Final reply of the evening (sorry I haven't had time to respond to even all
of the very important stuff):
K. Kay Shearin wrote:
> 3) There has to be a chain of command. It may be a formal
> hierarchy, such as the I.R.S. requires for any entity to get
> ยง501(c)(3) status, or it may be a practical one, because
> whoever controls the computer it's on effectively controls
> CZ. ("He who pays the piper calls the tune.") One way
> people have tried throughout recorded history to make a
> governing structure democratic is to rotate the authority
> (that's what trial jurors are, temporary authorities who make
> legal rulings based on the advice of judge who's a legal
> expert), and that's a possibility
> here: For example, if CZ had a list of editors in the field
> "mathematics." We could randomly select three of them at a
> time to serve for a week/fortnight/month as the authority to
> resolve disagreements between individual editors over
> articles about math topics. (We could, of course, select a
> single person to be the math czar for the term, instead of a
> panel of three. Or we could have a larger committee than
> three.) Or we could use 3-person panels of whom two were
> math editors and the third an editor from any other field.
> Or one math editor, one other-list editor, and one non-editor
> author (or constable). Or . . .
I agree. Please look here for one proposal regarding at least the
leadership of discipline-type workgroups like "Chemistry" or "Religion,"
what I've called "Chief Subject Editors":
http://tinyurl.com/y29njq
The only reason that there are not more sources of authority, at present, is
that we have not had large numbers of people involved and I haven't had time
to get to know people and talk to them about what they want. It's always
been my plan to delegate not just work but operational authority as much as
possible, as soon as it seems responsible for me to do so.
Tomorrow I'll make share a proposal I've developed recently to start
workgroups focused on different aspects of editorial policy, such as
reference and bibliography, info boxes, categorization, and the like. I
want those groups to have the authority to set and explain (dare I say
"enforce") policy.
The sooner we get such groups set up and working out policy intelligently,
the sooner people will feel comfortable actually working according to a
policy. What I have drafted is, after all, very sketchy.
Before too long we will have to talk about the actual process of selection
of leaders. I will be advancing at least two broad principles on this
front: (1) automatically limited terms and (2) sortition (i.e., random
selection among pre-approved persons).
I advance the thesis to you that if we have elections, and eventually
(heaven forfend) parties, the resulting politicization of the project would
threaten not only the health of the community and motivation of members, but
also our commitment to neutrality. Sortition and limited terms will, it
seems to me, keep the "politicking" to a minimum and keep people focused
where they should be: on the mechanics of content creation.
--Larry
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