What’s the point?
The bottom line: our aim is quality, not quantity. We already know that “crowds” can produce massive quantities of content. Big deal. The Citizendium is about developing our massive quantities of content into works of stunning quality, over the long term. We have a better shot than anyone at doing this.
Many people have essentially asked me, “Since Wikipedia is ‘good enough,’ what is the point of the Citizendium?” The answer, of course, is that Wikipedia isn’t good enough, and given its policies, it is highly unlikely that it ever will be. More to the point, over the long haul, the Citizendium can do better.
But that’s always my reply. It now occurs to me that the underlying insight has not been emphasized enough. As I look at various encyclopedia articles — and my own writings — I am struck by how much work there is to do, to perfect them. For example, to find exactly the right reference, and place it at exactly the right place, is very difficult and time-consuming. Most people don’t spend the time needed to get it exactly right. A work is hailed as brilliant if it merely doesn’t get anything too badly wrong. Well, the great thing about the Citizendium is that we have the (growing) community and the (developing) policies that is allowing us to grow not just another encyclopedia, but a continuously improving encyclopedia. That is the brilliance of our plan.
The day we look forward to is not the day when we have millions of articles, but the day when serious professionals say, “The Citizendium articles in my area are of such stunning quality that I can’t imagine how they could be improved. They have been worked and reworked by hundreds, or thousands, of specialists, in my field. They contain, of course, no known factual errors. The coverage is complete; the tiniest details are covered in more specialized articles. The writing reflects consistently superb craftsmanship: accessible to the college student on more basic topics (without removing accuracy), and clear on more advanced topics. The citations are brilliantly chosen, always reflecting the best (original, or most authoritative) sources. They do not favor any side in any controversy, but provide full details of the debate, so that the reader can be fully informed so as to make up his or her own mind. The bibliographies and external links, fully annotated, list virtually every credible source on their topics. The other supplementary material, on subpages, is of equally high quality. In short, the only reason to change the articles (and whole clusters) now is that the field itself changes.”
An article is one thing. A magisterial article is quite another. The difference is huge and hugely important.
It’s a long road from here to there. Wikipedia is very, very far from that point, and again I doubt it will ever reach that point; if I thought they could, I wouldn’t have started CZ. We, however, have a chance!
In fact, in view of this, you might well ask yourself: what is the point of Wikipedia? It’s never going to get past a certain level of mediocrity; that’s one of the main reasons I stopped working on it a while ago. I think that, as the years go by, we are going to find more and more people asking themselves that — and coming to CZ. Because it’s not just about quantity. It’s about quality. And we have the nascent community and policies in place that actually have a chance to achieve the sort of high quality a global collaboration of scholars can achieve.
Mind you, I still think it’s all right if we start with stubs; we have to start somewhere. But we should also keep our eyes on the prize, because our substantial promise of achieving that sort of stunning quality is really what makes it all worthwhile.
One difference between CZ and Wikipedia that I haven’t heard mentioned–or not mentioned enough–is that while both have the potential to develop great articles over time, only CZ has a mechanism to keep an article from becoming worse over time. The approved article and working draft model that CZ uses is, for me, its most important distinction from Wikipedia.
An interesting experiment would be to place an approved CZ article on WP and track its de-evolution over time. (With additions of Simpsons references of course.)
Comment by Eric Winesett — November 29, 2007 @ 10:14 am
It’s definitely an open question whether Citizendium can produce dramatically better content that what Wikipedia can produce. The best of Wikipedia’s articles today are definitely in the same league as the best of what Citizendium has produced so far. (The last time I did close readings of approved CZ articles, some of them were about Wikipedia Featured Article quality, but none were quite up to the level of the best of the Featured Articles.) The best Wikipedia content is also typically the product of a small number of editors (usually less than ten) for a given article. It’s not clear, to me at least, that it’s feasible to get 1000 people to give serious and systematic attention to a fully-formed article, nor is it clear that the result would be vastly better, even if you could. Certainly many eyes make shallow bugs, but the difference between a really good Wikipedia article and the hypothetical best-article-possible is not generally one of bugs, but of style and emphasis…aspects of writing that go better with fewer, not more, authors.
Yours in discourse,
Sage
Comment by Sage — November 29, 2007 @ 11:55 am
The way for CZ to acomplish what it is trying to do, is to be _better_ than wikipedia at enabling people to produce high quality articles. Wikipedia is not trying to be that … it aims to make it _easier_ for people to produce edits–with no care as to *what* those edits actually are. It is meant for people to do casual editing, as evidenced by the lack of proper locking and merging facilities.
