The Citizendium unforks
UPDATE: the articles are now deleted!
After considerable deliberation, indicating broad support, we have decided to delete all inactive Wikipedia articles from the Citizendium pilot project wiki. This will leave us with only those articles that we’ve been working on. The deletion will take place on Saturday at noon, Eastern time.
This is an experiment. In other words, we’re quite seriously thinking of not forking Wikipedia after all. If we see more activity on the wiki, which is what I expect, then the Wikipedia articles will stay deleted.
Let me emphasize that we have had good success on the wiki so far, and I am very grateful to all the people, a few dozen of them, who have been regularly working on CZ articles over the past few months. We merely think that we can do better, and this change might be a way to do better. In any case, as we ramp up recruitment (still not started…) and after we go public, we will be expanding greatly, no matter what we do!
So, let me explain why we’re trying this.
I think back to the beginnings of Wikipedia and the sort of excitement we had. Anyone could actually start the article on the planet Mars, on France, on Socrates, and so forth. And in starting and editing these articles, we devised all sorts of rules and got into many good (and some bad) habits, and in short developed our own culture. Because this culture was developed by the entire community–and in that sense, by the way, all of the early Wikipedians are best identified as co-founders of Wikipedia–they shared in it.
The first few months of the Citizendium have, however, been different. We probably have had as much or more activity as Wikipedia did in its early months, and a similar number of contributors, but–well, the passion hasn’t been the same. I have been idly puzzling over what the difference might be. Then it occurred to me, a few days ago, that Citizendians (or maybe we’ll be “Citizens”) are just disheartened by the fact that their first obligation seems to be to edit mediocre Wikipedia articles. After all, that’s what forking Wikipedia seems to require. I myself have said we’ll be cleaning out the Augean Stables. Here’s your shovel!
So I asked myself: “Would you contribute more if the wiki were blank?” And I had to admit that I probably would. I mean, for example, that I would enjoy taking a fresh crack at the articles about philosophy, epistemology, Irish traditional music, and other topics–none of which is dealt with particularly well by Wikipedia.
So why not simply get rid of all those articles, and encourage people, by default, to start new articles altogether? If we weren’t forking Wikipedia, then I would be quite comfortable starting new articles. And, as I said, as things have been, I’ve felt like the first order of business would always be to read and fix the Wikipedia article.
When you come down to it, it’s a question of our identity. Do we want to be Wikipedia 2.0–but still a version of Wikipedia? Or, instead, do we want to be the Citizendium, a newer and better project, with its own identity that takes the best of Wikipedia’s process and jettisons all sorts of stuff that hasn’t worked for Wikipedia? If we start over, then we can create our own more distinctive culture, and we can take more pride in our articles and in the processes we develop. In short, we can be ourselves. And putting yourself into a piece of work is what gives you passion in creating it.
Again, it’s an experiment, because we can always reinstall Wikipedia’s articles if the experiment doesn’t go so well. But I think that deleting all those Wikipedia articles will actually make people more motivated to get to work.
Of course, I don’t know this; it’s just a hypothesis. So I’m actually quite excited to see what happens. Personally I think I’ll be quite interested in creating and exploring new territory–making those red links turn blue.
By the way, it isn’t lost on me what this might indicate for the nature of forking content projects. How many times have content forks been done in a meaningful way? Ummm….never? Content is different from software. Software does stuff, and that’s something objective that either works or doesn’t work. So you can take software and make it work better. By contrast, content expresses ideas, and people just might not want to start their work by seeming to express other people’s ideas.
I concur. CZ is now no longer the step cousin of Wikpedia. Another press release is due ASAP.
Comment by Chris Desouza — January 18, 2007 @ 11:00 am
“people just might not want to start their work by seeming to express other people’s ideas.”
Uh… isn’t that the whole point of any encyclopedia, to summarize other people’s ideas (primary and secondary sources) in one place?
Comment by Anonymous — January 18, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
Clever point: “Uh… isn’t that the whole point of any encyclopedia, to summarize other people’s ideas (primary and secondary sources) in one place?”
There’s a difference between writing an original encyclopedia article and doing original research. The point is that people working on CZ might be more motivated to write *original* encyclopedia articles and thereby express their own ideas about how to introduce the subject–even if the subject is, naturally, defined by other people’s ideas.
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 19, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
I remember reading about Wikipedia in a New Yorker article. It was mostly positive, but one of the main criticisms was that the first author of the Wikipedia articles set the tone and others were reluctant to veer from that path.
If CZ is to work people will have to remember to get out of their own way and be open to constant revisions and even major overhauls.
