CZ:Nomination page/Editorial Council 2011/Hayford Peirce

To return to the main election page when you have finished reading, please click here: CZ:EC Election and Referenda December 2011.

I've been at CZ since May of 2007. I have a background as an English major in school and as a professional (and published) writer of fiction. I have a fairly broad knowledge of most items that fall under the "liberal arts" blanket but no particular expertise in any of them. Likewise I have an intelligent amateur's knowledge of a number of other things such as eating and drinking, tennis, baseball, Polynesian culture, and other trivial and useless items. For most of my career at CZ I've enjoyed creating articles, more or less at random, about these interests, and also making edits to and comments about articles created by others. Here are two that I've started in the last year—they're pretty representative of the sort of thing I do:

• Gnocchi alla Romana—food

• Ken McGregor—tennis

I've also embarked on a couple of more ambitious projects, one about the American novelist Richard Condon, with individual articles such as The Manchurian Candidate about the first eight of his many novels, the other a catalog of Famous tennis players—someday I hope to actually complete both of them.

At Larry Sanger's direct request, I was honored to have served as a Constable for more than a year and a half. Finally the general aggravation inherent with the post caught up with me in the Fall of 2010 and I abruptly resigned. Not long after that, the new Charter came into force and elections were called for various offices. I was nominated as a candidate for the Editorial Council. It was only with reluctance that I accepted, fearing that the Council would the same sort of battlefield as the Charter-writing process had clearly been. At the time I accepted the nomination, I posted a rather lengthy Statement that you can read here:

• http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Hayford_Peirce/Editorial_Council_Election_Statement_2010

In that Statement I said that if elected I would fight to ensure that the Council was run by a simple "majority rules" system of voting in order to avoid the dysfuction that had plagued the Charter-writing committee, and that I would try to weed out, or severely rewrite, any "fringe" articles that had crept into the project and had been the source of much contention.

I was elected, and, eventually, both my stated goals were achieved.

A short while after the formation of the Council, upon the resignation of the original Secretary, I was unanimously elected to serve as its second Secretary. In that post I have played a fairly active role, both initiating a number of proposals of my own and shepherding, as expeditiously as possible, others' proposals through our process. During the last twelve months there have been 78 proposals that the Council has considered and decided one way or another. Fifty-three of these proposals were passed and have become part of the rules and guidelines for our project, while the other 25 were either voted down or failed to pass for parliamentary reasons. Whether or not you agree with any of these decisions, we have been doing our job of both proposing and considering others' proposals; ours is a representative democracy and we on the Council have been doing what we were elected to do. There has recently been criticism from certain Citizens that the Editorial Council has fallen down on doing its job and that we are basically inactive. I would reply to them by saying that 78 motions formally considered within a 370-day span is about one motion every four and a half days. How much faster are we expected to work?

As Secretary of the Council, I have been its public face, and, as such, I have received 99% of the flak thrown at the Council from both within the project and from people outside the project. I have, I admit, a confrontational personality and I do not suffer fools gladly. Like everyone in any public office, I have made mistakes and I have tried to acknowledge doing so. I have also tried to learn from them. Whether or not I have, is up to you to judge. I am proud of our record of achievement during my term, and I doubt if anyone else in my position could have gotten much more accomplished. For nearly six months the Council also was belabored by the disruptive presence of Howard C. Berkowitz, who tried in vain to have the Council run the same way that he had delayed and impeded the workings of the Charter-writing committee. During the time that the Council was considering, in a formal way mandated by the Charter, the credentials for Howard's editorships, the Council, and I in particular, were frequently accused by his partisans as conducting a witch hunt. It is instructive, however, to note that as each of his editorships and his qualifications for them were considered, that no one, and I repeat NO ONE, of his partisans every jumped in a single time to defend what purported to be his credentials. There is, I think, still ill-will remaining from this long process, and there is nothing I can do about it. Howard left the project permanently about six months ago and I think that most Citizens will agree that the project has proceeded far more smoothly without his continually disruptive presence. I wish that the Council could have spent the time that we devoted to Howard on other matters, but that was independent of our will.

What do I propose to do if I am reelected to the Council? What visions do I have for the Council? I will tell you flatly: whether I am Secretary or simply a member of the Council, I propose more of the same. The people who have attacked me so freely over the course of the last year seemed to be playing the same note over and over again: that I, as Secretary, had ridden roughshod over the supine bodies of the other members of the Council, pushing through my initiatives no matter how ill-considered or destructive they might be.

I repeat what I have said many times before: I have been but a single member out of seven on the Council, and if I am reelected I will once again be one member out of seven. I don't think that I am revealing any secrets that I shouldn't be when I say that the other members of the Council have not been particularly happy to be characterized by a few Citizens as acquiescent puppets in my hands. They never were, and they never will be.

If you think that I'm worthy of being reelected, vote for me.

If, for a myriad of reasons, you don't think so, then vote for someone else.