CZ:Council

The Citizendium Council is the elected body of Citizens that is responsible for the content, technical and economic resources of the Citizendium and its related websites. It is authorized to:

• make all the administrative, financial and legal decisions for the Citizendium;
• take decisions over the content, format and organization of Citizendium articles;
• develop the rules of civility and behavior for Citizens participating on CZ and its related websites;
• adjudicate alleged violations of the rules;
• impose sanctions for violations of the rules;
• administer the "User Rights" of the software;
• develop operational procedures to implement the powers and institutions of the Charter when needed;
• appoint and supervise the activities of Constables;
• conduct elections and certify the results of elections;
• set its own rules and by-laws for its meetings;
• manage technical matters of the software and hardware;
• establish and maintain public awareness of the Citizendium; and
• invite and establish collaboration with external partners on any matters relevant to the Citizendium's mission.

Membership

There are three directly-elected voting members of the Council, plus the Managing Editor, who is a non-voting member. All seats are elected for two years, but one seat temporarily has a one-year term to ensure that not all seats are elected at once. The Managing Editor and two Council seats have terms expiring on June 30th, 2016 and one seat has a term ending on June 30th, 2015.

Contact the Council

See also: CZ:Communication

The Council maintains boards on the forums, and members can be contacted via their user pages. If you have an account on this wiki, you can also e-mail the Council privately via this page.

Previous governance

See also: CZ:Governance

The Council was created in August 2013 after Citizens voted to merge the Management and Editorial Councils. All rules and decisions passed by previous Councils remain in effect except where they contradict the existence of the Citizendium Council.

Decisions reached and motions passed by the Citizendium Council

2013

CC_2013_001	The Council requests Constable Matt Innis to grant sysop privileges for the test wiki to John Stephenson.
CC-2013-002	The Council requests Constable Matt Innis to grant sysop privileges for both the main and test wiki to Pat Palmer.
CC-2013-003	The Council requests Bureaucrat Matt Innis to add to sysop rights the rights of the Editorial Personnel Administrators, consisting of two rights: View requester’s and IP addresses while processing requested accounts (requestips), and View the queue with requested accounts (confirmaccount).
CC-2013-004	The Council authorizes the technical staff to implement Darren Duncan's hosting proposal as described here.
CC-2013-005	Whereas the duties of the constables are many, including daily checks, and whereas at the present time (September-October 2013) Citizendium has only one Constable on active duty, namely Chief Constable, Matt Innis, and whereas sysop John Stephenson has been active and performing some of the duties of the Constabulary and has indicated his willingness to serve as a Constable, the Citizendium Council hereby appoints John Stephenson to the Constabulary and requests the Chief Constable to invest John Stephenson with the rights of a Constable and the means to exercise those rights.
CC-2013-006	Motion Regarding Verification of Real Names Citizens responsible for creating accounts for applicants to Citizendium will verify that the applicant is requesting an account using his or her real name. An effective methodology or methodologies for verification of applicants names will be established by the Citizendium Council as mandated by referendum #8 (Reform and Simplification of the Account Creation Process) passed in the July-August 2013 election. The page entitled CZ: Real names policy (Real names policy) will be amended to add the following paragraph: “To ensure that contributors, whether to Citizendium’s knowledge base or to administrative functions, have registered under their real names, the Citizendium will employ a real names verification methodology appropriate to the applicant and as foolproof as is practically possible.” In the section of CZ:Why Citizendium headered Real names are better, which currently reads: “By requiring real names, we give both our articles and our community credibility: if you look at our recent changes page, you will see nothing but real names. Real names make it possible to enforce some modest, sensible rules, while Wikipedia's anonymity policy allows anyone who is slapped on the wrist to come back immediately under a new pseudonym. Citizendium has virtually no vandalism and little abuse of any kind. A community that asks its members to use their real names should be more pleasant and productive than one that allows abusive people to disrupt the community under the cloak of anonymity. We believe that in time, more and more people will come to see the merits of the Citizendium policy.” A paragraph will be added as follows: “To ensure that contributors, whether to Citizendium’s knowledge base or to administrative functions, have registered under their real names, the Citizendium will employ a real names verification methodology appropriate to the applicant and as foolproof as is practically possible.”