Nate Anderson has actually done his homework for his recent Ars Technica analysis of us. He’s evidently read enough about us that he is among a very small group — outside our properly self-critical group of active Citizens – that has produced a contribution to the interesting debate about CZ’s merits and future. Here’s a reply.
It seems that everyone is talking about Google’s new Knol project — the Citizendium has got a tremendous amount of press as a result. So I wanted to add another note on the topic.
At the Citizendium we are motivated by one thing only: to become the best knowledge base that Earth has ever seen. We believe we have, over the long term, a better chance at this than any other project.
If Knol were to reveal a genuine expert contributor that was not already an expert editor on CZ whom CZ would approve as an editor, it would be my pleasure to welcome that person to become part of our new knowledge society.
What our expert editors discover is that the expert-guided collaborative environment on the Citizendium is unprecedented, remarkably productive, and really without parallel.
Delivering one’s expert knowledge with the input from a general knowledge community helps all our editors to assess — and improve — the ways in which their knowledge is stored and communicated.
Only the Citizendium does that.
We are by no means complacent, and we intend fully to watch Google’s new Knol project. We will utilize constructively any contributor that will genuinely add to the world’s knowledge store by inviting them to join us a CZ contributor.
Creating a new knowledge society is what the Citizendium is doing and every genuine expert should be an editor on CZ. Moreover, everyone who wants to work as part of an open, public project shoulder-to-shoulder with such experts should join us as well.
What are knols? No, they aren’t Dungeons & Dragons monsters, or small hills, they’re purportedly “units of knowledge,” and they are encyclopedia articles Google is inviting people to write. So Google is entering head-to-head competition with Wikipedia — not so much with the Citizendium (thankfully, we have a different niche: quality) — making things much more interesting. (Of course, philosophers have had a zillion different names for “units of knowledge,” and none of them could be used to describe a Web page.)
A reporter asked me some questions about Google’s announcement, which I answered by e-mail. Here are my answers.
What is your assessment of the Knol initiative?
There are a few problems.
First, quality. It looks to me as if Knol is a high-level attempt to do what many others have done. Countless websites already exist that invite signed essays and information (remember h2g2.com?) and other content for public rating. Time will tell, but Knol will probably resemble other such websites, and have a huge amount of mediocre content, with a little excellent content mixed in. The concept does not sound like a model that would attract many genuine experts. I say that because the notion that anyone may write a “knol” and be compared and ranked by “the crowd” — not by expert peers — is apt to attract relatively little notice from experts who are very careful about where they publish. Still, other Web companies have had reasonably good success making money with such Web services, and Google might make a lot of money with theirs.
Second, lack of buy-in from the free culture crowd. Many of the sort of people who contribute knowledge to projects like Wikipedia and the Citizendium are likely to be very skeptical of a giant corporation organizing such a project, particularly with Google Ads appearing on the articles. It does not appear to be in the spirit of the free culture movement. Still, it is good that Google has decided to make ads optional.
Third, lack of collaboration. (See below under your last question.)
Do you think it addresses your concerns about Wikipedia, namely, that expert opinion should have a larger role in shaping knowledge?
Nope.
On the one hand, Knol would be a very different project from Wikipedia, first and foremost because it is not strongly collaborative. For that reason, the governance problems will be different and probably less difficult. (Google is wrong to think, however, that they can avoid making any editorial decisions. Such decisions will be forced upon them by people who try to abuse the system.)
On the other hand, Knol is apt to produce precisely the same sort of uneven content, with many of the same abuses, that Wikipedia has. Without actual editors, the same sort of problems about misleading and damaging information are apt to plague Knol. While I know that many people do not think that such problems are serious, we at the Citizendium do. And a growing part of the general public is coming to agree with us. In fact, producing a more mature, responsible source of information is one of our main motivations for working so hard under our new model.
How will Knol affect your own efforts with Citizendium?
The problem with the Internet is not the lack of information; it is the lack of findable high-quality information. Knol does not appear to be a serious attempt to solve this problem, but the Citizendium is.
So Knol is unlikely to change our efforts with the Citizendium at all. In fact, we are soon going to announce a new Creative Commons license, and in January we will turn toward a strong, concerted push toward “CZ 2.0.” This will involve adding a adding a Board of Directors and, generally, expanding our governance so as to empower many different people and groups to develop the project more proactively. We expect to grow strongly — and quite possibly explosively — in 2008. It is worth pointing out that the Citizendium actually produced slightly more words (about five million) in its first year than Wikipedia did in its first year. And our words were, needless to say, of much higher quality than Wikipedia’s were then.