By the way, there are well-intentioned people working on both CZ and Wikipedia. There is room for both endeavors and the underlying (and I hope friendly)competition will make them both better.
Comment by Dan F. — January 19, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
One of the reasons I joined Citizendium was so that all of the hours I’ve spent on articles on Wikipedia won’t be lost if Wikipedia folds. If you’re not going to fork Wikipedia, I guess I’ll have to copy and paste my articles to Citizendium. That’s not really a big deal except in one area…what about the images? Do I need to copy and upload all of the images from those articles to Citizendium? That’s very time-consuming.
Comment by Charles Ainsworth — January 21, 2007 @ 12:38 am
With all due respect, having spoken with fellow CZ editors in real life and in offsite fora, the real reason for the lack of enthusiasm here is because of uncertainty over your leadership. Dealing with Wikipedia material isn’t a problem, I enjoy deleting cruft like vandalism and linkspam from WP articles and knowing that it will stay deleted. Instead the issue is people signing up and then thinking “I’m not sure this project is going to take off if Sanger keeps much control over it.”
Comment by Christopher Culver — January 21, 2007 @ 2:56 am
Christopher, I’m very sorry indeed that you feel that way. No one has ever told me that, so this comes as a very unwelcome surprise.
I very much want to unload a lot of the responsibility I now have. As you might know, we are going to start up a bunch of workgroups that are independent of me. CZ will become, in another month or two, much more of a representative Republic than it is now. Please be patient.
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 21, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
Charles, one thing I’ve asked the tech guys to do is to upload all the WP images, even if we do delete all the (text) articles. Unfortunately, they just haven’t gotten around to it. :-/
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 21, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
I think the use of the term ‘unforking’ is inaccurate, and misleading. What Citizendium sought was to purely and simply was to leverage Wikipedia’s huge, but improvable content. That’s not a fork. It’s a way to start a business without the overhead of original content creation. Nothing wrong with that; but nothing noble about it either.
I also think that this ‘unforking’ decision (which is really a tacit but not explicit acknowlegement of failure) suggests that Larry’s premise (stated in his October 24, 2006 article “Why Make Room for Experts in Web 2.0″) simply doesn’t work.
Larry’s view of “the wisdom of crowds” (expressed in the above-referenced article) is that it is “a nonstarter” that “doesn’t even merit a reply, except to say that it’s daft.” This seems to stem from his fascination with the community of experts. Despite the existence of a popular book of the same name, he dismisses the as “totally unproven” (without referencing any of the extensive research cited in the book).
Maybe with the failure of CZ, he might have enough open-mindedness to apply his apparently considerable talents to the real challenges we face.
Comment by Terry Steichen — January 21, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Larry, what would be helpful to CZ (once live) is to get the WP developers to include links to the corresponding CZ pages at the top of WP pages (and vice-versa).
Comment by E.A. Evans — January 21, 2007 @ 6:06 pm
I just wanted to emphasize the point that both Citizendium and Wikipedia are noble efforts. I will read them along with Britannica and World Book.
Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales are visionaries. I also think they are national treasures. They, along with the dedicated contributors, have changed the world.
History is being made here.
Comment by Dan F. — January 22, 2007 @ 6:44 am
To Terry: “unforking” is perfectly accurate for the simple reason that we have gotten rid of the million-plus articles that constituted CZ as a fork. And, of course, forking can be a way to start a business, but we aren’t doing that unless a nonprofit organization is well described as a “business.”
Also, this is hardly a tacit acknowledgment of failure; you clearly speak from ignorance, here. We have dozens of active participants, many more occasional participants, hundreds of edits per day, over 800 articles in progress; and progress on virtually every front.
Some people do not have the concept of a comparative advantage. Of two successful systems, one can be better than the other, and it can make sense to switch from the less successful one to the more successful one. I think that’s what we’re doing–experimentally. (It will be easy to reinstall the deleted articles, of course.)
