CZ Talk:Editorial Council

Created CZ: Editorial Council with election information, and moved the previous contents to CZ: Editorial Council/Pre-2010 Election Howard C. Berkowitz 02:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

This page change was not authorised by the Editorial Council and is therefore not the official page. Since there are no actual errors of fact, I will leave it in this state for the time being, until the EC decides what should appear here. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 04:21, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

If the Editorial Council will have to convene to authorize every page change it will be quite a while before they get to any actual Citizendium business, don't you think? David Finn 06:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It's the format that is the issue; normally the Secretary is responsible for making official changes, anyway. I am leaving it as it is, since it's preferable to outdated info. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 07:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I guess I am used to regular citizendium pages where changes you don't like can quickly be undone. Probably best to ask that this page be locked right away and a draft page started, that way no danger of non-EC members editing it by mistake. David Finn 07:28, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I do not think that locking the page is needed. Unwanted edits can easily be reverted. --Peter Schmitt 10:13, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Official recognition of expertise

Article 14 of the Charter states

Editors are Citizens whose expertise in some field of knowledge is recognized and formally acknowledged by the community. Official recognition of expertise — obtained through education or experience — and its scope shall be based on guidelines established by the Editorial Council.

I hereby request the Editorial Council to provide these guidelines. --Daniel Mietchen 01:21, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Daniel, there is a start to this under expertise management in the CZ Wiki. It will have to align closely with knowledge management. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:36, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

No it doesn't. The EC will make its own policy. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 02:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

That page is being proposed to the EC, through approved procedures, as the start of a work plan for developing these policies. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:26, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

This is one of the main tasks of the EC, but also one of the most difficult. It will need time and not be finished (my estimate) in the near future. Thus specific problems concerning expertise will have to be decided on a case by case basis. --Peter Schmitt 12:28, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Maintainability policy

Can you look at the maintainability policy. It's a key policy, but is incoherent. As phrased it's nonsense - it would potentially disallow articles on (say) any protein on the grounds that it's inconceivable that we could ever have articles on every protein. It's a rule that can't be enforced coherently, is in practice not applied, and runs directly counter to the laissez faire approach that some favour, expressed as "Anyone should be able to write an article on anything they like". Yet it is the key grounds for article deletion.

May I propose an alternative policy:

Maintainability is the CZ policy that allows an article to be deleted by editorial direction on the grounds that a) it has significant weaknesses, and b) that deleting inadequate content would leave nothing of importance to the project, and c) that the article is unlikely to improve as there is no active interest from any member of the project in developing it.

Editors may nominate any article for deletion on these grounds. Any Citizen may object by disputing any of the three grounds given above, and if any citizen objects, then the deletion notice will be removed. If no objections are received, the article will be deleted after expiry of a period of four weeks.

Gareth Leng 15:54, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll forward it to the Secretary as a formal proposal emanating from you. I will support it but it needs another two EC members to enter the policy process. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It also needs some brushing, e.g. in terms of "deleting inadequate content would leave nothing of importance to the project" and "if any citizen objects, then the deletion notice will be removed". In general, though, I support Gareth's view that the old policy needs to be replaced along the lines he proposed.

@Martin thanks for forwarding it. I hope the EC will soon introduce a more practical way to submit such suggestions. I would also like to encourage the Council to invite more feedback from the community.

--Daniel Mietchen 16:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

What's the status of this? Howard C. Berkowitz 23:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Welcome Johan!

May you be the needed calming influence, untainted of what has gone before. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Motions rejected by the Council?

I fail to see the point of announcing non-decisions here. Peter Jackson 10:52, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

That's your privilege. In my view, a decision NOT to do something, is just as much as a decision TO do something. Would you say that the vote in the U.S. Senate NOT to convict President Clinton of whatever the Articles of Impeachment were accusing him of should NOT have been announced? Part B (6) of our Regulation concerning communications with Council reads: "Regulations, Decisions, and Recommendations shall be officially documented on the Citizendium at 'EC:Editorial Council' and pages linked from there." A couple of days ago, Peter, if I recall correctly, you were complaining that the EC was not providing *enough* information; now you complain that we are providing too *much*. I don't think that you can have it both ways. Hayford Peirce 15:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, maybe it depends whether it's a substantive matter. This proposal was just for the EC to adopt an agenda for its own discussions on certain topics. It doesn't really affect anything, as Howard will still be free to make any specific proposals he wants on the topic and the rest of you will be free to ignore them. But I suppose it's probably undesirable for someone to have the power of deciding which things are mentioned. Peter Jackson 11:11, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Where?

The link for 2011-004 is to a deleted page. Peter Jackson 09:56, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Peter has been doing a massive job of reorganization over the last couple of days. I just tested it and that link now works, redirecting to http://ec.citizendium.org/wiki/EC:D-2011-009 -- It may be a while before *every* link in every spot in both the EC wiki and CZ wiki is fixed but eventually they will all be in working order. Hayford Peirce 15:50, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The changes are explained on the EC homepage. Links should always point to the number of the motion (EC:2011-004) or ruling (EC:D-2011-009) -- they are supposed to be permanent. They redirect to the actual page that will change while a motion is processed, and may change later. Moreover, I have added to this page a link that leads to a category generated listing of all passed motions. --Peter Schmitt 16:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Leadership

I am greatly disappointed in the lack of leadership shown by the EC concerning: EC:2011-015 at [55] Proposal about the role of Editors, lack of a quorum. It's a whole lot easier to sweep difficult decisions "under the rug" rather than try to fix a potential problem. Sadly, Citizendium, which you were elected to represent, will continue to suffer due to the EC's lack of action.Mary Ash 18:18, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Hehe, I hope that the other six members take your words to heart! Hayford Peirce 18:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I believe most or all did express opinions. They did not agree with Mary's view, or Hayford's view that this motion was needed now.

The thread on the Forum and elsewhere, about reviewing our structures, in my opinion is the direction we need to go for long-term improvements. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)