Forum Talk:Governance

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Proposal for approving articles
What would you think about setting up a committee of five members (three Editors, two non-Editors) to review potentially approvable articles, edit as needed, and vote for approval or non-approval (majority vote)? Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 23:46, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Why not? We need SOME mechanism, and this seems like a reasonable one, at least to get started with. Hayford Peirce (talk) 01:04, 8 November 2017 (UTC)


 * We've progressively reduced the number of elected officers because of difficulty finding candidates, and eventually abolished them altogether. I suspect this would suffer the same problem. I think you probably have to go quite a long way back through the contributions log even to find three Editors (Anthony, Robert Badgett and Russell Jones or Sandy Harris?).


 * If we do something like this, we should clearly distinguish this sort of approval from that by subject experts. Peter Jackson (talk) 17:37, 9 November 2017 (UTC)


 * How about a committee of three members (two Editors, one non-Editor). We can state: "Approved by the Editors of Citizendium". The goal is to render the articles as "Citable". Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 00:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)


 * "Approved by the Editors of Citizendium" sounds pretty misleading to me. Peter Jackson (talk) 10:48, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Tentative thought about how to handle motions
Any member can propose a motion and two weeks can be allowed for discussion and possible editing. A one-week call can be put forward to find out how many members would be willing to vote on that motion. If 2/3 of the members who were active in the six months prior to one month before the motion was submitted indicated their willingness to vote on the motion, BallotBin can count the votes of that group. The motion passes if 2/3 of the voters vote yes if and only if 2/3 of the members who agreed to vote did so. Otherwise the motion fails. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 22:58, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable enough to me.Hayford Peirce (talk) 01:36, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Have to think about that, but I suspect RationalWiki would consider it excessively bureaucratic.
 * Maybe we'd want to distinguish different types of motions. Peter Jackson (talk) 15:51, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it depends on who turns up. If there is a clear consensus or no objections, the proposer should be able to get on and do it as long as sufficient time has elapsed for people to make their views known. The two or three weeks Anthony suggests seem about right. Also, we could simply have votes, if needed, on the wiki, unless there is a call for anonymity. John Stephenson (talk) 20:00, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Our new basic policy document says it can be amended only by 2/3 vote. Maybe less fundamental changes should be easier. Peter Jackson (talk) 09:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Peter, would you be willing to edit or rewrite my proposal on how to handle motions? Anthony.Sebastian (talk)
 * Not right now. We're still just throwing ideas around, and only a few people have commented. Peter Jackson (talk) 11:55, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Another thought occurred to me. There will be situations where we need a definite decision one way or another. A 2/3 rule would be awkward. Peter Jackson (talk) 11:32, 15 December 2016 (UTC).

Edited proposal
Any member can propose a motion. A one-week call is put forward to determine how many members will be willing to vote on the motion. If 50% of active members agree to vote on the motion, and anonymity is not required, one week will be allowed for discussion in the appropriate section of the motion. Discussion may lead to editing of the motion. Voters will vote yes or no after their name in an appropriate section of the motion on the wiki. Active members are defined as members who have contributed content during the six-month period prior to one month before submission of the motion. The motion passes if a majority of voters vote yes. Otherwise the motion fails to pass. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 23:44, 25 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Any idea how many "active members" there are? I just tried to find out, but can't get the recent changes list to go back beyond 30 days (7 members). Peter Jackson (talk) 09:57, 20 January 2017 (UTC)


 * John, could you make the recent changes list go back one year? Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 00:28, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Enforcing the policy document
Putting this out here now in advance of anything happening: what do we do in the event that someone breaches the policy document? It says that we must prohibit certain behaviours, e.g. spamming. Previous rules (now guidance) required indefinite bans followed by an appeals process. Also, at the moment, there are no moderators but several people do have sysop privileges. I suggest that those who have such privileges and are faced with obvious rule-breaking (e.g. someone spamming) should be allowed to block the offending account(s) immediately and then we discuss it. After all, any blocked account can be unblocked. John Stephenson (talk) 14:13, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Have we got a suitable working channel of communication for the appellant to use? Peter Jackson (talk) 09:41, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There's the citizendium-l-owner@... e-mail address on the wiki signup page. That goes to me at the moment. John Stephenson (talk) 18:27, 19 January 2017 (UTC)