As to what I said about the “wisdom of crowds,” Terry has put it quite misleadingly. He thinks I said that the wisdom of crowds is “a nonstarter” and “daft.” This is a silly misinterpretation. My main thesis in the paper is a positive thesis, namely: “experts can play special roles in Web 2.0 projects without ‘breaking’ such projects.” In the paragraph Terry quotes from, I am defending this thesis against the objection that experts aren’t needed, because the “wisdom of crowds” is total. Terry turns this around to make it sound like I’m saying that NONEXPERTS aren’t needed–which is just silly. Here’s the paragraph:
“A third objection is one that hardly anyone ever actually comes out and owns up to believing wholeheartedly. It is that experts simply aren’t needed–that the wisdom of crowds solves all problems, that the aggregate opinion and the average effort is, magically somehow, superior to expert knowledge and practice. No offense to anyone, but this point would be simply inane to offer as a reply to my thesis. My thesis is a modest one. It’s that some Web 2.0 projects could be improved if some of their decision-making were specially done by experts. To reply to that by saying that the wisdom of crowds is always going to be better than the wisdom of experts is just a nonstarter, I think. It doesn’t even merit reply, except to say that it’s daft. More kindly, I might say that the general claim is totally unproven. For whatever reason, some people clearly want it to be true.”
Terry and his ilk clearly are willing to overlook facts and misinterpret texts in their fervent desire that we fail.
We must be doing something right.
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 22, 2007 @ 7:22 am
Larry,
Wow! Seems that I scratched some very thin skin here.
Though you don’t know me from Adam, you nonetheless confidently assert that I belong to a group (”my ilk”) which has “a fervent desire [CZ] fail[s]“. Not only that, but you declare that I “speak from ignorance”, use “misleading” information, make “silly misinterpretation[s]“, among other crimes and misdemeanors.
Frankly, if I encountered a person like that, I too might become paranoid.
But, let me lower my own guns, and simply restate (perhaps more clearly) what I was trying to say in my first posting.
Your rationale for CZ (as explained in the “Why Make Room for Experts in Web 2.0″ article) was that a bunch of experts could convert Wikipedia content into something much better. (You were much more articulate, but I think that was the jist.)
In making this case, you quite clearly not only rejected but ridiculed as well, the concept of ‘the wisdom of crowds’. In the lead sentence of an article you describe as the “most thoughtful discussion yet [of CZ]“, starts with “Larry Sanger doesn’t trust the wisdom of the crowd..” - http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2006/12/22/Citizendium/
You may wish to reframe what you said, but what is, is.
You recently decided to ‘unfork’, explaining (in this blog post) that this decision was based on objections from your editors on having to put a priority on editing ‘mediocre Wikipedia articles’ rather than ’start[ing] new articles altogether.’
Now I have no particular insights into CZ other than your own writings, but what I’ve read seems to suggest pretty strongly that your original rationalization was incorrect.
Look, I’ve been wrong plenty of times myself. I have found that my biggest mistakes were invariably when I didn’t acknowledge them.
Comment by Terry Steichen — January 22, 2007 @ 10:22 am
I’m all for unforking. In fact, I’m back here after some strong suggestions in the listserve were made against forking, but initially over-ridden.
Like many others, my experience with other forks of Wikipedia is that because minor forks of Wikipedia articles are quickly made obsolete if the smaller new community can’t be as active (if somewhat random) as Wikipedia is.
A gradual start concentrating our efforts seems wise to me. I hope it works, but am prepared, as is Larry, I guess that would be Mr. Sanger to me, for the possibility that it won’t.
As for leadership grumbling, which is par for the course and healthy enough: no-one can predict a priori what will work best - something Mr. Sanger knows as well as anyone can, from previous experience. I only worry that whoever is in charge won’t make course corrections, and so far the present leadership has excelled in this, and promised to continue.
Comment by Russell Johnston — January 22, 2007 @ 10:27 am
Terry, re thin skin, after your reaction to my reply, which I thought was temperate enough, my reaction is: pot, kettle, black.
I did not give a definitive rationale for CZ (if I gave any at all) in the essay you cite; if you want the rationale for CZ, see http://www.citizendium.org/essay.html
On the one hand, I DO ridicule the notion that “the wisdom of crowds” really is anything like wisdom. Crowds produce all sorts of useful things, but wisdom isn’t among them. On the other hand, I DO NOT ridicule the notion that crowds can produce, indeed, all sorts of useful things.
You seem to think I am declaring failure because (you think) my original plan necessarily, essentially called for forking. I don’t think it did; I always have wanted to improve on Wikipedia, and whether that involves forking Wikipedia or not, I don’t know.
I would certainly admit that, experimentally and provisionally, I was MISTAKEN in thinking that forking was better than not forking and starting over. I might have failed in that judgment anyway.
This business of telling other people what they mean is awfully boring, by the way.
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 22, 2007 @ 10:52 am
Larry,
You say that you “DO ridicule the notion that ‘the wisdom of crowds’ really is anything like wisdom. Crowds produce all sorts of useful things, but wisdom isn’t among them.”
