was..."

That doesn't seem very relevant. I also suspect the name of the current president (Fedoroff), when added, should be accompanied by details about her dates of presidency and leave the rest to the Fedoroff and AAAS pages. Any arguments? Aphzidos (talk) 19:07, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Years
The years used to refer to AAAS President's is confusing due to AAAS convention. As stated correctly in an earlier edit, now removed: "In accordance with the convention used by the AAAS, presidents are referenced based on the year in which they left office." So McCarthy should be McCarthy, President 2009, not 2008, which is the year he became president. Agre, elected in 2009, is considered Agre (2010)... unless that would be unduly confusing to the reader. AAAS employee (talk) 14:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aphzidos (talk • contribs)

I propose changing the years to something (a) more understandable to Wikipedia's audience, and (b) possibly standard within Wikipedia's usage. Changing the years served to match the list of Wikipedia list of U.S. Presidents, which lists the dates of taking & of leaving office, would change Peter Agre's "2010" to "2009 - 2010." More formally, he served from 2/2009 - 2/2010 but I'm not confident I can find references for months for presidents going back into the nineteenth century. (Speaking of which -- this list of years needs citations!) Aphzidos (talk) 14:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)