Is this a project Citizendium might collaborate with? Or is Google’s project at cross purposes with your own?
A kind of collaboration seems possible. Obviously, the Citizendium provides two important things that the Knol model is missing: expert guidance and strong collaboration. I’ve already discussed Knol’s likely weakness in attracting experts. Another reason I am not particularly worried about Knol is that the quality and depth of encyclopedia articles written collaboratively by a huge global community, especially under expert guidance, will eventually beat out anything produced by individuals, regardless of their ability. Frankly, Knol is reinventing the wheel; the Citizendium is the future.
If Google allows Knol’s contributors to retain their copyright — something they would do well to comment on — then those writers could always bring their content to the Citizendium to be developed further, collaboratively. Maybe the only way Knol might collaborate with Citizendium is this: Knol allows their contributors to link prominently to a Citizendium article, as a locale where those articles could be developed collaboratively. If Knol removed the Google Ads from all articles that were being developed further in collaboration with the Citizendium, we might be interested in developing such a relationship. Of course, I’d have to check with the Citizendium community, for which I cannot speak definitively on such an important matter (it isn’t a dictatorship).
Thanks for asking my opinion.
P.S. It’s not lost on me that this is similar to http://www.whatsyourarticle.org/
Multiple sources are now saying that Wikipedia is more “on the ropes” than ever, burdened by multiple fresh scandals. Here’s a review of the sad yet fascinating situation, as I understand it.
Slashdot first highlighted a Register article, which pointed out that a “secret” mailing list was used by a “cabal” of Wikipedia insiders essentially uses to deliberate about sockpuppets — something I’ve repeatedly warned is the Achilles’ heel of any collaborative system that permits pseudonymity and anonymity. This news caused a furor among Wikipedians (as I think it should have). I actually invited the disaffected people to join the Citizendium — the first time I had ever gone to WikiEN-L Wikipedians to join us.
Then Slashdot highlighted another Register article (mind you, The Register has never been a big fan of Wikipedia’s). This is a very long one that goes into considerable depth about a particular case. It is hard to say who is telling the truth, but certainly some hard questions are being raised which go to the way that Wikipedia is being governed.
Problems with Wikipedia’s governance were pointed out by other recent sources, as well. Seth Finklestein had an interesting article in The Guardian following up on the mailing list story, and the lawyer who set up the Wikimedia Foundation has been dishing dirt on his new blog, and also criticizing the governance of the project. I’ve also heard from two ex-employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, who both have fascinating stories to tell, but I’m not about to “out” them. They both strongly insist that something is rotten in Wikipedia-land, and they insist that the rot starts at the top.
Meanwhile, Slashdot pointed out that Jimmy Wales, illustrating once again his tone-deafness on publicity matters, was now saying that Wikipedia is now suitable for use, and even citation, by students. I am not making this up. I only wonder where this downward spiral is going to end.
As much as I would enjoy diving into the fray, I’ll just leave it at this. My respect for both Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia organization plummeted following the Essjay affair (all blog comments here) and their completely underwhelming response to the scandal. None of these more recent developments, however disappointing, is particularly surprising to me. Wikipedia’s caretakers have shown themselves, essentially, to be amoral and ultimately unaccountable.
I am happy to be able to learn from their mistakes, however. Here are the lessons that I draw. I hope the Citizendium will do better in each of these respects:
As I’ve said many times before, Wikipedia has a woefully dysfunctional governance system. It is time that they did something about it. This is going to take leadership. I wonder, however, if there are any real leaders left in Wikipedia-land. The fact that they do not require real names is going to prove to make such matters difficult – it implies conundrums I wouldn’t wish on anyone. What I suspect they will end up doing is creating official (real name) registration for members of the community who wish to become full voting Wikipedia “citizens.” I simply don’t see how else they can do it, without continuing to suffer the problems of the present system. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. Jimmy Wales — who enjoys playing the CEO and celebrity rather than a real leader – clearly doesn’t acknowledge any problem, and without Wales’ concurrence, nothing will happen.
Perhaps the nascent Citizendium governance system, which has started coming online and should be fully operational in the next few months, will prove to be a model for Wikipedia.
I suppose I should feel grateful for this mention in Wired Magazine, in spite of the terminally idiotic concept and silly comparison. 
I should also be grateful for that outdated statistic. 2,300 articles? Anyone curious enough to look at the website will see that we’ve nearly doubled that by now…
Here is a post I made, with some trepidation, to the WikiEN-L mailing list, the main discussion list for the English Wikipedia project.