Have you read Surowiecki’s book (”The Wisdom of Crowds”)? In it he cites numerous examples of excellent solutions (wisdom) achieved via groups. He shows that these solutions are usually superior to those produced by experts. He’s careful to say that it’s NOT groupthink, and that there are some specific and necessary conditions that must be met for this wisdom to manifest itself.
If you have read it, do you reject all of his examples and research? If so, why?
Comment by Terry Steichen — January 22, 2007 @ 11:09 am
I haven’t read the book, actually. Maybe I should. But solutions to problems usually aren’t examples of “wisdom” but of know-how.
And, I tell you again, I DO agree that crowds produce all sorts of good stuff.
Seeding crowds of amateurs with the proven wisdom of experts isn’t a bad thing. Or do you disagree with that?
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 22, 2007 @ 11:14 am
Yes, I think it’s very important to read Surowiecki’s book. I think it has a direct bearing on what you’re trying to do at CZ.
You comment: “Seeding crowds of amateurs with the proven wisdom of experts isn’t a bad thing. Or do you disagree with that?”
Surowiecki deals with precisely that situation (and many others). I’d best leave him (via the book) to answer (since I’m far from an expert on the matter).
Comment by Terry Steichen — January 22, 2007 @ 11:31 am
I found out about Citizendium yesterday and sent in by biography this evening. I think it’s exciting and I truly hope it works out.
I’m interested in how the contributor selection will work. It’s great that my participation has to be approved in some manner. I wonder how this will scale though. If the whole community will take on the burden of approving new participants, then I guess that could work out.
And then how thoroughly are new users checked before being approved. You would think it quite a trivial task to weed out the worst net-negative contributors. I’m not so sure though; my fellow humans constantly surprise me. Face-to-face there are many who are smarter or dumber than they appear. I’m amazed to find myself on occasions being entirely too ridiculous. Digging a little into my own collection of online specimens might give any judge pause in considering me as a potential contributor. But then who wants to join an elite club with a liberal selection process? Ay, there’s the rub.
Comment by Christian Steinbach — January 22, 2007 @ 3:51 pm
In my view, the willingness of a leader to make course corrections and to experiment engenders, not hinders trust.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — January 22, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
Terry, how much better would crowds work with subject experts among them as opposed to not?
Comment by Stephen Ewen — January 22, 2007 @ 4:49 pm
Stephan,
According to Surowiecki, the inclusion of experts in the ‘crowd’ makes little difference per se, unless the experts provide greater diversity (in which case the effect is positive). On the other hand, to the extent that other members of the ‘crowd’ end up deferring to the expert members, the inclusion of experts is deliterious to the potentially achievable ‘wisdom.’
But on balance, the contribution of experts in a system based on ‘wisdom of crowds’ (WOC) is neutral.
Having said that, I want to make it clear that I’m not advocating any particular change for CZ. Most of today’s information systems (including CZ) are simply not designed to tap WOC. That doesn’t make them bad or wrong. It just means that many must sustain the overhead of finding, attracting, and feeding (in every meaning of the word) experts. And it means that the quality of their output is limited to the quality of their individual experts.
Designing online systems that efficiently, effectively and consistently extract WOC (which is my personal/professional focus) is extremely difficult. Not all types of problems/objectives are amenable to WOC solutions.
But when the conditions are right, WOC rocks!
Comment by Terry Steichen — January 23, 2007 @ 7:10 am
Now, when we understand the gargantuan difference between *wisdom* and *knowledge*, alas, you may have a point.
You might wish to do some research on “knowledge communities.” You will find the consensus among researchers is quite different than is the conclusion of your business columnist author.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — January 23, 2007 @ 9:28 am
The discussion taking place at this blog is very deep.
I was wondering if people could please comment on an observation I have made.
I think that many contributors at Wikipedia use screen names instead of their real names because their user pages are not locked and thus are subject to vandalism. Sure, they could correct the vandalized pages, but it turns out to be time consuming and a big hassle. A person would be more comfortable using his real name if the user page was only accessible to him.
I also think Citizendium would really take off if it allowed people to have a choice of using their real name or simply “anonymous.” All the edits with the name “anonymous” would not be posted immediately and would have to be screened.
Please post your thoughts on this. Thank you everybody.
Comment by Dan F. — January 23, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
Stephan,
You suggest: “You might wish to do some research on ‘knowledge communities.’ You will find the consensus among researchers is quite different than is the conclusion of your business columnist author.”
I assume that your reference to “[my] business columnist author” means James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”.
I urge you to read (or at least scan) that book, because it makes extensive reference to research on this topic. If you have references to the consensus that you mention which conflict with the book’s research, please mention them and I’ll gladly investigate further.
