Citizendium Blog

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It’s been a pretty big news story: for a few days, editing of Wikipedia was effectively blocked throughout much of the U.K., because Wikipedia had, and still has, an uncensored reproduction of the Scorpions’ album cover for Virgin Killer. This shows a completely naked pre-pubescent girl in a sexually suggestive pose.

Does it bother you that Wikipedia reproduces an image that is, arguably, child pornography? It does me. Now, I think the Internet ought to be safe for porn, but not child porn. It was Jimmy Wales’ Bomis.com, after all, that den of soft-core porn “glamour photography” (the Jimbo-approved euphemism), that paid my paychecks when I was starting Nupedia and Wikipedia. (I often used to say that Wikipedia was built using good fertilizer.) But I don’t think that a general encyclopedia, used by millions of school kids (at least at home) should host sexually suggestive pictures of naked pre-pubescent girls. That ought to be obvious to Wikipedians, and the fact that it’s not is yet more evidence that not all is well in Wikipedia-land.

Perhaps it’s time to remind the world that there is a wonderful new, and growing, alternative: Citizendium (CZ). If you’re reading this on the CZ blog, you no doubt know that we are another free wiki encyclopedia project, but started by a co-founder of Wikipedia, yours truly. (But I’m writing it so you can forward it to family, friends, and colleagues who don’t know about CZ.) A lot of people don’t know what we’re here for and they have bought all sorts of misinformation about us. Let’s fix that, shall we?

Let me sum up the case for CZ. We are still around, we’re still growing, and we’re steadily becoming a viable alternative to Wikipedia. We are small, but vigorous. We have no vandalism. We have grown steadily over the one-and-a-half years since our public launch, and we’ll be breaking 10,000 articles in the next few months. I won’t bore you (again) with the reasons, but I think that there will come a tipping point for us, after which a lot more people will know about us and swell our ranks. And they should! We aren’t going away, and even at the current rate, we’re going to have hundreds of thousands of articles in the long run. We’re non-profit, Creative Commons, community-managed, and we’re open to everyone who is willing to use their real names and identities. We’re a remarkably pleasant and well-behaved community, and I think we do great work. We have pioneered a new model, a public-expert hybrid community; we’ve shown that it is not just viable, it is in many ways a clearly superior model for the organization of an open, online knowledge community.

And, of course, the cover of Virgin Killer will never appear on the pages of CZ.

Now, if you are harrumphing (rather ridiculously, I might add, but that’s just me I suppose) that of course the cover of Virgin Killer should not be “censored,” and that Wikipedia is better than CZ insofar as it doesn’t feature such “censorship,” then let me point something out. Let me point out the wonderful, delicious fact that you can stick with Wikipedia. The two projects naturally attract delightfully complementary groups of people. The people who want to hide behind pseudonyms, who want to play governance games in order to push their biases, and who want to prove their maturity and enlightenment by putting up pictures of naked little girls, can stick with Wikipedia. I’ll be delighted if they do. But I think that in the long run, you’ll see that a lot more people will want to contribute under the more sensible CZ system.

Time will tell, but you know, I was right about the viability of the Wikipedia model long before it was popular or even known to almost everyone reading this post. And I have a strong and well-justified belief in the viability of the CZ model, a belief that is well-informed by my experience actually developing the Wikipedia model, many other online projects, and thinking deeply about online knowledge communities.

We’ll be hosting a big Citizendium Open House in January, as a way to boost this great project to the next level and welcome a lot of new people who might be curious about the project. Be on the lookout for announcements here and elsewhere.

…yep, it’s my birthday, so I’m taking the day off, but I thought I’d pop in here long enough to thank the people who have been writing me articles for my birthday.

We’re giving away over $1000 in prizes for educational videos this summer, as part of a WatchKnow “pre-contest.” Here’s a video I just uploaded to YouTube about it:

Here are the contest topics and rules.

Comments on the contest topics and rules still welcome.

We’ve installed the “EmbedVideo” MediaWiki extension.  This means we now allow people to embed videos taken from, e.g., YouTube.

Here’s an example in use (which also, incidentally, shows off how we use subpages–this is a “video” subpage), a large assortment of videos, mostly homemade, of various County Donegal-style fiddle players.