[Moderators: if you don’t wish to forward this post, I’ll understand. If you do, thanks in advance. –Larry Sanger]
All,
I saw this unfortunate article
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/
and I felt inspired to reach out to the Wikipedia community and invite those of you who are seriously disaffected to give the Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org/) another look. In case you took seriously a certain article about us in the Wikipedia Signpost last summer, let’s just say that wishful reports of our demise were greatly exaggerated. Since then, we’ve nearly doubled our number of articles and our activity; our growth has been accerating, and recently, we’ve had a great growth spurt. Obviously, we’re still small, but we’ve got an excellent opportunity to replicate Wikipedia-style growth.
I’ve never actually extended an invitation to Wikipedians before. I’ve always felt that Wikipedia and the Citizendium naturally attract different constituencies, and that that’s a positive thing. I have never wanted to appear to be competing with Wikipedia for people. I just didn’t think that’s necessary — and I still don’t.
But, especially to those people who are seriously disappointed with the management of the Wikipedia community, I feel it’s appropriate and important that I say: we all (humanity) might be able to do better than the Wikipedia model of production and governance. Maybe, for some of you, it’s time to explore the Citizendium model.
I know I’m going to make a lot of people angry or disappointed by my saying this here, in the lion’s den, so to speak. (Does it help that I started this list? I doubt it. ) I’m sure there will be no shortage of hostile response. But bear in mind, I am reaching out only to people who are seriously disappointed with Wikipedia or its management. I think this is within the properly critical spirit of the open source/free culture movement. After all, I am *not* trying to undermine Wikipedia, which I hope will always exist as a popular source of information. (I’ve always said that.) I’m merely trying to build *another* source of information. I hope that those who are contemplating exiting Wikipedia will consider joining the Citizendium.
If you want to know how (we think) we’re different, see this page: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:We_aren’t_Wikipedia
The present “scandal” is over the community and governance. So what’s special or interesting about the Citizendium community and governance? Here’s a summary.
The community as a whole is by and large a mature and pleasant place to work. But it’s still an open wiki.
We are ramping up an open, online representative republic. (We’re still drafting our rules!) Among other things, this means we’ve got an Editorial Council (a “legislative”), a Constabulary (a “police force”), an Executive Committee (an “executive”), and we will soon be adding an independent judiciary. These community components are rule-governed and being established with the well-known challenges of Wikipedia’s community in mind.
We take “the rule of law” seriously. “Ignore all rules,” which I originally proposed for Wikipedia as a sort of joke back in the spring of 2001, isn’t recommended. Boldness and not caring too much if you make beginner mistakes are strongly recommended. (But that was the original spirit of “ignore all rules,” in case you didn’t know.)
We require that contributors agree with a Statement of Fundamental Policies. (And, soon, a Citizendium Charter.) No endless arguing about our fundamental policies: we are all committed to them up front. We still argue about stuff that really matters. We take the notion of “cyber-citizenship” seriously.
We require real names. We actually check that there is someone with a particular (real) name and we try to match this name up with an e-mail address. Our methods of doing this are very fallible, but so far they seem to have worked just fine. So sockpuppetry, while in principle still possible, becomes much, much more difficult. (I’m not aware of our having any sockpuppet contributors on CZ.)
On the issue in question — should there be a “secret cabal” of people to deal with sockpuppets? – well, it’s interesting. On the one hand, we don’t have a sockpuppet problem to speak of, because we require real names. On the other hand, we do have a “Constabulary,” and occasionally they deal with difficult cases, and indeed privately, but the constables are bound by certain rules. Among the rules are the right to appeal to a fully independent body. For example, recently one editor (a very kind University of Edinburgh professor who served in the same appeal function that we’ll soon formalize with the Judicial Board) “heard” an appeal and reversed my decision to ban someone. This is fine with me and I am glad to be able to demonstrate that I do *not* have the final say. No single individual should, in a republic.
The notion of a *secret* body that actually has authority to determine cases is, needless to say, anathema in a project committed to the rule of law. But, just as with closed police records, closed access is sometimes necessary to protect contributor privacy and interests, and to avoid libel issues needlessly. If a person wishes us to make our deliberations public, we will. We regard it as their *right* as a citizen. This guarantee of rights, however, would be rather more problematic if we weren’t using real names.
