Citizendium Blog

Possibly.  In that case, let’s work together to make it a “Make-Year”.

Why should we?  Because at core we want to build a free, online source of a broad spectrum of knowledge that provides readers with trustworthy information written engagingly, coherently, and most importantly, written informatively, by people who choose to reveal their identity and who write not because they want to say something but because they have something to say.

Why do we want to do that?  Because no free online general encyclopedia exactly meets that description, not fee-based Encyclopedia Britannica Premium Online, not Wikipedia, with its enormous number of anonymous writers.

And because we want to contribute to the education of those whose un-lost curiosity seeks education.

And because we knowledge workers need such a place to work, a need driven by the need to share with others what knowledge we have or can acquire by satisfying our own curiosity, by the need to excel, by the need to belong to a like-minded community.

Does anyone have something to add?

According to Nobel Laureate, Robert William Fogel, we must have a sense of purpose in order to enjoy a life feeling fulfilled (see Citizendium article, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism).

Fogel ranks sense of purpose first among a long list of non-material resources required for leading a rich life in terms of quality. To have a sense of purpose means that you have “something that one sets before himself as an object to be attained : an end or aim to be kept in view in any plan, measure, exertion, or operation”, and that you know that you have it (see ‘sense’ and ‘purpose’ in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com).

Because many of Citizendium’s volunteer authors write regularly and with enthusiasm, voluntarily and without byline-type credit#, I can only surmise that their doing so fulfills some inner need they have. It seems to me, after over five years with Citizendium, that their need falls into the broad category of pedagogy, sharing their knowledge with others, giving enrichment to the lives of others, a type of charity.

What they seem to get for themselves: the enrichment that comes with having a sense of purpose.

If all that seems a bit idealist, but not certainly so, try your own hand at sharing your knowledge through writing in Citizendium. You could also try doing it in some other free online wiki encyclopedia, like Wikipedia. Or try two or three and see which environment accords best with your sense of purpose.

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# Citizendium does not include bylines with article titles, but every entry+save you make will appear on the ‘History’ page of the article with your registered name.

All of the registered members of our Citizendium community undoubtedly have some idea of why they volunteer their time helping each other develop our encyclopedia.  In addition to any rational idea we might have for volunteering our time, we all must also have a feeling that comes with it, an emotional reason, perhaps one we find difficult to articulate.

If you were to ask Cassie Mogilner, Zoe Chance and Michael Norton, psychological experimental scientists at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Yale School of Management and the Harvard Business School, respectively, they might tell you this:

“Many people these days feel a sense of “time famine”—never having enough minutes and hours to do everything. We all know that our objective amount of time can’t be increased (there are only 24 hours in a day), but [our] new study suggests that volunteering our limited time—giving it away—may actually increase our sense of unhurried leisure.”

Their thinking is that by giving away time, as in volunteering, you stimulate your feelings of being competent and efficient, accompanying which time seems to stretch out in your mind. You gain time, subjectively, by giving time.

Since we all live in our subjectivity, I’ll go for that kind of “time affluence”.

Get rich in time, join Citizendium, those of you reading this who haven’t already gotten such riches.

See:

PRESS RELEASE: Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science

As Independence Day shows dimming twilight outside my office window, I find myself thinking rather of ‘dependence’, how Citizendium’s contribution to the organization and dissemination of knowledge online depends on our volunteers, our authors, Editors, administrators, and support staff — volunteers with spirit and capability.  I declare our dependence on each other, we band of citizens.

Providing, free, “knowledge with the highest standards of writing, reliability, and comprehensiveness” takes effort and time, collaborative effort and dedicated time by dedicated people.

I say it’s okay to have fun while we go about it. “[A]nyone who has knowledge, broad or narrow, about any subject “can join this service-oriented fun-filled project-party.