Please don’t take my brief comments as being a definitive interpretation of Surowiecki’s work. I’m using a lot of short-hand because we don’t have the space to get into more detailed discussions.
That said, however, I think what I have said is, in general, a decent description of the jist of WOC.
And, lastly, I’m not saying that this particular book is super-special. Only that it is pretty well researched, and pretty well (IMHO) thought through, anticipating many issues that are surfacing as we ’speak.’
Comment by Terry Steichen — January 23, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
I just wanted to add one more thought.
The reason I suggested that Citizendium allows anonymous contributors (with a verifiable e-mail address) is because there are many professional writers and journalists who could copyedit the articles written by experts and scholars. These journalists and writers might be hesitant to use their real names if it would cause problems,for a variety of reasons, at their workplace.
Let’s face it, a person could be an expert and very knowledgeable in a certain field but only be an average writer.
Professional editing and writing are what makes Britannica great. We can all learn a lesson from that.
I very much want Citizendium to succeed.
Comment by Dan F. — January 24, 2007 @ 5:25 am
Dan, our “constabulary” has already let in a few people under pseudonyms. There needs to be an excellent personal reason for your using a pseudonym. Your job being at risk is no doubt one such reason! If you must have a pseudonym, apply to personnel [at] citizendium.org and explain why. But the constables need to know who you are, and we don’t grant pseudonyms on the basis of privacy concerns that apply to everyone.
Comment by Larry Sanger — January 24, 2007 @ 6:26 am
Larry Sanger,
Thank you for your thoughts.
You are making history and will be remembered as a great man. Thank you so much for all your efforts and the efforts of all the contributors.
Good luck with Citizendium.
Comment by Dan F. — January 24, 2007 @ 9:06 am
This is great. Honestly, the Wikipedia articles were confusing me with their strange presentation, and it’s simpler to start with a clean slate.
Comment by Connelly Barnes — January 28, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
Can I write in Portuguese ?
Comment by António Silva — February 1, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
Instead of starting with a complete blank slate, why not start like Wikipedia did, with the 1911 Britannica?
Comment by james — February 2, 2007 @ 1:28 am
Wikipedia has a lot of experts on it already. There are articles on Wikipedia that took years before someone with the knowledge came along and made, and for that reason, any projects that seek to recreate the sheer breadth and depth of Wikipedia are not going to be as useful as Wikipedia for at least that amount of time.
Until Citizendium has information as specialized as Splay Trees and Radix Trees, it is of little use to me.
Does Wikipedia have quality control issues? Yah, of course it does. But hey, have you seen the $100+ reference books that are out there? They suck even more. In general, Wikipedia has done a BETTER job of explaining domain specific information than either private industry or “field experts” have managed.
All my school text books are written by field experts, and with a very few exceptions, they are all impossible to understand.
Will Citizendium fix problems such as the random malicious insertion of information in a politicians biography? Meh, sure. Do I care? Not really.
When will you have information on the architecture level details of dozens of different RISC chipsets? How about the details of Metaphone or Soundex?
Comment by Devlin Bentley — February 14, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
Devlin, give it about 5-6 years, if that’s how long it took Wikipedia–or perhaps faster, since we’ll be borrowing from Wikipedia. You will see, probably within the next year, a general acceptance that CZ is here to stay, and that it’s a more robust and reliable system than Wikipedia’s. When that happens, you’ll probably see faster growth here than on Wikipedia. And, depending on how much faster, it could be only 2-3 years before you see those articles you want.
Comment by Larry Sanger — March 5, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
I apologize for possibly making a redundant suggestion.
I’m one of the folks who thinks that failing to take advantage of Wikipedia’s content will lead to perpetual marginalization. That said, I don’t think this is an all or nothing choice.
If CZ has no page for a particular topic, and Wikipedia does, then present some trivial to use means by which the user can quickly get to the corresponding Wikipedia entry. For example, when the system generates “There is no page titled …” response it could be helpful and say “We don’t have it, but you might try looking here” and then have a link to the Wikipedia page and possibly other appropriate and automatically linkable sites.
That way users will be rewarded for making CZ their first choice for information. If the CZ article exists they get high quality content. Else they are only a single click from the current, for better or worse, de facto standard for first choice.
This will of course finding a way to run search queries against the wikipedia contents.
Comment by Dan Nachbar — March 7, 2007 @ 10:17 am
quote from Devlin:
“Wikipedia has a lot of experts on it already. There are articles on Wikipedia that took years before someone with the knowledge came along and made, and for that reason, any projects that seek to recreate the sheer breadth and depth of Wikipedia are not going to be as useful as Wikipedia for at least that amount of time.
