February Write-a-Thon is on–the Independent notices
The Citizendium Monthly Write-a-Thon has started in most of the world (it happens the first Wednesday of every month), and the topic this month is fascinating: Thoughts and Books. With that topic, I’ll be on hand in the morning… In fact, there are already five people who have shown up, including three who are “keen-as-mustard and jumped the gun” and of course Aussie Aleta.
The Independent kindly noticed the Write-a-Thon announcement. OK, so it’s not the most positive press coverage we’ve received. But at this point, some mainstream press attention is welcome. Still, I gotta say…contrary to this journalist, we didn’t expect to eclipse Wikipedia before the two year mark, and we are not “a Nupedia” (for cryin’ out loud, when is that canard going to die?) — we’re a robust and growing community. I’m personally very proud of the work we’ve done, and I am happy and grateful to be able to work daily with such a wonderfully bright and involved group of people.
UPDATE: ouch…Wikipedia has gotten some negative press, too, from the New Scientist. Wikipedians are “closed” and “disagreeable” according to personality tests?
While you didn’t expect to eclipse WP by now, you do have a habit of making predictions about the growth of Citizendium. Take for example your one-year report at http://www.citizendium.org/oneyearandthriving.html, written in October 2007. “At some point, possibly very soon, the Citizendium will grow explosively–say, quadruple the number of its active contributors, or even grow by an order of magnitude.” In reality, the number of regular editors has fallen by about 30% since October 2007, according to [[CZ:Statistics]].
That 2007 report has a lot of promises and ideas on how to make Citizendium work better, but very few of them have come into reality. Judging from the list of long-term plans, not a lot of progress seems to have been made since that time. There are a number of good ideas there to make CZ easier to use, which is essential if you want to attract more people.
Citizendium has created some very good content, but if it can’t turn around its present decline, I fear that there’s not much future for the project.
Comment by Eugene van der Pijll — February 4, 2009 @ 5:15 am
Eugene, first, I stand by what I said about explosive growth. Nothing that has happened since has pointed to anything wrong with my reasoning. It hasn’t happened yet–but I think it will.
Second, you’ve painted an unduly pessimistic and puzzlingly unfair picture based on a single dipping statistic. The entire page, CZ:Statistics, shows a lot of good news too.
Besides, we have many tricks up our sleeves as well. It’s not as if this project is without a rudder and dependent entirely on the whims of fate; we can improve our chances in many ways, and I’m very confident we will do so.
If you do support us, Eugene, I wish you’d try a little harder to see the whole picture.
Comment by Larry Sanger — February 6, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
Rereading my comment, it is a bit more negative than
necessary. My apologies for that.
I hope you’re right, that it will get better, but without new initiatives specifically aimed at getting new users and new authors, I’m just a bit pessimistic.
Comment by Eugene van der Pijll — February 9, 2009 @ 7:22 am