Hello, any coders out there!  Today, we spent many hundreds of dollars posting ads for the WatchKnow programmer position.  Can you help get the word out? Can you post this in your networks or send it to friends?

Here’s a copy of the job ad…which I posted to craigslist San Francisco Bay Area, even though I’m located in central Ohio.  The point is that I don’t really care where you live, as long as you can do the job. Being in the U.S. is probably a requirement, but beyond that, hey, telecommute from Alaska!  It’s a 3-4 month contract job, and may work into permanent employment, and it will pay pretty well.

UPDATE (June 20): yay, we now have a good set of candidates to choose from…

We’re now starting to spread the word about a major new Citizendium program. This initial announcement is meant to be low-key (no press release yet). I wanted our “Citizens” to be the first to receive it.

WatchKnow will be a free, non-profit, K-12 educational video contest. It is currently under planning and development. See http://www.watchknow.org for a long FAQ.

Here’s the basic idea. Imagine tens of thousands of excellent short videos explaining nearly every topic taught in U.S. public schools. WatchKnow will be a free (open content), non-profit beta project, to launch probably this fall, to see whether we can create that. We will set the topics and invite teachers–and everyone–to submit videos. Videos will be rated, and, at a certain point, we’ll select a winner for each topic. We’ll pay the winner(s) within each topic a small prize(s), such as $75 and $25, but the amounts have not be decided firmly yet. We might award substantially more for certain topics. You could think of it as an American Idol for teachers, but we are not affiliated with American Idol. The project is being carried out as a new program of the Citizendium Foundation, with funding from a retired Memphis millionaire who wishes to benefit American education.

We hope to launch the beta project this fall. We will be spreading the word this summer, to attract school teachers and others to help staff the program in various ways. We hope within the next few weeks to hire a technical person to actually build the beta system. See the ad here.

 For future updates, please add yourself to the announcement list.  You can discuss the new program here on the CZ forums.

I have been asked to lead the program. So, you wonder, why have I agreed? First, the aforementioned Memphis philanthropist has been very generous in supporting the Citizendium, as an incentive to us to work on this project. (He doesn’t want to be named, by the way.) He has been very persistent for over a year in recruiting me (and us) to get this project started. Second, it is largely in keeping with our overall mission of bringing online communities together, to create reliable, free, and (broadly) educational content.

I suppose it’s often this way in life–you start out doing one thing, and you find yourself presented with excellent reasons to branch out into something else.

If you are worried that this means I’ll be quitting as Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium soon, please don’t. I’ve in fact been working on both projects for several months now, spending *most* of my work time on CZ rather than WatchKnow. One exciting thing about this project, as an opportunity for us, is that, if it succeeds very well, it might bring large amounts of relatively “permanent” funding from a whole variety of sources. There will be no shortage of funds for a really useful free educational video project. As the parent project of WatchKnow, CZ naturally stands to benefit. Already, we can tap the WatchKnow engineer to serve a System Administration role for CZ as a whole. A successful beta project will no doubt provide us the funds to do something that I have been concerned that we wouldn’t be able to do: actually pay my successor a suitable salary!

Besides, once the system is off the ground, it should largely “run itself” and require relatively little work from me. If it doesn’t–if it requires heavy management–we’ll hire someone to do that.

CZ’s Executive Committee already knows about the project and has given our involvement their blessing. Several members have been rather enthusiastic about it. We have also received advice and help from a number of other people, including two “big names” in the world of free culture–but I will not release their names until the entire new WatchKnow Advisory Committee is constructed. We’ll be looking for interested and suitable members of that Committee–i.e., distinguished educators, ed tech gurus, and free content advocates.

I think WatchKnow will be good for CZ in another way. While we’ve been doing all right so far this year, we have not had a real “shot in the arm” in terms of the sort of announcements, press attention, and active recruitment efforts that punctuated our earlier months. WatchKnow will not only put CZ’s name back in the news, it will demonstrate that we are still very much active, expanding…and funded! Finally, think of this: the video project might end up being very high-profile. There’s reason to think it will; so far, everyone who hears about the idea loves it, and the idea is totally innovative and fills a gaping hole and need. If WatchKnow is very popular, it will help boost CZ, and vice-versa. So, in sum, I’m very comfortable with this as move strategically.

