CZ:Editorial Council Resolution 0007

The resolution

Whereas, The Citizendium Editorial Council's membership should be particularly well-informed about the project;

Whereas, Membership should also include some representation from the body of authors, whose special interests are affected by Council decisions; and

Whereas, the Council needs a method whereby regular selection of members, including Council leadership, can take place;

Resolved, That the Council adopts the following rules and procedures for Council membership.

I. Composition of the Council.

The Citizendium Editorial Council, concerned as it is with matters of content policy about which knowledge professionals are particularly expert, will have a preponderance of editors among its membership. But, since the Council is voting on matters that concern the rights and responsibilities of authors, the body of authors as a whole also requires representation.

Therefore, there will be 33 regular members of the Editorial Council, 22 editors and 11 authors. The size of the Council may be increased by Council vote, particularly if the number of active Citizens increases, and there are enough personnel for all governance functions.

In addition, however, the Council itself may vote to bring aboard up to ten other "elected" members. This should be done if, for example, some particular person has been doing important service to the Council and it is to the advantage of the project that he or she be a Council member.

All members must satisfy the requirements for membership listed below.

II. Requirements for membership.

To be qualified to be a member of the Citizendium Editorial Council, a person's identity must be confirmed to the same level of certainty required for editors generally. Moreover, the person should

(1) have made his or her first edit of the wiki at least one month prior to the beginning of the selection process;

(2) have edited the main namespace or the main talk namespace of wiki, in good faith, at least 20 times in the past year;

(3) have made at least one edit in the last three months; and

(4) be at least 25 years old and have a four-year college degree (or equivalent, in the judgment of the Selection Official), unless the person occupies one of the elected positions.

Furthermore, the Selection Official may, but with the oversight of the whole Council, add other members to the roster of those eligible. This may include new members as well as persons under 25 or without a four-year college degree. This prerogative should only be exercised in unusual cases, however, not to empower large classes of persons en masse.

III. Selection of members.

III.A. Term limits.

Members will serve two-year terms, with a selection occurring yearly on the first Tuesday of April, with a term limit of one consecutive term (subject to rules stated below), and with no limit on non-consecutive terms. The first selection will occur in 2008 (see Part VI below).

To guarantee that there is always a mix of new members and old members, each selection will replace (on alternating years) 17 or 16 members of the 33-member Council. This will include 11 editors and either 5 or 6 authors.

III.B. Preparation for selection.

The Council will hold a selection process beginning every year on the first Tuesday of April (to begin in 2008: see Part VI below).

The technical department of the Citizendium will compile a list of Citizens that satisfies conditions (1)-(3) above. Then the Secretary or, if the Secretary is not available, a person chosen by the Chair (in either case, the "Selection Official"), will determine which of the members are eligible editors, according to the list on Category:CZ Editors.

The Selection Official will then, on the date of the beginning of the selection process (above), e-mail the eligible editors, asking if they are willing to join the Council. At the same time, the Selection Official will post a call for author representatives to Citizendium-L.

Council members may not be members of the Executive Committee, the Constabulary, or the Judicial Board. Therefore, a person cannot be considered eligible if he or she is a member of the aforementioned bodies, unless he or she agrees to resign from those bodies. This policy must be conveyed to all candidates by the Selection Official.

The Selection Official will wait for two weeks for replies to be received. The Selection Official should respond to every mail immediately (but briefly), so that the applicant knows it has been received.

III.C. The selection procedure.

As to editor representatives, in the unlikely event that the pool of eligible and willing editors numbers fewer than 22, then the selection official should invite (at random) other editors whose work does not satisfy (1)-(4).

As to author representatives, in the unlikely event that the pool of eligible and willing authors numbers fewer than 11, the selection official should post another call for willing authors stating that otherwise ineligible authors are welcome to join. If there are still not enough authors who are not eligible, then a random selection from among ineligible but willing authors is made to fill the other spots.

If the editor pool numbers exactly 22, or if the author pool numbers exactly 11, those editors (or authors) become the members.

If the editor pool numbers more than 22, or if the author pool numbers more than 11, then the following happens:

• all current members are excluded first;
• if, among the eligible candidates remaining after current members are excluded, (a) there are fewer than 22 (11), then a random selection from among the current members to fill the slots, (b) there are exactly 22 (11), those are the new members; and (c) there are more than 22 (11), then a random selection is made from those.

