One of the two original creators of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, who had left in anger over a dispute about the nature of the encyclopaedia, today announced that he will start his own project called Citizendium at the end of the month. [via we-make-money-not-art ]
This happened, quite theatrically, on a panel about the quality of such systems from a scientific standpoint during the fourth Wizards of OS conference which is currently happening in Berlin.
Citizendium will start off as a fork of Wikipedia, which basically means that it’s a copy of every article.
Registered users will be able to edit as “authors” but there will also be “editors” who have more authority because of their background as specialists in a certain field. While this is being intrinsically ruled out in Wikipedia’s approach, Sanger strongly believes that the valuing of expert knowledge would attract more people from the scientific community and thus improve the overall quality.
In addition to that, so-called “constables” will “rapidly eject the project’s inevitable, tiresome trolls”, a situation that has apparently had annoyed him a lot during his earlier involvement.
Comments
@ 10:49
Experts will use the ability to ban people as a way to push their point-of-view! This is much like how some admins misuse the Wikipedia to pursue their POV, however, on this new site it will be much more visual.
Also, page history makes pages nearly impossible, not impossible to destroy. Some of the Wikipedia’s most respected admins have powers to delete versions from history (but under very very strict policy).
The Wikipedia evolved from the Nupedia. This new site seems to be a devolution.
@ 14:07
Yep, but thats the beauty of it all:
If the new site will be worst, people will just not migrate.
Anyways, we the readers will have two sources we can compare.
I can already see a third site that places both articles side by side for comparison.
Since both sites are creative commons, you are legally allowed to copy/paste from one to the other to better both of them.
Interesting to see what will happen.
Dave.
@ 14:24
Sounds like the next stage in the Orwellian farm - Wikipedia’s animals are all equal; Citizendium’s animals are all equal, but some more than others. Sinister, methinks.
@ 00:25
Joe: Pants-wettingly terrifying as experts may be, you have the responsibility to brave their prospective environs long enough to get some idea what you’re talking about, BEFORE you shoot off your mouth. Citizendium editors will not have the ability to ban; that will be the job of constables. And some of us actually value the ‘point-of-view’ of an expert, given that an expert by definition is someone who has put forth the effort to know more than we do.
Dave: GNU FDL is not Creative Commons, but your point is still valid — and one well worth attending to before talking trash on either project.
rAchel: I’m inclined to agree with Sanger that Wikipedia produces some of its bad content precisely because it does not respect the fact that people are not all equal. A neurologist knows a lot of things about brains and can write some butt-kicking articles, but if a dozen people who have never studied brains decide that they know better than him, they can royally screw them all up. In Wikipedia’s culture, the balance of forces favors some articles’ fading into mediocrity. Citizendium proposes to enact a different culture, see what kind of people it attracts, and see if its balance of forces can produce something better. This is sinister?
@ 19:01
Emily: Larry was a full-time employee of Bomis, which Jimmy owned and operated. Larry Sanger did not quit: Jimmy fired Larry. The only reason that Larry resigned from his now-volunteer position within Wikipedia was because he could not live on air: he needed to spend full-time searching for a job.
If Larry was or is ever angry about the matter, it is because Jimmy rarely tells the whole Truth. Jimmy emphasizes how Nupedia was a failure. That is a half-Truth. What made Wikipedia’s start successful was Jimmy insisting on letting anonymous users come in and edit (an easy decision because it results in more traffic) in combination with the high editorial standards, organizing ability and leadership of Larry (a more difficult task). Larry was successful at attracting talent early on with Wikipedia. Larry was so successful that he worked his way right out of job: with Larry’s correct foundation policies, Wikipedia became self-organizing and Larry became expendable. I do not blame Jimmy for letting Larry go: Jimmy could no longer justify to himself paying Larry a salary when he was awash in free labor. I blame Jimmy for forgetting that Larry is a co-founder (and, in many ways, the primary creator) of Wikipedia.
Citizendium is not doing well. It is growing slowly and the internal approval process is time-consuming and understaffed. When that fails, it will be entirely Larry’s fault, but that has not happened yet. On that project, Larry needs to get a boss for himself that will get the traffic volume up on that site. It is barely breaking 100,000 in ranking over at http://www.alexa.com/ . That means that the community is small and it is a lonely place. This thread sums it up: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1215.0.html