Citizendium Blog

Guest blogger: Hayford Peirce, Citizendium Treasurer

I’ve been the Treasurer of Citizendium (CZ) for the last six months or so. As such, I am happy to report that Anthony Sebastian’s recent fund-raising drive was quite successful — we raised enough to ensure our continuing operations at least through January of next year.

And I’m confident that donations will continue to come in, although possibly in much smaller quantities and in more erratic fashion. Personally, I think that the future of CZ’s finances will probably enable us to continue indefinitely, even if occasionally we do get a little near the knuckle on a month to month basis….

More important to me, though, is the lack of authors and Editors. Right now there are only a small number of truly dedicated souls who continue to contribute new material on a regular basis, along with a scattering of others who jump in from time to time. What is lacking, and holding back our growth, I think, is the total lack of the collaboration that we originally had.

Even though we might have argued with some authors, at least they were present — and actively participating!

When I started at Wikipedia years ago, I was able to originate many dozens of articles mostly in the tennis and genre-fiction fields — it was infuriating to have imbeciles come in and destroy a lot of content, but it was also exhilarating to have like-minded people come in and add worthwhile additional material and to constructively rewrite what I had begun. And that sense of collaboration, of course, was what then led me to Citizendium, as I’m sure it was the case with most of the other early Citizens.

Now, however, my energy seems to have flagged. Without the participation of *anyone* else, it is very hard for me to find the strength of character to go to the recent Tony Trabert article that I brought in from Wikipedia, for example, and completely rewrite it as I think it *should* be written. I’ve redone the first paragraph, yes, but as for the rest…. It’s like dropping a feather down a well and waiting to hear a sound….

If I *knew* what could be done to change the situation, I would certainly make it public — as it is, however, I don’t know….

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

In a few weeks, a small group and I will be announcing a major new educational project, free and non-profit, with very significant funding from a retired businessman.  We will be meeting in New York City early next month, talking to some potential advisers and funders.  I am sorry to have to be so vague.  For now, suffice it to say that everyone will benefit, but school children most of all — and the effort will answer the petition I mentioned earlier, which I hope you will sign if you have not done so already.  That’s why I want to mention this, even without any detail: there are philanthropists who will get behind that sort of project.  I know, because I have met one; his generosity inspired that petition in the first place.  I also had to let out a little of the excitement!  The idea is a corker!

This is an early Thanksgiving.  It occurs to me that I have not thanked people enough, especially the hardest-working people.  I thank people all the time, but it is usually for over-and-above stuff, and when people first show up.  So, at the risk of embarrassing them, I’m going to thank a whole bunch of people.  I hope you don’t mind, folks.

But I should add something, because I don’t want this sort of attention to go to anybody’s head, either — I mean, frankly, I think it’s a little ridiculous that praise from me would go to anybody’s head.  Most people aren’t that way and they realize that I’m just this guy, so big deal.  But, you see, I’m worried and I speak from experience.  In listing these people and their useful work, I do not mean, in any way shape or form, to be establishing something like a project aristocracy.  I can imagine that some people might be puffed up by this sort of attention, and think that such recognition gives them rights in the project that others do not have.  That would be very wrongheaded.  In fact, not to malign them unjustly I hope, but certain Wikipedians seem to carry about their titles and achievements and “barnstars” and whatnot as so many bludgeons that they can use to get their way.  Damn me if that ever happens on the Citizendium.  I have sometimes accused Wikipedia of being egalitarian in a bad, utopian way, but in this regard I would like CZ to be *more* egalitarian than WP.  I would like us to settle content disputes by kindly, rational compromise first, by reference to expert knowledge second, and by fair, open, law-governed dispute resolution processes last — but NEVER by a presumption that “I’ve been here
longer, I’m a Big Shot, so you gotta listen to me and my friends, or else!” We should always be a freer, more open, and indeed more equal community than that cliquish, competitive attitude implies.

And if you would never dream of being that way — well, clearly, I’m not talking about *you*.

That said in preface, here’s the rogue’s gallery from the Citizendium’s first year, in alphabetical order, and what I honor them for.  And I’m very sorry if I left anyone out, or if I failed to mention some shining achievement of yours — I’m just going based on what I remember and what I had personal experience with, and the project is already bigger than I can always personally track.  But yes, I do actually know all these people and am at least somewhat acquainted with their work for the project!  I am sure I must have left out some hard-working people, some may have slipped through the cracks, and I’m sorry that I did…

Click through to the list.

From a grant proposal.

