Citizendium Blog

I thought I would link to this blog post from FT’s Richard Waters, which dramatically claims, to my surprise, that I am “ready to jump ship” from the wonderful Citizendium, which I continue to love, and which I would never intentionally harm. In fairness, I think Waters reported the main facts pretty much accurately and fairly. But I did have this to say in reply (comment #1):

Richard, “jump ship” carries the wrong connotations, however eye-catching it might be. A less dramatic and more accurate statement would be that I have reiterated — once again — to carry out my promise to step down as Editor-in-Chief after 2-3 years, to ensure that the project proceeds as a bona fide constitutional republic. This does not mean I will be “abandoning” the project. If I sincerely believed that my departure would mean the end of CZ, I would make sure I stayed on board in some keyed-down capacity.

I have not updated my personal website (larrysanger.org) for many months. I’ve been very nose-to-the-grindstone with WatchKnow.org. Once it is off the ground I plan to return to CZ to help a transitioning process.

As for the Wikipedia article about CZ, its coverage of the “issue” is inaccurate and biased, as I explained on the article’s talk page. There’s no “scoop” there. It’s actually very old news.

I should add that I apologize (again) to the CZ community for my recent silence. My excuse is that I am starting up yet another non-profit educational project, this time for preK-12 videos. Don’t look at it now…it’s about to undergo a big design and software change, and will probably be under wraps for several weeks as we lead up to a (hopefully!) big launch.

(And…uh…speaking of inaccuracies on the blogosphere…I am not Jewish. But I like and admire many Jews and support the right of Israel to exist. Also, if Jimmy Wales is Jewish, that is news to me.)

In an informative update, Seth Finkelstein has summed up the fallout to my Open Letter to Jimmy Wales. Among other things, Florence Devouard, former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, is quoted as saying, “I know it will only be a small satisfaction, but I wanted to mention that in the French speaking user guide book I recently co-wrote with Guillaume Paumier, you are recognised as a co-founder.”

Yes, that is a small satisfaction, thank you, Florence. It would be nice if the Board of Trustees were to issue a statement reiterating its original 2004 position on the foundership issue. It would also be nice to read a public statement that it no longer considers Jimmy Wales to be a reliable source when it comes to matters of the early history of Wikipedia. I won’t hold my breath.

I have usually bitten my tongue in the four or five years since Jimmy Wales stopped crediting me as co-founder of Wikipedia. There are many things I have not said, or that I could say more pointedly, but which I did not. This is partly because I don’t like a scandal, but mostly it’s because I was raised to be modest, and to press my advantage always seemed in bad taste to me (even if it’s de rigeur for so many). But I will no longer mince words when Jimmy Wales continues to lie and misrepresent to the media — as he has done in a recent Hot Press interview the contents of which I’ve seen — about my role. It is deeply disappointing that Wales continues on shamelessly as he has been doing, after this long, and in spite of the shockingly poor match between his claims and the living record available online. The interview I mentioned, along with the recent rediscovery of a comment in which Wales called himself “co-founder” of Wikipedia in 2002, are really the straw that broke this camel’s back.

So, in addition to giving a pointed interview and blow-by-blow reply to the same writer who interviewed Wales, I’ve added a note to the “My role in Wikipedia” page on my personal website. Here it is, a note about the word “founder”:

I believe “founder” is used in two closely-related ways, depending on whether the thing founded is either a business enterprise, on the one hand, or a community project, movement, etc., on the other hand. In a business context, frequently, the founders of an enterprise are its original funders or sponsors. In a community context, however, the founders are those who had the most personal influence in getting a community started. So, for example, we might say the French government was a “founder” of the United States in the business sense, while Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin were among the community founders.

So, on the one hand, we can say that Bomis, Inc. was the founder of Wikipedia in the “business sense.” Strictly speaking, the “business founder” of Wikipedia was not Jimmy Wales individually, since it was Bomis that paid the bills for Wikipedia (including my paycheck), and Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis were, to the best of my knowledge, equal partners and co-owners of Bomis, Inc.

On the other hand — and I am sorry to have to say this myself, because I know it sounds so immodest coming from my own mouth, but after the events of recent years I just want the truth stated clearly — I have a much stronger claim than Jimmy Wales has to being a founder of Wikipedia in the community sense. As you can see from the evidence above, and as I think most people who were there will attest, I was far more active than he was in the first 14 months of the project, and my influence on the community, in terms of organizational work, general policy, and important decisions was far greater than his. For anyone wondering what I could possibly mean by this, I would point to my memoir for clarification. I’d also like to point out that Jimmy Wales has written no similar memoir, because he really did not do that very much in the community to write about. If he ever does write a memoir of the events of the first 14 months of Wikipedia, he knows I will be on hand to keep him honest.

Finally, I submit that, since Wikipedia is best known and most useful not as a “business enterprise” but as a free resource and worldwide non-profit community, the most relevant sense of foundership is not the business sense but the community sense.

A special issue of the highly-regarded journal of social epistemology, Episteme, has just appeared. The journal is edited by one of the most important living epistemologists, Alvin Goldman, but this issue was co-edited by University of Arizona philosophy professor Don Fallis and me (Don more than me). Anyway, here is the issue.