In terms of management, to set a positive precedent, I plan to step down as editor-in-chief and hand over the reins to someone else — within the next year or two at most. This will require that I do fundraising to pay this person’s salary, because I myself have been living strictly from writing, speaking, and consulting fees. I will at that time no longer play *any* role, formal or informal, in the governance of the Citizendium encyclopedia project. (I will try to behave like the traditional disinterested U.S. ex-president.) It just seems obvious to me that the leader of an allegedly democratic project should actually *step aside* when he’s handed over the reins of power.
Finally, we have a role for experts (only they are called our “editors”), who can approve articles and make content decisions where necessary, but who otherwise work shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone. In fact, anyone can join (as an “author”) and contribute, as long as they are 13 or older, write good English and otherwise make a positive contribution, agree with our fundamental principles, and help us establish that the name/identity they claim is their own real name.
If you are motivated to try something different, join here: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount
Coincidentally, tomorrow (Wednesday) is a good day to join. It’s our monthly Write-a-Thon (details linked from the front page).
By the way, I’m sorry to those who have been waiting, but I hope to announce our license before *too* much longer. The announcement will be accompanied by a very long essay, which I haven’t finished yet. Please don’t assume the license will be incompatible with Wikipedia’s…there’s a decent chance it will be compatible.
Also, by the way, I’m going to start up SharedKnowing (a new, “neutral” mailing list) soon. Some prominent Wikipedians are already subscribed. Join here:
http://mail.citizendium.org/mailman/listinfo/sharedknowing#more
In conclusion, I’m hoping sincerely for the best outcome for everyone. I hope Wikipedia can overcome its obviously difficult problems, and let me add that I don’t expect the Citizendium to be free of problems when it’s bigger, either. They’ll just be different, and I hope not so fundamental.
My best to the Wikipedia community,
Larry Sanger
Wikipedia ex-co-founder 
—–
Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. | http://www.larrysanger.org/
Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium | http://www.citizendium.org/
sanger@citizendium.org
It is interesting that, if you do the Google search for “biology,” you won’t find the fine Citizendium article on the subject. It is actually better than the #1 result (the Wikipedia article), and it is certainly of more interest and use for people who do the “biology” search than many items in the top 100.
This alone demonstrates that there is something wrong with Google. But what, precisely? What is Google doing wrong, and how could they do better?
Someone just pointed my attention to this page, which says that Wikipedia had 4.9 million words in January 2002 — slightly less than what we have now. And I still maintain that the comparison would be more meaningful to make next March (use your browser to search on the page for “3,200 articles after one year”). You might say that Wikipedia was growing faster at that point in its career — but then, we’re decidedly accelerating now, too, notwithstanding a Halloween lull just now.
Pretty cool.
This is my kick-off mail for our new recruitment effort, sent to PHILOSOP and PHILOS-L. It explains why philosophers should get involved with CZ, despite the existence of Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Feel free to forward it to philosophers! –Larry
Dear philosophers,
Larry Sanger, long-time listmember and Wikipedia co-founder, here. I’m now Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org/) and I’m writing, again, to invite you to join the project, which you can easily do
here:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount
A human being will look over your (brief!) application and let you in typically within an hour or two. But why should you join? Read on.
================
Some differences
Some months ago, I announced here the start of the non-profit, free, international Citizendium (”the Citizens’ Compendium”). “CZ” as we call it is a wiki and a general encyclopedia project. Since first announcing the project, it occurred to me that many of you may have not seen its point. So I wanted to describe the project’s interesting niche. What makes it different from other projects, and why should philosophers join in?
* Unlike Wikipedia, contributors to our wiki are required to use their real names; experts have a role (they approve articles and can make decisions about content issues in their areas of expertise); and the community is managed by “constables” who ensure that contributors follow the rules. As a result, our open, but expert-led community is remarkably pleasant and virtually vandalism-free. It’s been called “Wikipedia for grown-ups.”
* Unlike the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy–both fine reference works, which I have used regularly over the years–CZ articles are not signed, and they are constructed collaboratively. Furthermore, CZ is considerably more open and interdisciplinary. These are “differences that make a difference,” as I’ll explain below.
=============
We’re growing
We’re about to celebrate the first year anniversary of the launch of our pilot project. In the intervening time, we have developed over 3,100 articles–three times what we had last spring. Every month, over 200 different people edit the wiki, and some 2,000 people have signed up with accounts, of which about 240 are expert editors. We continue to grow robustly and, recently, at an accelerating rate. Wikipedia started small, too. In a few years, we will have over a hundred thousand articles (my opinion of course). There is no reason that we cannot replicate Wikipedia’s sort of growth, which as Wikipedia’s organizer I engineered; our fundamentals are very solid.
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