Hi Candace and everyone,

Before answering Candace's questions, as a reminder, only the votes casted at https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group#Proposal_to_introduce_%22Inactivity_removal_policy%22_to_the_bylaws will count. I have received more than several emails from active and inactive editors voicing their votes privately to me, but unfortunately I cannot consider them as this is a public vote.

Back to Candace's questions. Active is considered to have at least "one productive engagement in an email or on-wiki discussion, participating in a virtual WikiJournal meeting, participating, attending or presenting as a WikiJournal representative at a local, national or international event, or finding peer reviewers for a submission" within past 12 months. Furthermore, editors can be exempted from the inactive policy due to extenuating circumstances by informing their editor-in-chief. I think the proposed requirement is very loose and generous already. The proposal would ensure equity by spreading the tasks to many individuals and not place a burden on a few active volunteers. (And I initially didn't want to spell out in the email why we are proposing this policy for fear of writing a long email, but I guess there isn't a better time to do it.)

The proposal was started when we tried to tackle the submission backlog that has been building up since 2019/2020 across the 3 journals. We found that many submissions were not promptly send off to peer reviewers due to the lack of active editors to coordinate the peer review process. Some authors have withdrawn their submission because of the delay, which casts a negative perception over the journal due to its long turnaround time. And frankly, nobody should have to wait for 3 years from submission to receiving a publication decision. The "whips" of each WikiJournal (Roger Watson for WJMedicine, Sarah Vital for WJHumanities and myself for WJScience) have volunteered to tackle this backlog but we soon realized that those who are active in WikiJournal are already processing reviews or participating in discussions which facilitate these reviews to be completed. Collectively, we found that our email requests to solicit editorial board members to coordinate peer reviews for new and old submissions were met with silence. Through a quick spot check, up until yesterday, I found that *each* journal has at least 4 editorial board members who have been inactive for at least 3 years (even using the very broad definition of active as specified above). This represents a minimum of 13 to 22% of editorial board members being inactive since 2019. This also gave the false impression our editorial board is quite full when the fact is that inactive members made up of a considerable amount in the roster. This inactivity proposal idea has been floated around in at least 3 WikiJournal meetings since July 2022. The "whips" consulted with editorial board members who were present in these meetings and unanimous agreement was reached in each meeting to bring this proposal to official consideration.

I want to point out that our proposal is not unique or new. Since 2011, English Wikipedia has removed administrators who have not edited once in a year. Countless of WMF Sister Projects also have varying degrees of activity requirement for individuals holding senior positions. Furthermore, inactive members will be given at least 1 month's of notice (via user talk page and email) in which they have an opportunity to become active again before being removed, which is a consistent approach for many WMF sister projects. There is no surprise if an individual found themselves being removed from the editorial board.

Andrew