I have an article in the issue, called “The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia.” Here is the abstract:

Wikipedia has challenged traditional notions about the roles of experts in the Internet Age. Section 1 sets up a paradox. Wikipedia is a striking popular success, and yet its success can be attributed to the fact that it is wide open and bottom-up. How can such a successful knowledge project disdain expertise? Section 2 discusses the thesis that if Wikipedia could be shown by an excellent survey of experts to be fantastically reliable, then experts would not need to be granted positions of special authority. But, among other problems, this thesis is self-stultifying. Section 3 explores a couple ways in which egalitarian online communities might challenge the occupational roles or the epistemic leadership roles of experts. There is little support for the notion that the distinctive occupations that require expertise are being undermined. It is also implausible that Wikipedia and its like might take over the epistemic leadership roles of experts. Section 4 argues that a main reason that Wikipedia’s articles are as good as they are is that they are edited by knowledgeable people to whom deference is paid, although voluntarily. But some Wikipedia articles suffer because so many aggressive people drive off people more knowledgeable than they are; so there is no reason to think that Wikipedia’s articles will continually improve. Moreover, Wikipedia’s commitment to anonymity further drives off good contributors. Generally, some decisionmaking role for experts is not just consistent with online knowledge communities being open and bottom-up, it is recommended as well.

Here is a direct link to the PDF. Not sure how long this will be up; I’ll post a copy on larrysanger.org eventually.

It’s a work of academic philosophy, but that didn’t stop Slashdot from commenting. (I gotta wonder…what percentage of the commenters bothered to RTFA?)

The other articles are interesting — check them out!

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?

A friend told me that my name came up on a Prairie Home Companion (a famous U.S. public radio show), but he didn’t tell me it was in a poem. Well, thanks, Garrison Keillor, for the recognition.

Message to me from Mashable.com:

Hello and congrats,

Just in case you didn’t see it yet, you are a finalist in The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards (openwebawards.com). Our announcement post went out already: http://mashable.com/2008/11/19/openwebawards-voting-1/

From here we will be covering each of the finalists in each of the 26 categories over the next week in which you will be showcased.

This is a popularity vote, so spread the word to ensure your place in the final voting round:

1. You can create a custom version of our voting widget above to post to your company blog or website? Just visit the Open Web Awards Widget Creator and check the box to preset a category or company. This means your fans only need to enter an email address to vote - simple!

2. Spread the word through our 100+ International Blog Partners and make sure to leave comments, so their readers know who to vote for

Congratulations again and let me know if you have any questions.

Vote for the Citizendium Here!

We are gearing up for Biology Week which begins Monday, September 22! Please plan to show up during the week, and especially on Monday. Also, we need your help to spread the word.

If you know any biologists, please pass the word on to them. If you have a biology blog or participate in a biology mailing list, please make an announcement there. Please feel free to use, or link to, our press release: Wiki Encyclopedia Invites Biologists to a Weeklong Open House. Here it is:

For immediate release

Wiki Encyclopedia Invites Biologists to a Weeklong Open House

International Cyberspace — September 19 — Biology Week, an online “open house” for biologists, biology students, and anyone else interested, begins September 22 on Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org/), the next-generation wiki encyclopedia started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger.

During the week, biologists and anyone interested in the topic are invited test out the Citizendium system. Editors and authors from the project’s Biology Workgroup will be on hand to meet and greet new people on the wiki. “I strongly believe that the Citizendium system will be appealing to many scientists and scholars,” said Sanger. “Many of them just need to give it a try. Biology Week is an excuse for biologists to try out the system together.”

Biology is one of the more active areas in the Citizendium, with nearly 1,000 articles in progress. Unlike the Encyclopedia of Life, the project is a wiki and benefits from strong collaboration; for an example of the success of the system, biologists might want to see the article “Life” (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Life).

Dr. Gareth Leng, Professor of Experimental Physiology at the University of Edinburgh, and Citizendium author and editor, described the project: “Our role will not be to tell readers what opinions they should hold, but to give them the means to decide, rationally, for themselves. The role of experts is critical—not to impose opinions, but to support accuracy in reporting and citing information.”

The Citizendium, or “citizens’ compendium,” uses the same software as Wikipedia. It is a successful public-expert hybrid project to produce a general reference resource. The community encourages general public participation, but makes a low-key, guiding role for experts. It also requires real names and asks contributors to sign a “social contract.”

As a result, the project is vandalism-free and, despite its youth (its public launch was just 18 months ago), has steadily added over 8,000 articles, many of them of fine quality.

LINKS:

Citizendium website: http://www.citizendium.org/
Biology Week homepage: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Biology_Week
“Life” (sample article): http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Life

PRESS CONTACT INFORMATION:

Prof. Supten Sarbadhikari (Biology Week coordinator)

Founding Chair of Biomedical Informatics
PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research
Coimbatore, India
supten@gmail.com
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Supten_Sarbadhikari

Dr. Daniel Mietchen (Biology Week coordinator)

Structural Brain Mapping Group
Department of Psychiatry
University of Jena
daniel.mietchen@googlemail.com
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen

Dr. Larry Sanger

Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium; co-founder of Wikipedia
Executive Director, WatchKnow (to launch soon)
sanger@citizendium.org
http://www.larrysanger.org/

Open blog — your comments requested! 

I want to open up the Citizendium blog to general discussion of an important topic: how can we keep Google (and the larger Internet) from “making us stupid”?  I solicit your ideas.  Click on “Comments,” or scroll down to the bottom, and share them!

(more…)