The Council may require the Selection Official to follow a special method for making random selections.

The Selection Official places Category:CZ Editorial Council Members on their user pages, sends a list of their e-mail addresses to be added by the list manager of cz-editcouncil, and sends e-mail announcements to the selected persons.

In addition, at the same time, the Selection Official compiles a list of the names and e-mail addresses of the persons who are no longer Council members. He or she sends a notice to those persons informing them that they are no longer members, and also send the list to the list manager of cz-editcouncil, who removes the addresses of former members.

IV. Elected members.

At any time during the year, any Council member may nominate a person for one of the ten available "elected" positions on the Council. The nominating member should give some indication as to why the nominee is needed on the Council. The Council then votes on the person's selection. This is a straight up-or-down vote, without discussion (unless there is a specific call for a discussion period), and does not require a special resolution.

Elected members may be selected for a given year before the end of the previous year. This is not necessary, however, to guarantee a particular person membership on the Council.

To prevent the elected members from becoming a permanent Council "elite," no one may be an elected member of the Council for more than three years.

V. Selection of the Editorial Council Chair.

(This section will be added to the Editorial Council Rules of Procedure.)

A new Chair should be selected each year from among the members who arrived the previous year, that is, from among those Council members who have been on the Council for one year.

The Chair of the Editorial Council is chosen by the traditional parliamentary procedure of "floor" nomination and vote. During the first week of March (one month prior to the general selection process), the Chair calls for nominations by saying, "Nominations are now in order for the office of Chair. Please submit nominations, either of yourself or of another person, privately." The Chair will allow one week for nominations, posting reminders after three and six days. After a nomination is made, the Chair will inquire of all nominees whether they

1. can attest in good conscience that they have adequate time to execute the duties of Chair, and
2. continue to support fully the fundamental policies of the Citizendium community.

A nominee can be announced as a candidate only if he or she answers "yes" to both questions.

After one week, the Chair announces the candidates. A private balloting is then done by the Secretary, who allots one week for the vote and who announces the result. All members, including outgoing members, may participate in this vote.

The first election for Chair should occur March 3, 2008, to replace the current Chair.

VI. Council start-up period.

For purposes of initiating these rules, and to guarantee that there is always a mix of new members and old members, we will use some special rules for the first (present) Editorial Council.

On or shortly after March 1, 2008, the Selection Official will create a list of all current Council members who have edited the main namespace or the main talk namespace of wiki, in good faith, at least 20 times in the past year, who have made at least one edit in the last three months, and who voted on at least one-half of the resolutions for which they were not disqualified from voting for any reason. The Selection Official will mail to each of these members asking for confirmation, within two weeks, that they wish to continue serving on the Council. All Council members who fail to meet the criteria, and who do not confirm that they wish to continue on the Council, will be removed from the Council on the selection day.

The Selection Official will next reduce the number of members to (at most) 16.

If there are more than 16 remaining on the roster of eligible members--call the number n--then the Selection Official will identify (by strictly objective measures, such as number of edits and number of Council votes) which of the eligible members have been least active in the project, and inform the n-16 least active members that they could not be retained since we must have 17 open slots on the Council, and these must be reserved for the most active members.

If there are fewer than 16 remaining on the roster of eligible members, then the remaining number will be selected according to the above rules. Specific "slots" will be identified and these specific slots will last for only one more year (until 2009), as they are taking the place of (completing the term of) outgoing editors.

The resulting roster of members should consist of 22 editors (again, at most 16 of these being from 2007) and 11 authors (all of them new in 2008, but five of them considered to be continuing outgoing editors' 2007 terms). These members will then (be eligible to) continue to serve until the first Tuesday of April, 2009 (if they entered the Council in 2007, or are completing the terms of those who entered in 2007) or else the first Tuesday of April 2010 (if they entered in 2008).

The following illustrations should help clarify how these general rules should be applied. Note that the transition must be made to a selection period in which either 16 or 17 new members are found each year, that is, with 11 new editors and either 5 or 6 new authors. Moreover, in the transition, we would prefer it if people who are asked to leave, to make way for new members, have served at least two years. But in the transition period, in fact, some authors will serve only one year (i.e., the authors who are completing an editor's term) while some editors will actually serve three years. This is intended to stabilize the system so that either 16 or 17 members are replaced each year, while, beginning in 2008, the Council will have a 2/3 editor, 1/3 author makeup. [If you can make a complete proposal that fits the constraints better, great!]