Until Citizendium has information as specialized as Splay Trees and Radix Trees, it is of little use to me.”
The problem as I see it is that the experts at Wikipedia are concentrated in some areas, and woefully thin-on-the-ground–or even non-existant, in others.
The other, and I think larger problem is a lack of organization. That is, all-encompassing, overview type organization. So you’ve got extraordinary detail in some areas, skimpy outlines in others, hit-and-miss articles on some topics, and no articles on other equally important subjects in the same topic. If you’ve done a lot of work for Wikipedia, you will probably understand what I’m getting at, which I can’t explain more fully without examples and a lot more writing than may be appropriate here.
Devlin, I agree with your analysis that it might take years before an appropriate article is developed, but far more frustrating for me is that it can take those years and then some moron can come along and ruin all that good work in an instant. Or a set of morons edit the article into mediocrity. Further, there’s likely to be an article on Radix Trees way before there’s one on John Aler, which is okay, but before there’s one on tenors, which is not.
I would really like an undertaking that there is going to be serious structural overview at Citizendium before I throw my energy behind it.
a) who is handling how material is organized–on a consistent basis?
b) who is deciding what needs to be at Citizendium–whether or not we have the knowledge or expertise to write it at present.
Comment by Aleta Curry — March 18, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
As a contributor to Wikipedia, I heartily disagree with the unforking.
*I’m not disheartened by the task of improving articles.
*I’m disheartened by having the million-plus articles of work, references and linkage _wasted_ by _abandoning_ them. It’s like torching the crops because of some weeds. Good grief, HARVEST and SAVE THE SEEDS first.
*I consider the unforking, and the current article count of 1100 a failure. It is not useful to a broad range of users who need encyclopedia content. Instead, it is a boutique. As a result of the unforking, it will be several years before CZ reaches critical mass of offering search-engine hits on a broad range of topics.
*A “Not Yet Validated” article tag for forked WP articles could have alerted visitors to doublecheck the content, and still maintained Citizendium’s reputation.
*WHO EXACTLY voted to unfork? See what you did? You’ve successfully focused attention on the governing body, instead of on stable, validated content.
*I’ll be “forking” WP articles I’ve worked on (more than 100) over to Citizendium manually to save and improve them, and resenting it every single time I have to do it manually. What a way to alienate new editors.
*I second “Instead of starting with a complete blank slate, why not start like Wikipedia did, with the 1911 Britannica? - james”
*I second Dan Nachbar’s “If CZ has no page for a particular topic, and Wikipedia does, then present some trivial to use means by which the user can quickly get to the corresponding Wikipedia entry.”.
Comment by Lex Ein — March 21, 2007 @ 4:53 am
Although in general I think I would support “unforking” (oh, what we’re doing to the English language!) on moral grounds, I’m giving Lex Ein’s comments at no. 36 consideration.
I’ve worked on (I think) WAY over 100 WP articles and it does seem a bit of a waste.
Some of the articles I wrote at WP have been only little touched by subsequent editors–what am I to do if I decide to duplicate these entries at CZ–paraphrase them???
Comment by Aleta Curry — March 21, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
Aleta, if you’re on the wiki, please see “how to convert Wikipedia articles into Citizendium articles” (or whatever it’s called — linked from the main page). CZ has no point if it is merely a mirror of WP. Therefore, we have a rule to the effect that if you want a WP-sourced article to remain on CZ, it must be improved over the WP version.
As to Lex Ein’s comments, I’m sorry I lack the time to respond adequately. So I will have to leave it at this. We are trying to start our own project. We have deliberately cast off Wikipedia articles so that our contributors can feel free to start a new project with new, and higher, standards. Unfortunately, as we discovered, having a million articles already in place essentially makes it impossible (or prohibitively difficult, anyway) to change the many poor policy decisions encoded by articles. Therefore, if we remain a fork of WP, we become a version of WP — and that, we’ve discovered, we don’t want to be.
Comment by Larry Sanger — March 21, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
Larry -
You still haven’t responded to my question
of March 7 about the user experience. To restate -
In order to avoid perpetual marginalization,
CZ needs to become a first-place-to-click resource
for the average person on the street.
For that to happen, a CZ query must have a higher
expected value than a WP query.
Clearly, the value of a CZ query “hit” will be high. However hits will necessarily be rare for a very
long time. Therefore the cost of a query “miss”
must be very low.
