Comments on: A Citizendium Web Directory? http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/07/24/a-citizendium-web-directory/ Weblog about the Citizendium project and its Citizens. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:52:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.2 By: Mathias Schindler http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/07/24/a-citizendium-web-directory/#comment-25826 Mathias Schindler Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:33:25 +0000 http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/07/24/a-citizendium-web-directory/#comment-25826 Hi Larry, you write "As you might know, we’re deep in development of an expansion of the Citizendium’s scope.". I have an honest question for you: Wouldn't it be wise to take care in fulfilling the promise of the original scope of Citizendium first? Mathias Hi Larry,

you write “As you might know, we’re deep in development of an expansion of the Citizendium’s scope.”. I have an honest question for you: Wouldn’t it be wise to take care in fulfilling the promise of the original scope of Citizendium first?

Mathias

]]> By: Larry Sanger http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/07/24/a-citizendium-web-directory/#comment-25838 Larry Sanger Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:27:11 +0000 http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/07/24/a-citizendium-web-directory/#comment-25838 This is a fair question, Mathias. Without going into great detail, my answer is: first of all, but this is the original announced scope of Citizendium. It has always been my plan to expand the scope of Citizendium beyond just an encyclopedia relatively early on. The encyclopedia is doing well enough that, with a few tweaks such as automated application approval, my anxieties will be more or less put to rest as far as that goes. We are hosting many other kinds of content already, with pages specifically devoted to "catalogs" of this and that, bibliographies, galleries, etc. The subpage project merely puts our official stamp of approval on that varied non-encyclopedic behavior, and organizes it neatly onto subpages. Besides, I think that when we are ready to actually announce our various subprojects, in a month or two, we will get a fresh flood of interest in the entire project. The encyclopedia project will only benefit, I think. I have the impression that many people areinterested in relatively narrowly-defined tasks, and creating an opportunity for them to work on other sorts of content will not so much distract them from writing encyclopedia articles is it will attract other people, who are interested in that other content and not encyclopedia articles. Sad that I never had this idea for Wikipedia. The more experience I have with it, the more I am persuaded it's the right move. Actually, I think I did have the idea, although not in this precise form (as far as I recall); but I constantly rejected it precisely because I thought, as you do, that it was crucial that we focus. But I've come to believe (as you can see in a Forum discussion) that the various subpage projects are actually entirely continuous with the encyclopedia projects, so it isn't as much of a stretch as you might think. There are a couple of subpage projects, particularly the news summary project and the debate guide project, that I don't propose to start right away. Those projects <i>would</i> require extra time that the other ones wouldn't. This is a fair question, Mathias. Without going into great detail, my answer is: first of all, but this is the original announced scope of Citizendium. It has always been my plan to expand the scope of Citizendium beyond just an encyclopedia relatively early on. The encyclopedia is doing well enough that, with a few tweaks such as automated application approval, my anxieties will be more or less put to rest as far as that goes. We are hosting many other kinds of content already, with pages specifically devoted to “catalogs” of this and that, bibliographies, galleries, etc. The subpage project merely puts our official stamp of approval on that varied non-encyclopedic behavior, and organizes it neatly onto subpages.

Besides, I think that when we are ready to actually announce our various subprojects, in a month or two, we will get a fresh flood of interest in the entire project. The encyclopedia project will only benefit, I think. I have the impression that many people areinterested in relatively narrowly-defined tasks, and creating an opportunity for them to work on other sorts of content will not so much distract them from writing encyclopedia articles is it will attract other people, who are interested in that other content and not encyclopedia articles.

Sad that I never had this idea for Wikipedia. The more experience I have with it, the more I am persuaded it’s the right move. Actually, I think I did have the idea, although not in this precise form (as far as I recall); but I constantly rejected it precisely because I thought, as you do, that it was crucial that we focus. But I’ve come to believe (as you can see in a Forum discussion) that the various subpage projects are actually entirely continuous with the encyclopedia projects, so it isn’t as much of a stretch as you might think.

There are a couple of subpage projects, particularly the news summary project and the debate guide project, that I don’t propose to start right away. Those projects would require extra time that the other ones wouldn’t.

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