Again, here are the key links:

• FAQ
• Mailing list
• Discussion forum
• Engineer/sysadmin ad

See: http://columbus.craigslist.org/eng/713663956.html

Video programmer/system administrator (Columbus area and telecommute)

Reply to: sanger@citizendium.org
Date: 2008-06-09, 2:33PM EDT

JOB SUMMARY. The Citizendium Foundation (http://www.citizendium.org/), an operationally independent project of the non-profit Tides Center, is looking to hire one full-time contractor to perform two main jobs: (1) primarily, construction of an innovative online video system in something like the YouTube vein, and (2) part-time, on-the-side system administration of the Citizendium servers. The job will last from the project design, coding, and testing through a time-limited beta project, i.e., probably nine months at least, possibly to become permanent. You will be answering to the project director, Larry Sanger (http://www.larrysanger.org/), founder of the Citizendium and co-founder of Wikipedia, and working with a large variety of volunteers. You’ll work from home or from your office, but if you are in the central Ohio area, we’ll meet from time to time.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE WITH:
* Set-up and/or management of online video systems, and the problems of such systems, including traffic and multiple file types. You will be coding up, or adapting, an open source video application virtually single-handedly. This is the top requirement.

* The technical implementation of Web 2.0-type and AJAX-type methods, and of course all languages and standards needed for such methods.

* User management systems/login systems/advanced identity management.

* Significant professional experience doing various Linux system administration tasks, including server configuration, e-mail administration, restarting the wiki server, etc.

* Independent work habits, willingness to work carefully to spec, extremely good ability to analyze English and discuss details of innovative projects. But note that we are very open to good ideas and will ask you to be creative.

Essentially, you must be able to prove that you have already successfully designed and implemented a video system similar to the one we’re asking you to build. If you haven’t, please don’t apply.

A DEFINITE PLUS FOR EXPERIENCE WITH:
* Documentation best practices.

* MediaWiki coding.

* Work (either as volunteer or as paid project manager) with open source and open content communities.

* Creation of videos/videocasting.

* Ed tech and state standards.

* Enough PostgreSQL to do simple commands.

Location in the central Ohio area is a strong plus, but we will seek elsewhere if the advantages are significant. We hope to hire and get started ASAP. In any case, the contractor will be required to give brief daily reports on progress.

WHY IS THIS AN INTERESTING OPPORTUNITY? This is a remarkable opportunity for the right person. This as-yet-unannounced open content video project and expert-led, real-name wiki encyclopedia project are or will be the first two of their kind. They are both currently directed by Larry Sanger. The video project is funded by a retired Memphis millionaire philanthropist, so you need not worry that funds for your work will dry up in the start-up period. This might well become a high-profile project with high name recognition. If the project succeeds and you do well, you will probably be invited into a more permanent (e.g., employee) relationship. Moreover, we will give you an opportunity to stretch as a professional, as the projects do or will make use of several first-time innovations (it’s not just a YouTube clone), and you will be invited to work with Sanger and others in the general design of the system. If the project succeeds, as we believe it will, there is a chance that it will pioneer an unusually compelling new model for online community content creation. It will also be very beneficial to society, as you will discover as you learn more about the project.

TO APPLY. To apply and/or make a bid, please send the resume of the person who will be doing the work, as well as links to samples online of that person’s work, rate/fee requirements, and date when available. Feel free to explain any weird stuff we might encounter when we google you. Since this is contract work, responses from individuals and from technical firms are both acceptable.

* Location: Columbus area and telecommute
* Compensation: commensurate with experience
* Telecommuting is ok.
* This is a contract job.
* This is at a non-profit organization.
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

The Craigslist ad: http://columbus.craigslist.org/eng/713663956.html

The new CZ skin is up! (It is now set to default.) So, when you go to the wiki you’ll see a brand new look. This helps to distinguish us from That Other Website.

