[Cz-editcouncil] Editorial Council procedures: tentative proposal

[Larry Sanger]

Thanks, Supten--some comments on a few items are below.

> 2. The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) - whoever it may be at 
> any instant, may be the Ex-Officio Chair of the Editorial 
> Council.

This is worth exploration.  I think that ultimately the EIC will have too
much to do to be an effective manager of the Editorial Council, especially
if it is very active.  But, perhaps more importantly, making the EIC also
the Council Chair would seem to concentrate too much power in the hands of
one individual.  Now, I might not mind that in my own case, since I will
always make perfectly wise and just decisions :-) :-), but I worry about
what happens when I am no longer EIC.

Here I think the American system actually gets it right: the leader of the
executive may veto bills, but the veto may be overridden by a large enough
majority.  I would want the EIC to have veto power to allow him or her to
have an important but not exclusive voice in shaping the direction of the
project; creative and competent drive from the executive helps to make the
project as a whole more coherent and responsive to problems.

But letting the executive actually set the agenda, which is what the Council
Chair does, goes too far, by making the executive the key driver of
legislative matters.  The Council becomes effectively an appendage of the
executive, and hence not diverse or representative enough.

> 3. The vote is automatically tallied and reported by 
> someone deputized by the Chair, and called something like the 
> "Presiding Officer", immediately after the closing time. The 
> Presiding Officer for any vote can be any of the members of 
> the CZ-editcouncil - EXCEPT - the three proponents of the 
> topic itself.

I agree with this all except for the name.  The Chair is by definition the
presiding officer.


I have no objections to any of the rest.

--Larry