The cost of a miss can be reduced substantially
by providing a user with a trivial-to-use link to
the corresponding WP page and/or other online
encyclopedias.
(This facility will also provide CZ with hard data
on what topics are of interest to readers and can
aid in focusing CZ’s authoring resources.)
CZ can thus provide immediate value to its readers,
without becoming a poor step-child of WP. CZ will
attract only limited resources and attention unless
and until it provides real value to ordinary readers.
Comment by Dan Nachbar — March 22, 2007 @ 2:48 am
Dan, why would someone want to come to Wikipedia in order to search for articles elsewhere? That’s what you’re suggesting they would do, if only we would return results from Wikipedia and other sources. Sounds very implausible. That isn’t how I search and I doubt it would be how you search, either. I use Google and, occasionally, other search engines. I use CZ’s built-in search feature only to find out whether we have an article on a subject — not to find some specific piece of information.
Sometimes people made an objection to the unforking to the effect that we’d suddenly become less attractive and relevant to people. This is unpersuasive simply because we’re going to be less attractive and relevant than Wikipedia for a long time, whether or not we host (or link to) Wikipedia articles. That’s because if we did keep forking, most of our database would just be a mirror of Wikipedia, which isn’t attractive at all. The point is that either way, it’s going to take us several years before we enjoy the relevance that Wikipedia has (also) taken years to earn. Why should it be any different for us?
Besides, it’s hardly as if instant relevance is required in order for us to be a long-term success. We’ll grow in a similar way to Wikipedia, I think. As long as we’re growing quickly enough, which (for a private pilot project) we have been, I’m happy.
Comment by Larry Sanger — March 22, 2007 @ 5:19 am
“I use CZ’s built-in search feature only to find out whether we have an article on a subject — not to find some specific piece of information.”
Ah. That accounts for the difference in view. I do indeed
use WP’s search engine to look for information, you don’t.
If links to WP (or a generic google search) were provided
by CZ as a fallback, then I’d start using
CZ’s search engine instead. Given your use pattern,
you wouldn’t.
Fair enough. Then having a “limit search to CZ only”
checkbox next to the search control will allow
both types of users to be satisfied a little cost.
Comment by Dan Nachbar — March 22, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
I read about CZ in the Boston Globe today, they still were saying that you forked Wikipedia. Then I saw my favorite articles on cinematic genres were missing, including one I did. Now I feel discouraged from copying my article from Wikipedia to CZ because I have to improve it or I’m not allowed to import. Has anyone made an entry on Micromanaging yet?? I’m not a big expert, I’m not going to write or improve a lot of articles all over again. The fork was an extremely exciting opportunity to fix stuff, starting over is not. I’ve gone from thrilled to depressed in a matter of minutes, I’ve got better things to do than reinvent the wheel. Good luck.
Comment by Carl Schroeder — March 26, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
Currently I see that CZ is taking a difficult path of starting all over, but in long run it will yield better results by having a proper standard over WP.
Here’s something I think will also help CZ grow back to WP’s size and better: a form of active invitation of people of different cultures (and subcultures) from all over world. “Cultural representatives”, for a lack of a better term. People from across cultures can give greater insight into a single subject, since they practically live in one. Let me discuss a case study:
In Thailand, there’s a street food named foi thong, which is beaten egg yolk with sugar made into mini-piles of strands. Subject on that in WP is non-existent. How could 5 years of WP, and over 60 million people in Thailand (not inclusive of tourists and culture enthusiasts) cannot even produce such a simple article of probably less than 200 words?
This points back to the problem of WP being a total formless structure with no one looking after some parts of it. This is where CZ has an advantage, through it team project style of creating, approving and maintaining articles. It will be better than WP when it comes to things like this. By inviting people who are familiar with their own daily things, which needs no PhD at all, will no doubt greatly increase the amount of “rare” topics. Which will in turn, add to its collective bulk.
Some people might not be 100% correct, but that only inspires many others to come in and build a community of knowledge.
Comment by Beano Lee — March 27, 2007 @ 10:34 pm
(First, with all the authority that comes from having joined yesterday, I’ll say that this was a good idea.)
Lex Ein makes a very good point about the pain of hand-importing all his pieces of work. OTOH my reaction, from my experience with a smaller body of work and perhaps a more bitterly controversial one, is the opposite. I’m going to import a couple of Wikipedia articles that I contributed to, and will start reworking them for CZ (Oops — is that an unapproved acronym?) in the expectation that they will not be victims of random drive-by contributions from someone who just read an article somewhere and wants to insert a favorite talking point — or victims of replacement of an entire section without prior notice or any discussion.