Illustrations

Example A: 13 editors carry over from 2007 to 2008. 2007 Continuing from start: 30 members added in 2007 (all editors) 2008 Continuing a 2007 term: 11 members added in 2007 (that is, suppose that only 13 are eligible to continue on, under the above start-up rules; then 11 of them are considered to have started in 2007; these are all editors) Continuing but considered to be starting a new 2008 term: 2 members added in 2007 (they are considered to be starting a new term purely to make the mathematics work; all editors) New and considered to be starting a new 2008 term: 9 editors and 6 authors New but considered to be continuing an editor's 2007 term: 5 members (all authors) Exiting: 17 members added in 2007 (these are all the editors who do not meet the new membership rules) 2009 Continuing: 17 members added in 2008 (including 11 editors and 6 authors; note, two of the editors actually carry over from 2007, because there were only 9 new editors in 2008) New: 16 members new this year (11 editors and 5 authors) Exiting: 16 members completing 2007 terms (11 editors and 5 authors; note, the 5 authors serve only one year to make the transition to 2/3 editors, 1/3 authors) 2010 Continuing: 16 members added in 2009 (11 editors and 5 authors) New: 17 members new this year (11 editors and 6 authors) Exiting: 17 members completing 2008 terms (11 editors and 6 authors) 2011 Continuing: 17 members added in 2010 (11 editors and 6 authors) New: 16 members new this year (11 editors and 5 authors) Exiting: 16 members completing 2009 terms (11 editors and 5 authors) Etc.

Example B: 20 editors carry over from 2007 to 2008. 2007 Continuing from start: 30 members added in 2007 (all editors) 2008 Continuing a 2007 term: 11 members added in 2007 (that is, suppose that 20 are eligible to continue on, under the above start-up rules; then 11 of them are considered to have started in 2007; these are all editors) Continuing but considered to be starting a new 2008 term: 9 members added in 2007 (they are considered to be starting a new term purely to make the mathematics work; all editors) New and considered to be starting a new 2008 term: 8 members (2 editors and 6 authors) New but considered to be continuing an editor's 2007 term: 5 members (all authors) Exiting: 10 members added in 2007 (these are all the editors who do not meet the new membership rules) 2009 Continuing: 17 members added in 2008 (including 11 editors and 6 authors; note, 9 of the editors actually carry over from 2007, because there were only 2 new editors in 2008) New: 16 members new this year (11 editors and 5 authors) Exiting: 16 members completing 2007 terms (11 editors and 5 authors; note, the 5 authors serve only one year to make the transition to 2/3 editors, 1/3 authors) 2010 Continuing: 16 members added in 2009 (11 editors and 5 authors) New: 17 members new this year (11 editors and 6 authors) Exiting: 17 members completing 2008 terms (11 editors and 6 authors) 2011 Continuing: 17 members added in 2010 (11 editors and 6 authors) New: 16 members new this year (11 editors and 5 authors) Exiting: 16 members completing 2009 terms (11 editors and 5 authors) Etc.

Method of execution

Upon adoption, the rules will be moved onto their own page and linked appropriately from other Council pages.

The Chair will ask the Secretary whether he wishes to serve as Selection Official; if not, the Chair will ask someone else to do the job, or else do it himself.

The Chair and the Selection Official will together set a date for the beginning of the selection process.

Vote

No vote yet

Current status

Discussion on amendments

Discussion

• Discussion on Amendments Member position statements
• Discussion at the Forum

Sponsors

Before it is added to the Agenda, these sponsors, but only these sponsors, may edit the text of the resolution. After it is added to the Agenda, it cannot be edited by anyone except via the amendment process.

• Sponsored by: Larry Sanger
• Co-sponsored by Council members (limited to two names):John Moffett ; Martin Baldwin-Edwards

Resolution history

• Proposed: November 16, 2007
• Entered queue: (bypassed)
• Entered initial discussion: November 23, 2007 04:30 hrs. UTC for 4 days
• Entered public discussion: November 27, 2007 04:30 hrs. UTC for 8 days
• Entered waiting period for putting forward Amendments: December 05, 2007 04:30 hrs. UTC
• Entered discussion on Amendments: February 28, 2007 03:30 hrs. UTC
• Entered voting on resolution:
• Close of voting on resolution:

The Editorial Council was merged with the Management Council into a single governing body in 2013. All EC rules and decisions were upheld
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