You won’t see the new skin, however, if you fiddled with your skin preferences, i.e., with this page.  If so, and you aren’t using the new skin, you can go to the above URL, click on the “skin” tab, and then select “Pinkwich5″ and click Save. Then you should see the default skin, or in other words, what all new (and un-logged in) people are now seeing.

Thanks hugely to Derek Harkness for coding this up and doing a lot of debugging. It might still have a few bugs. If so, we’ve been using this page of Derek’s to report them.  Thanks also to Greg Sabino Mullane for uploading it and doing other techie stuff.

What may be the first CZ article to be cited in the mainstream media is “Stravenue.”  It is referred to in this article in the Arizona Daily Star. Here is the relevant sentence:

An entry on a user-generated online encyclopedia, Citizendium, says these roads were designated as stravenues by the developers of the subdivisions.

That’s a start!

I’d like to point out that this is an unusual sort of topic. I believe that, while we should encourage people to write on core topics, we should nevertheless remain open to a very wide assortment of topics. Translation: I am an unrepentant inclusionist.

I’ve uploaded two recent essays — speeches, really, but written out.  The first is “Citizendium: A New Vision for Online Knowledge Communities,” which I delivered at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, Feb. 7, 2008, as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series, “Wikipedia - Democratization of Knowledge or Triumph of Amateurs,” hosted by Marshall Poe.  Here’s a bit that sets up the problem to solve:

… It would be boring and banal for me to point out that collaboration on free content represents an interesting opportunity. Of course it does. The Internet has been exploiting that opportunity for almost ten years, at least ever since the Open Directory Project got started in 1998. The real question is whether there are any interesting new free content opportunities. And there is, I think. The most interesting unexploited opportunity before the Internet today is high quality and high relevance. In short, if developing sheer quantity of content was the big exciting problem ten years ago, we’ve licked that one. The big exciting problem now is quality: how to create enormous amounts of high-quality and highly-relevant content. And this is–I guarantee it–a much more difficult problem, and one that not nearly as many online projects will be able to solve. …

I go on to argue for three fundamental principles underlying the Citizendium:

… Clearly, something really important has been left out of the Web 2.0 equation. What? What needs to be added so that our communities produce content that is not merely abundant, useful, and interesting, but also reliable and relevant?

I have three principles, which I will state briefly first but then elaborate, because it is very easy to misunderstand in all three cases. They are:

1. Find a meaningful role for experts within the project.
2. Require contributors to use their real-world identities.
3. Establish the rule of law by committing contributors to a social contract that makes them full partners in the project.

Adopting these three principles will help transform Web 2.0 into Web 3.0. Leveraged intelligently, these principles will allow an online community to produce high quality and relevance, without necessarily compromising high productivity. They will, in short, help the Internet to grow up.

Let’s consider these principles each briefly in turn. …

I also give a report about the latest CZ progress.  Here’s the whole thing.

The second is “How the Internet Is Changing What We (Think We) Know,” a speech I gave when kindly invited by a local Columbus-area library.  This is not so much project propaganda as the examination of a socio-philosophical problem:

… Before the Internet, we were already awash in information. Wading through all that information in search of some hard knowledge was very difficult indeed.

The Internet is making this old and difficult problem even worse. If we had an abundance of information in, say, the 1970s, the Internet has created a superabundance of information today. Out of curiosity, I looked up some numbers. According to one estimate, there are now over 1.2 billion people online; Netcraft estimated that there are over 100 million websites, and about half of those are active. And those estimates come from over a year ago.

With that many people, and that many active websites, clearly there is, as I say, a superabundance of information. Nielsen ratings of Internet search showed that there were some six billion searches performed in December, 2007, in one month—that’s about 72 billion in a year! Google, by the way, was responsible for two thirds of those searches. Now, you might have heard these numbers before; I don’t mean to be telling you news. But I want to worry out loud about a consequence of this situation.

My worry is that the superabundance of information is devaluing knowledge. The more that information piles up on Internet servers around the world, and the easier it is for that information to be found, the less distinctive and attractive that knowledge will appear by comparison. I fear that the Internet has already greatly weakened our sense of what is distinctive about knowledge, and why it is worth seeking. …

I then go on to explain all that in some detail, but for a popular audience.  Here’s the whole thing (complete with pictures!).