Yeah: watchlists, and reverting big unannounced changes, and all that; but if there is less ”need” for such methods here, as clearly is the intention, I’ll be a lot happier watchlisting and maintaining material. And I can hope to get the gratification of seeing somebody improve my stuff, which sure enough happened on Wikipedia; but on balance, not enough.
I haven’t seen any mention of a point which struck me as a one-time Wikipedia contributor: Since the content is not all forked, we have the option to import the version of an article that we think is the best starting point. After all, if we thought that everything always improves on Wikipedia, why would be here at all?
PS: Gee, there isn’t a preview for comments? Hope that such a feature is somewhere on someone’s do-some-day list.
Comment by Dan Drake — March 28, 2007 @ 7:52 am
Larry, thanks for your comment of March 21, 2007. I shall review the article carefully to find out, e.g. what exactly qualifies as “improvement”. I think that that might speak to Carl S.’s comment of March 26, too. We may not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’.
Here’s my favourite expression to date: “…victims of random drive-by contributions….” That sums up a great deal of my WP frustration, Dan D.
“…I…hope to get the gratification of seeing somebody improve my stuff, which sure enough happened on Wikipedia; but on balance, not enough.” Amen to that one, brother.
It is good to hear (read) from others with the same concerns, as I try to make up my mind about throwing my hat into the CZ ring….
Comment by Aleta Curry — April 8, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
I decided to come over and check out Citzendium today. I’m kind of
interested in the project but learning about the “unforking” is a
major disincentive to contribute.
My kids tease me that my common response to questions is “I don’t know
but you could look it up on Wikipedia”. I both use and edit Wikipedia.
I have edited over 1500 unique pages on Wikipedia and have over 900 on
my watchlist. I have probably read many more articles without editing
them. If I didn’t use Wikipedia, I would be less inclined to edit it.
After the unforking, I understand that Citizendium has perhaps 1600
articles. Yes, this will grow but what gives a large number of people
incentive to edit an article is that they came to read it in the first
place.
That’s how I started editing Wikipedia. I went there to get
information for my son’s 4th grade report on Hernan Cortes and the
Aztec Empire. I found that the article needed improvement and 7700
edits later, I am still editing Wikipedia.
If Citizendium isn’t useful as an encyclopedia, it will not see the
explosive growth of Wikipedia. Build on Wikipedia with a better
editing model and some editors like me may consider switching over.
Otherwise, you will have to re-create Citizendium from scratch
competing with Wikipedia for editors and it will take you years.
Richard
P.S. If this argument isn’t persuasive and I concede that there are
philosophical issues underlying all this, consider allowing editors to
fork Wikipedia with a 3-month grace period (i.e. no edits within 3
months and the forked article is toast). I think this compromise is
still markedly inferior to just forking Wikipedia but it’s better than
reducing CZ to 1600 articles and trying to grow it from there.
Comment by Richard Shu — April 23, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
[...] Mitarbeiter geben. Doch es scheint derzeit nicht ganz so gut zu laufen, denn Sanger verkündet im Citizendium Blog einen Kurswechsel: Er will Wikipedia-Artikel nicht mehr als Grundlage nehmen, sondern die [...]
Pingback by Notizblog » Citizendium - auf ein Neues — May 29, 2007 @ 7:46 am
Is anyone still watching this? I am an administrator at Wikipedia, where I’ve been for almost 6 years. Today, I got a little frustrated with the vandals and crackpots we have to put up with there, and I thought of Citizendium, which sounds like a good idea to address these issues. I came because I considered joining you.
However, after reading about the unfork, I have the same concerns as Richard Shu, and I would like to see how that worked out for you.
For me, the ability for users to look up lemmata is the first criterion for an encyclopedia, and I am utterly surprised at Larry’s reply to Dan Nachbar. that even he himself “use[s] CZ’s built-in search feature only to find out whether we have an article on a subject”. How in the world can CZ even have a chance to outdo WP if nobody uses it?
Larry wrote to Devlin Bentley: “… it could be only 2-3 years before you see [articles like Splay Trees and Radix Trees].” That was 20 months ago. Now I’m not familiar with the topics Devlin mentions, so I took some that I’m familiar with. First, I looked for “insulated glazing” – nada. “double glazing” – nada. Well, I thought, maybe it’s under “window”. But again; that article doesn’t even exist. I’m not writing this to make you look bad, but because I’m seriously disappointed, and if I want to join you, I need to know if your project has any chance of reaching its goal.
Sebastian
Sebastian
Comment by Sebastian Helm — December 11, 2008 @ 9:10 pm