Topic Informants: how the Citizendium would handle Seigenthaler and Microsoft
John Seigenthaler, Sr., distinguished, long-time editor of The Tennessean and a founding editor of USA Today, made big news (in the wiki world, at least) by taking Wikipedia to task for the outrageously libellous article they had written about him. Microsoft, being a giant evil corporation, could elicit no similar howls of outrage over Wikipedia’s biased articles about it; so it tried to resort to paying someone to edit articles that they perceive as biased.
Closer to home, I find it frustrating that I am constantly having to go to the Talk pages on the Wikipedia articles about me to correct people, who don’t know anything about me, or about the origin of Wikipedia, who are writing about me or the projects I’ve been involved in. It’s actually led me to create a handy page on my own Web space that I can link to and tell people, “Just go look at this.”
Similarly, my colleague, the astrophysicist Dr. Bernard Haisch had an editorial published in the LA Times in which he complained, quite justifably, of his treatment at the hands of Wikipedians with an ax to grind. As he explains, “if there are problems [with the biography Wikipedia has written about you], you should click on the discussion page and politely argue your case there, in the hope that some other self-appointed editor will consider the merits of your case and fix things for you.”
Ironically, Jimmy Wales too had a disagreement with the Wikipedia article about him, although on much thinner grounds. It seems he didn’t want me to have any credit for the founding of Wikipedia, and he edited his own bio seven times to deny me that credit. He thus ran afoul a rule of Wikipedia–what I, anyway, would insist is a rule–that the subjects of biographies should not edit articles about themselves.
At root there’s just one problem here. The people who know most about and who are most affected by articles about themselves (or about their companies, projects, etc.) have no reliable and independent way to get their perspective on the claims made by Wikipedia out there.
We’ve had the idea for an innovative solution to this problem for the Citizendium for several months. This afternoon, we started making this idea a reality.
I’d like to announce that, this afternoon, the Citizendium has started a new group called the Topic Informant Workgroup. We are at present over a dozen people, mostly Citizendium editors, and all of whom have significant publishing experience or a B.A. in a writing-intensive discipline.
Our mission is to create a platform from which people may respond to articles in Wikipedia–and the Citizendium–about themselves, and also about entities and events in which they personally played a key role. Such people will be called Topic Informants. We will interview them, or accept essays from them, and publish the results, free of charge and open to read without logging in–not on the wiki, but in a special area of the Citizendium website. These essays and interviews should concern the problems with the Wikipedia or the Citizendium article about themselves and their experiences, but they may also serve as “primary sources” that our Citizens may cite. Topic Informants will absolutely not be permitted to edit the articles they are commenting on–due to conflict of interest concerns of the sort that Microsoft is now in hot water over–but they will be able to speak or write at length, and we will listen very carefully.
Then our Citizens–a wiki community of responsible people gently guided by expert editors–will make sure that the perspective of the Topic Informant is fairly and sympathetically represented in the Citizendium article. Of course, we cannot violate our own neutrality policy, so the article will not become a mouthpiece of the Topic Informant. But all significant viewpoints, including the Topic Informant’s, will be expressed as sympathetically as possible in the Citizendium article. Everyone will be able to benefit from the results.
Microsoft, John Seigenthaler, Sr., Bernard Haisch, and even Jimmy Wales will be welcome to use our service, which will always be part of an independent nonprofit. The results should be very entertaining to read, we think. It might teach us all a lot about fairness, and about some really fascinating people.
If you want to become a Topic Informant for an article that appears on either Wikipedia or the Citizendium, please send an e-mail to: czinternal-topic@citizendium.org. Also, if you wish Wikipedia didn’t have an article about you, and you don’t want the Citizendium to start an article about you, this is the address to say so. We are not associated with Wikipedia, and so we cannot guarantee that they will respect your wishes and reflect what you have to say–but we will! We feel that if you aren’t really a public figure, it should be up to you whether we have an article about you or not. After all, why should you have to negotiate with strangers about an article that represents your achievements in something billed as an encyclopedia article? You shouldn’t, particularly if you aren’t a public figure.
Note that we cannot accept as Topic Informants just anyone who claims to be one. Here are our evolving rules on topic informants (available unfortunately only to registered users; sign up here). The Topic Informant Workgroup reserves the right to reject requests from persons to become Topic Informants on biographies about themselves that do not yet exist, or on account of remarks that they inserted into articles themselves. Such requests may be rejected on grounds of unseemly self-promotion. Also, the Topic Informant Workgroup also reserves the right to edit these remarks both for relevance to the content of specific articles, for their tendency to violate copyright and libel law, and for consistency of format with other Topic Informant remarks.
I have experienced similar problems in wikipedia when trying to make sensible articles on the study of cycles (repeating phenomena, not the wheeled things). Articles are repeatedly butchered and proposed for deletion by ignorant people. The category:cycles was deleted because someone thought the only thing the articles had in common was that the things had cycles in them! Isn’t that the point?
At present I am following a procedure in wikipedia concerning the lies and wrongful procedures relating to deletion of an article where the vote was to keep the article but the action was to delete because they said there were sock puppets and only one valid keep vote. I know for absolute certainty that this was very wrong, and it amounts to libel against me (as I voted so I am being accused of making all the votes). Please read more about this in my blog at http://ray.tomes.biz/b2/index.php/a/2007/02/02/is_wikipedia_broke_anti_cycles_behaviour
I have joined CZ with the hope of a better way of keeping little known cycles research from the past alive. There is still the issue of how cycles research fits into the CZ subject scheme as it is interdisciplinary. There will surely be other such cases.
