[Cz-editcouncil] Council rules of discussion

[Larry Sanger]

I was asked to clarify where Editorial Council discussion takes place.  This
is the sort of question that the Chair can be expected to take up, but since
I know Supten is busy, and since I can explain, I'll explain.  The substance
of the following can be found here

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Editorial_Council_Rules_of_Procedure

although I add some information about background and rationale below.

First, some essential background.  The Editorial Council is a formal
decision-making body, modeled on parliamentary procedure, which is the set
of rules set up for managing large meetings of people with important
business to conduct, in a fair, democratic way.  In parliamentary procedure,
as anyone who has experience with it knows, a person may speak to the whole
body only when the Chair (or President or Speaker) typically recognizes him
or her.  This is to prevent everyone from speaking all at once; it is also
to prevent one person or a small group of persons from essentially "taking
over" the assembly.  In short, it is fundamentally ensures order and
fairness in formal proceedings.

On a listserve, there is a similar but not identical problem.  It is the
problem of people speaking *not* all at once, but *too much*, so that only
the most active members of the forum can follow all the "official"
proceedings.  (I guess this point has already been reached, lately!)  There
is also a problem of one or a few people, with relatively large amounts of
time or motivation, attempting to dominate the discussion--which is
essentially unfair.

To solve these problems, with Resolution 1 we adopted our Rules of Procedure
(above), which are a way to "digitize" parliamentary procedure.  While you
*are* free to propose an amendment to these rules if you like, currently the
system works like this:

(1) On-list discussion should only be about (1) the rules of procedure
themselves (formally, these are "points of information"), as well as (2)
brief statements of positions about motions for acceptance "by acclamation,"
and (3) of course, other *formal* business such as the actual statements of
motions (about which, again, please see the above link--it's explained
there).

(2) Official discussion *of resolutions* takes place *after a resolution is
made*.  There is at present no mechanism to discuss potential resolutions,
or resolutions that are not yet before the body.

(3) No fewer than *four* official methods of discussion are available to the
Council, once a resolution is before the Council:

     * First, there is an "initial comment" period, when people submit their
views on a resolution "silently," so that initial comments all appear at
once.  This has the beneficial effect of not allowing the first "speakers"
on a resolution to prejudice later discussion; in other words, it is
designed to avoid the well-known "echo chamber" effect.

     * After the initial comment period is over, Council members may use any
of three further methods of discussion: (i) the resolution is posted to the
Forums (I think this should be amended to add "or to the Proposals System"),
and can be discussed there; (ii) on a single wiki page, each member is given
a maximum of 600 words to articulate his or her position on the resolution;
and (iii) any member may elaborate as many longer arguments on a page such
as "CZ:Editorial Council Resolution NNNN/LASTNAME opinion" as he or she
wishes.

It follows from these rules that general informal discussion of upcoming
resolutions is out of order.  Last year, such discussion was done in advance
on the Forums, and was not done by the Council alone but instead by the
community at large.

I hope this helps.  I suggest that if you are uncomfortable with these
rules, you should move a resolution to amend them in a way that makes you
comfortable.

--Larry (speaking for myself, not in any official capacity)