CZ:Managing Editor/2012/004 - Approval of Editor-authored articles when no appropriate nominating Editors available

Statement of problem
Existing policy regarding article approval does not take into consideration the not uncommon circumstance in which an Editor has predominantly authored an article to a stage ready for consideration of Approval but no other Editor is available to consider nominateing it for Approval, owing a dearth of truly active Editors in any of the article’s  Workgroup categories.

The question: Until Citizendium grows to the stage when the mentioned dearth of Editors no longer exists, or no longer is of severity to present a serious problem finding appropriate Editors to nominate articles for approval, should Citizenium allow Editors with established track-records nominate for Approval the articles they predominantly authored, with following provisos:
 * 1) The Approvals Manager judges the Editor's responses to comments from authors-at-large to be satisfactory in terms of edits to the article and rebuttals to critiques.
 * 2) The Editorial Council concurs with the Approvals Manager's judgment.

Charter

 * Article 36


 * The Managing Editor has the following duties:
 * 1) to ensure by means of executive decisions that the principles and policies of the Citizendium are effectively and coherently observed; such decisions shall be based on established policy where defined;
 * 2) to make interim decisions on behalf of the Editorial and Management Councils when established policy does not provide guidance; these decisions shall be overridden by the establishment of relevant policy;
 * 3) to represent the Citizendium in its relations with external bodies, such as the mass media, and academic or non-academic institutions.

Editorial Council
From "CZ:Approval process" (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Approval_Process):

Those rules do not take into consideration the circumstance described above, under "Statement of problem".

Seeking outside reviewers is unsatisfactory at the present time (July 2012) inasmuch as the prestige ranking of Citizendium is not high enough to offer incentives to busy and career-oriented specialists to peer-review articles for Citizendium. In the future, the use of outside reviewers may be a practical option.

The Editorial Council’s regulation, EC:R-2011-027/ Approval process (http://ec.citizendium.org/wiki/EC:R-2011-027) likewise does not set policy for the particular circumstance described above, under "Statement of problem".

Draft decision
''The text below is what I plan to decide in this case. Feel free to edit the text if you think this improves it. If your edits require discussion, please use the dedicated section below. Editing and discussion in this "Draft decision" section shall stop 24h after my last edit to it.'

Yes. That affirmative decision will enable the Approval Process to accelerate without compromising article quality given the provisos stated that provide safeguards by both the Approval Manager and Editorial Council.

Indeed, quality might improve, as the Editor's reputation is more at stake.

Editors whose articles are being considered may comment on the Talk Page of the article, and Editorial Council members who happen to be an Editor-in-consideration is expected to recuse himself/herself from concurring or not with the Approval Manager's judgment.

It is intended that this decision stay in effect until all Workgoups have adequate numbers of truly active Editors to support the Approval Process.

Discussion of Draft decision
When reading or editing this section, please keep in mind that the current version of the draft decision might be different from the one referred to by previous commenters.

Decision
Yes. That affirmative decision will enable the Approval Process to accelerate without compromising article quality given the provisos stated that provide safeguards by both the Approval Manager and Editorial Council.