Comment by Ray Tomes — February 3, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
Glad to have you, Ray.
Comment by Larry Sanger — February 4, 2007 @ 4:42 am
A Suggestion: How about a method of having an anonymous paid “Topic Introducer”. There will be a separate queue where an Anonymous user can turn up and say. Please have a look at this resource and please consider this possibility or Argument. I will pay 5 cents for each character I will submit here. You draw your own conclusions. But think in this direction. Since I am paying for this, I will not Ramble and Citizendium can look at references for further info. There can be an upper limit for contributions about each article to prevent indirect bribery. All such Paid Opinions will be kept separate and could be explored by CZ not becoz it believes the introducer but coz someone thinks looking at it is worth some money he is prepared to sacrifice. It will reduce rambling and will help topics to bubble up even if the informant is not an expert. In fact I would say, you could introduce a Dutch Auction like google does. Pay more to send your Message higher. All the circus just to attract attention.
But once bubbled up, only an Editor can include it. The money collected could be used for operational cost. To the user, the cash is like a Gamble. You may produce zero results, but it worth a try. If some tries to prove GW Bush lived in a Sewer for 18 years and pays the cash, it is lost for ever. But at least he can pay cash to bring a topic to the special notice of an editor. Maybe u can mutate this to suit CZ. I leave it to u. Just a thought.
Yet another suggestion for CZ in general. Pick all NPOV disputes in Wikipedia and show Wikipedia, how elegantly NPOV disputes can be resolved by experts without much Mudslinging. Create a situation where, users who visit Wikipedia articles on a disputed topic immediately think of CZ. The mere availability of a “superior” resource for all disputed topics, will increase the PageRank for those Articles on Google. I think Handling NPOV articles could be first priority.
Another area would be well known misconceptions. The Experts know people have some typical misconceptions. These can be dug up from Wikipedia and fixed in CZ.
The name “Citizendium” looks ugly
and the Key needs a redesign.
Comment by Sudarshan Palliyil — February 5, 2007 @ 5:12 am
Another Suggestion: Not sure if this popped up somewhere already. The Red links on a CZ Page look Bad. Dunno why u have not imported full WP. If it is legal, then no comments. If is technical, I mean lack of resources, then here is an idea. How about Tricolor links
1. Blue Links : Normal CZ Links.
2. Bluish Green Dull Links : WP articles not yet imported to CZ. When these links are clicked, one of 2 things could happen. Open a WP article in a new page or Open up the WP page within the CZ Page using Ajax or Curl. If the user clicks edit and submits the article now becomes a CZ article then onwards. Of corse some approval step can be added if necessary.
3. Red Links : No data on either WP or CZ.
Comment by Sudarshan Palliyil — February 5, 2007 @ 5:50 am
Create a branding for CZ centered around Authority and Approval. Eg a Green Tick Mark. A Slightly uncommon Green Tick mark which reminds you of CZ whenever one sees it. A tick mark that indicates “expert approved content”.
Comment by Sudarshan Palliyil — February 5, 2007 @ 5:54 am
[...] The Citizendium, so far, has few if any articles about living persons among its 1000+ articles in development. When we do start adding such articles, they will come under the management of our Topic Informant Workgroup (see this blog post for more). Furthermore, we will have a zero tolerance policy toward any even possibly defamatory remarks: to say something that might tend to impugn someone’s reputation, even if true, will require extremely good documentation. If no such documentation is offered, or if it does not check out, the person who makes such claims will be “escorted to the door.” We simply won’t tolerate it. [...]
Pingback by Citizendium Blog » Wikipedia article defames golf pro, who sues company with IP address of anonymous contributor — February 25, 2007 @ 2:57 pm
Just an update on my situation in wikipedia. The link is to the full discussion in my blog, which is perhaps worth looking at. However here is the most recent comment that I added:
“As a result of my complaint about wrong vote counting and removal of a cycles category, user SilkTork was assigned to the case. He has worked with me at looking at the issues in a fair and balanced way.
He asked me whether I wanted to deal with the complaint about procedures or just get material re-established that was wrongly removed, such as the category for cycles articles, which he agreed was not a proper decision. I agreed to do the latter, re-establishment.
Recently he re-established the article on The Foundation for the Study of Cycles and I did some work on tidying it up, but more remained to be done.
Yesterday I spent many hours reviewing over 1000 wikipedia articles on cycles. The problem is that “cycles” has multiple meanings, being wheeled things that people ride, processes such as the carbon cycle, collections such as in music and mythology, and finally repeating phenomena. I was only interested in this last group and found 44 articles that reasonably belonged in such a category. I created the category and put it into those 44 articles.
This morning I arrived to find that all the work that I had done was deleted, the category was removed and the FSC article put there by SilkTork was also deleted. I was blocked from editing anything in wikipedia except my own talk page. The person who did this goes by the name “Ruud Koot” - go figure.
Well, my contention that Wikipedia is broke is not about to be changed at this point in time.”
Comment by Ray Tomes — March 16, 2007 @ 2:36 pm