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 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 have

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

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

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

(4) if the person was a Council member during the immediately prior session, voted on at least two-thirds of the resolutions.

III. Selection of members.

III.A. Preparation for selection.

The Council will hold a selection process beginning every year on [date to be determined].

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 and condition (4) above.

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, so that the applicant knows it has been received.

III.B. 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.

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, which the

Vote

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Current status

Initial discussion

Discussion

• Initial comments from Council Members (none yet)
• Forums board for Resolution 0007 (none yet)
• Member position statements
• Longer statements from Council Members:
  • None submitted

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:
• Entered voting on resolution:
• Close of voting on resolution:

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