Calacanis invites side-by-side comparison of CZ and WP
In a blog post, one of our more prominent Web 2.0 supporters, Jason Calacanis, invites people to compare CZ and WP articles side-by-side, citing our “Northwest Passage” article (which is currently our Article of the Week) and Wikipedia’s.
I appreciate the implied compliment, but I think the time for meaningful side-by-side comparisons is still some time off. There is no question that, in most cases, articles take time to develop to their fullest potential. This is just as true on CZ as on WP. We are still a very new project, and many of our articles simply have not benefitted from the time and scale effects that Wikipedia articles have enjoyed (but have not actually been perfected by) over the years.
That said, a lot of our articles are excellent right out of the gate — for instance, our “New Article of the Week,” which was started July 22, ”Edward I.” And there is no question that the average level of our new articles is far better than Wikipedia’s new articles were. Jimmy Wales said recently that he remembers the days when one could start the Africa article and write, “Africa is a continent.” Indeed, I believe that’s exactly how the Wikipedia “Africa” article did read for a while. Well, such a stub would be deleted fairly quickly on CZ. Now, I must admit in fairness that we still have no “Africa” article at all – for shame! Still, this and many other major oversights will be fixed before too long.
The Citizendium is unfinished, but on a vector of improvement that will, over the coming few years, take it head and shoulders over Wikipedia in terms of quality. And then in terms of quantity, too!
I do have to agree with Jason:
This is going to get very interesting over the next five years.
Interesting, though would you rather have no article at all or “Africa is a continent”? Neither really seems better.
What I am looking forward to is a big faculty invite and better automated account creation.
Comment by Aaron Schulz — August 9, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
Aaron, me too, very much so. Can you e-mail me about how your testing came along? You did get on our test server, didn’t you?
Re “Africa,” well, both situations suck, but the point is that Wikipedia was comfortable with substandard work where CZ isn’t. Clearly, this helped WP get off the ground. CZ has been laboring under–but also being rewarded by–higher standards. Notice that we are thinking about how to encourage people to add more stubs, but high-quality stubs that aren’t too short.
Comment by Larry Sanger — August 10, 2007 @ 12:08 am
Originally Citizendium started off with all Wikipedia articles. It found that this task was not doable and decided to start all over with a clean slate. Having learned some of the lessons of Wikipedia, it is not strange that the result is different.
Wikipedia is doing the mammoth task of not only creating more content but also improving on the existing content. Its quality is as a consequence improving steadily. Given the sheer size of the project, it is understandable that it takes time to get a job done and there are many jobs that need doing.
Another trap that Citizendium consistently falls into is comparing itself with Wikipedia. There is not one, there are many Wikipedias. Africa may still be missing in Citizendium, but Citizendium has nothing to offer for everyone that does not speak English.
Citizendium may have some articles that are good but contrary to Wikipedia, it does not have a license. It is effectively a copyrighted work that does not clearly specify what it can be used for. Consequently the articles may be great but what is its use ??
Thanks,
GerardM
Comment by GerardM — August 10, 2007 @ 2:27 am
Larry: Are there intentions to name a license for CZ before the end of the year?
Comment by Nick Moreau — August 10, 2007 @ 9:02 am
Definitely before the end of the year. More like before the end of the fall, and I was frankly hoping for the end of summer, but I doubt that will happen.
Comment by Larry Sanger — August 10, 2007 @ 9:41 am
Larry, it will be very interesting to see what happens to the old content that is still GFDL-content or under a non-specified license. Some people might consider it a copyright nightmare and a huge risk for CZ in the long run.
Comment by Mathias Schindler — August 12, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
Another aspect of a side-by-side comparison: alleged abuse of anonymity on Wikipedia by corporations and other organisations whose employees have apparently posed as ordinary users to make sympathetic edits and remove controversial material. This would be much more difficult to do on Citizendium as we generally have some idea who people are. See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6947532.stm ‘Wikipedia ’shows CIA page edits” - BBC News, 15th August 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2874112.ece ‘Wikipedia and the art of censorship’ - Independent, 21st August 2007
Comment by John Stephenson — August 21, 2007 @ 7:57 am