In some ways, the Citizendium works similarly to Wikipedia: an open, bottom-up wiki, a wide variety of people may join and contribute to whatever topic they want, whenever they want. The interface, using MediaWiki software, is fairly simple and easy for any reasonably technically adept person to learn. This system has allowed the Citizendium, like Wikipedia, to create thousands of articles in a short time. Yet the project is truly a by-the-bootstraps operation; when first announced, the project had a zero budget, and has been able to survive for a year on little more than $40,000 in donations and with one full-time employee.

But Citizendium’s differences with Wikipedia have proven extremely consequential and successful. Because the Citizendium requires the use of real names and biographies, there has been virtually no vandalism; furthermore, the community is mature and collegial, yet still dynamic. Because the Citizendium has a guiding role for experts, articles tend to be of remarkably high quality. Moreover, there are over 40 approved articles and over 600 “developed” articles, i.e., articles close to approval.

In addition, the Citizendium has recently enabled contributors to add various other kinds of reference information: bibliographies, external links, tables, image galleries, timelines, and much else. There is a particular need for an enhancement to MediaWiki that would incorporate these different types of information into the software. With support, the Citizendium Foundation could hire a programmer who would transform the text-oriented MediaWiki platform into something that handles all different sorts of information intelligently. The Citizendium, in turn, would show the world how to use the software.

Support for an administrative assistant would also help the project to do a serious recruitment drive; until now, most people have arrived via the many mentions of Citizendium in the technical press. Similarly, support for a development director would help the project tap into the no doubt millions of dollars that are available for a project that has already proven itself in this way.

In short, while the Citizendium has already shown that it has the potential to solve Wikipedia’s problems, further support would make this assured.

I’ve been working quite a bit lately on fundraising issues. This was overdue, even if it means I’m not on the wiki as much. Our fundamentals are such that we could be raising a lot of money–but because I am usually so focused on getting this project off the ground, and not on fundraising, we haven’t raised so much money recently, or not since last year (when I was working on it! ).

We now have a seven-page PDF prospectus that I can send to parties that might contemplate supporting CZ with a major donation. Let me know.

There is also now an explanation–as if you needed one–for why folks ought to contribute regularly to CZ: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Donate

Ongoing thanks to Kelly Patterson for helping as Fundraising Assistant. For that matter, thanks to the Executive Committee, which has helped in various ways, and thanks to everyone for making the whole thing possible!

Want a book, game, or other merchandise of a sort that you buy online?  Then, if you get it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble,

                  please order it through us!

We get 6% of the price you pay — and that adds up!

Let’s give credit where it’s due, Nancy Sculerati, Kelly Patterson, and Jason Potkanski have set up affiliate programs with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and have been at work on various aspects of our fundraising efforts.  Thanks!

Already, 14 items have been ordered and 8 items shipped from Amazon, which has raised our referral rate (i.e., the percentage of the price you pay that we receive) from 4% to 6%.  We’ve actually received some money already, and we’re very glad to have it.  We’ll announce a dollar amount when we get into four figures. 

With luck, we’ll have even more fundraising news to announce soon.

Geez, won’t those guys leave our poor little server alone?  Apparently not.

I took the opportunity to explain that, by getting just a few more servers, we could launch pretty soon, i.e., on the order of weeks, not months.  The number of servers we can afford is not a scalable solution, however.  Therefore, we will probably soon be forced to beg shamelessly for funds for more servers.  But Yes!  We can do that!

Posted here, but here’s a copy for the blog archives:

Media Contact:
Maggie Quale
FortyThree, Inc.
831.621.3773
citizendium@fortythreepr.com            

Citizendium Pilot Project Open For Public Contribution - Project Announces Non-Profit Status

Columbus, Ohio – January 24, 2007 – The Citizendium, a project aimed at creating a new free encyclopedia online, announced today that its pilot project has been a success, and that it is moving rapidly toward a public launch. For the first time, anyone can visit the website (www.citizendium.org), create a user account and get to work within minutes. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names.

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It is becoming obvious that with the amount of data we have to deal with that our current hardware situation is grossly inadequate.

In English, we need a Database server ASAP! Specifically, We could use a U320+ SCSI Card with True Hardware RAID and at least 4 15K RPM SCSI disk of at least 36GB. Server RAM in 2GB+ sticks great too. Donations of equipment or money extremely welcome.

Paypal Donations:

Send checks to: The Citizendium Foundation, P.O. Box 146, Mount Hermon, CA, 95041.

-Jason Potkanski
Technical Team, Citizendium Executive Committee

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