Wikipedia will then become the haunt of trolls and newbies, where people who value their dignity will avoid publishing to like the plague. CZ can distinguish itself by bringing the right tools to the job, for the type of interactions that scholars actually would want to be doing. I was always thinking that this is the way to do a scholars encyclopedia, by providing the tools for them to do what comes naturally to them. Such as keeping an article open on their desk for one month at a time, and being able to merge it meaningfully afterwards. Etc. Etc.
Basically the tools should reflect the practise of these scholars, and be the place for them to do ALL of their collaborating, and the body of work that comes out of their efforts will be the CZ.
Hasan
Comment by Hasan Murtaza — November 29, 2007 @ 7:10 pm
I would like to suggest a more diplomatic, magnanamous and (I think) accurate response with the help of a few analogies:
Wikipedia might be “good enough” in some situations, but not “good enough” in others.
Sometimes a fast “takeaway” meal is “good enough” and sometimes it is not.
Sometimes an old Volkswagon bug is more appropriate (as it permits a learner driver to have a few prangs with minor repercussions) and sometimes one wants more safety and comfort.
Wikipedia has its place in the world, as does Citizendium. They both have value. The world benefits by having both.
My (twelve-year-old) daughter often asks me questions I can not answer. Citizendium does not always have the answers to all of these diverse questions (and might never). So she sometimes goes to Wikipedia. She knows to take information on Wikipedia with a few more kilos of salt than what she finds on Citizendium (which can not be perfect, as nothing is).
But having Wikipedia as a source, though it includes more furphies (rumours, misleading information or false information), also gives her the experience she needs in life to differentiate valuable information from that which is not.
Comment by andrew — November 29, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
I agree completely, Larry. CZ can never, and should not even try to, compete with WP. As far as social science articles are concerned, there is no comparison with our Approved articles and anything on WP. The wikipedia articles are either full of errors and bias, or else (in a desperate attempt to cover all viewpoints) have an incoherent compilation of everything anyone ever thought on the subject. Neither is appropriate for an encyclopedia.
Comment by Martin Baldwin-Edwards — November 29, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
Martin (#5) implies that CZ’s main strength is reliability in controversial areas, and I think we should concentrate on social sciences, some areas of biological sciences, and politics in the widest sense. Reviews of rival manufacturers’ claims, particularly for pharmaceuticals, would be particularly valuable (and could consist largely of references to more specialized sites that we think reliable). Wikipedia articles on the hard sciences and other factual matters are generally OK, and even the WP system can sort out minor bloopers.
I am a sort-of scientist/engineer so I am blunting, rather than grinding, my own axe.
Apologies if these points have been made before.
Comment by Peter Bradshaw — November 30, 2007 @ 10:13 am
There are lots of good points in the replies to this post. Eric Winesett\’s thought experiment of placing an approved CZ article on WP and tracking its de-evolution over time would be fascinating if it could be done.
I agree with Sage that there are aspects of writing that go better with fewer, not more, authors. Good points by Hasan Murtaza and andrew too. The ability to differentiate valuable information from that which is not, is a very valuable skill in the internet age — even if dubious content is successfully eliminated from Citizendium.
The issue which prompted me to reply is Martin Baldwin-Edwards\’ observation that Wikipedia\’s social science articles are either full of errors and bias, or an incoherent compilation of everything anyone ever thought on the subject. Following on from that, Peter Bradshaw suggested that CZ should concentrate on social sciences, some areas of biological sciences, and politics in the widest sense. That\’s something to bear in mind. These are the areas where WP is often unreliable.
Larry Sanger said of CZ articles:
I sure hope so. As I pointed out in a reply once before, the history of academic psychology is the history of a swinging pendulum of orthodoxies. Before cognitive and evolutionary models took over, the opposite view - \”behaviorism\” - was dominant. Behaviorists believed hereditary factors counted for nothing and research should focus on the \’conditioning\’ of observable behaviors. Now, in the same offices of the same universities evolutionary psychologists are sitting behind the desks.
A similar phenomenon occurs in psychiatry. Until bio-psychiatry swept away everything that went before, psychiatrists practiced psychoanalysis — with all the circular reasoning that entailed. In fact, the International Psychoanalytic Association seldom accepted candidates who were not medically qualified. In my view, bio-psychiatry is a topic where dissenting voices against reductionism and circular reasoning should be given serious coverage. On Wikipedia, defenders of prevailing orthodoxies in psychology and psychiatry tend come out on top in the edit wars. There doesn\’t appear to be a CZ article titled \”Psychiatry\” so far.
Comment by A.M. Sherwood — December 5, 2007 @ 8:07 am