CZ:Charter drafting committee/Position statements/Martin Baldwin-Edwards

I was an Editor in Economics since Dec. 2006, and subsequently also in Politics and Sociology (my academic background is multidisciplinary). In April 2007 I was appointed a member of the first Editorial Council (EC), and Secretary of the second Council in May 2008. I pioneered EC Resolution 001 (language variants), guiding discussion through the Forum chat, and subsequently through the Editorial Council. As Secretary, I was responsible for guiding all Resolutions and advising their sponsors/authors on constitutional and procedural issues on CZ.

On November 1, 2008 I resigned from the EC and all editorial positions, after extended public disagreement with the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) over expert editorial control (namely, supporting the text of an expert author) versus the EiC in his personal capacity and other non-experts; the issue of acceptable sources (e.g. popular journalism) was also a component. These issues have not been resolved since.

I believe that the Charter is the first opportunity since the creation of the Editorial Council to remedy some of the ad hoc "structures" and procedures of CZ, and replace them with institutions accountable to the Citizenry. The functions of the Charter should be to set out clearly the rights and obligations of all parties (authors, editors, constables, EiC, Editorial Council) and to empower and specify the creation of any necessary new institutions (e.g. a Judicial Board): clearly, these should be kept to a minimum. However, these institutional deficits have been responsible, in my view, for the departures of many of the former leading authors and editors on CZ. Now is a real chance to get Citizendium back on its feet again.