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• Wikipedia on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Citizendium on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Citizendium: Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a peer-directed project to create a group of online encyclopedias in every major language. Founded in 2001, Wikipedia grew exponentially in its first 4 to 5 years. It is the world's largest encyclopedia project and one of the most popular sites on the Internet.[1] The English-language Wikipedia is the world's largest single wiki and contains more than two million articles.

========

Wikipedia: Citizendium
Citizendium: The Citizens' Compendium

The Citizendium homepage in Firefox
URL http://en.citizendium.org/
Commercial? No
Type of site Internet encyclopedia project
Registration Optional (Required to edit pages)
Available language(s) English
Owner Larry Sanger
Created by Larry Sanger
Launched October 23, 2006 (pilot)
March 25, 2007 (public)
Current status Beta

Citizendium (pronounced /stzndim/ "a citizens' compendium of everything") is an English-language online wiki-based free encyclopedia project spearheaded by Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia.[1][2] The project aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by requiring all contributors to do so with their real names, by strictly moderating the project for unprofessional behaviors, and by providing what it calls "gentle expert oversight" of everyday contributors. A main feature of the project is its "approved articles", which have each undergone a form of peer-review by credentialed topic-experts and are closed to real-time editing. The project was first (late 2006) envisioned as a complete "fork" of the English Wikipedia,[3] but the project abandoned that idea prior to its March 2007 public launch to emphasize its own original articles. As of October 2007, the project had over 3,000 articles.[4]

If your touting Wikipedia as a reliable source, I'm afraid you have to accept these four Gospels as a reliable source. Let me explain in brief: Wikipedia is the result of people writing and editing en masse, combining several perspectives and often lacking informational support that would be acceptable for the lable, "fact". Dido for the Bible. Both have various pieces of information that can be proven one way or another, but both have some inconsistencies as well. I do, in fact, believe you, concerning the importance of these other stories, but my point is that the existence of such texts doesn't disprove anything in the Bible, just like the inconsistencies in Wikipedia usually don't disprove the claims made on that site. Also, here's a plug: Support Citizendium http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page It aims to be more reliable. Finally, in an effort stay in line with the subject, proving that one can induce a "god-sensing" state of mind does not prove that there is no god; we can do all kinds of funny things to the brain to make it sense things that aren't there.

Citizendium has some features intended (& designed) to address several of the concerns that Wikipedia has raised. Obviously it will have a long way to go before it encompasses Wikipedia's breadth, though it's depth should be as good or better from the start. Citizendium starts here: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page

The article summary hits the nail on the head because that's what it's all about: boosting reader confidence, even despite any concerns about accuracy. Oddly enough the two concepts are different and yet closely related. And then there's Citizendium who state "We aim at credibility and quality, not just quantity". I'll tell you, Wikipedia is smart, expanding their already huge user-base by slowly gaining more trust, whereas Citizendium just decided to turn everything on its head suddenly. This could be a long, drawn-out marketing campaign, if there is one!

...also known as citizendium.

Wikipedia is a great idea, and a great interface, but leads to exactly this sort of behaviour. If a company edits their entry to reflect their side of the story, is it editing or abuse?

He who edits last, wins. Over the long run, that doesn't work. That's why one of the founders of wikipedia (Larry Sanger) decided to take the idea of wikipedia and add in some accountability. The project was named citizendium, and was started just about a year ago. It is based on three fundamental differences from wikipedia:
        * all contributors must apply for membership in the project under their real names, which are then visibly associated with all articles
        * all articles are reviewed by experts in their particular fields, offering suggestions and criticism as the articles evolve with the goal for each article to be "approved"
        * that vandals, trolls, and disruptive editors are quickly and permanently banned from further work on the project.

It's MUCH smaller than wikipedia at present , but also not loaded with garbage and editorial pissing matches. Take a look, join the community, and help make the next generation online encyclopedia better.

...also known as citizendium.

Wikipedia is a great idea, and a great interface, but leads to exactly this sort of behaviour. If a company edits their entry to reflect their side of the story, is it editing or abuse?

He who edits last, wins. Over the long run, that doesn't work. That's why one of the founders of wikipedia (Larry Sanger) decided to take the idea of wikipedia and add in some accountability. The project was named citizendium, and was started just about a year ago. It is based on three fundamental differences from wikipedia:
        * all contributors must apply for membership in the project under their real names, which are then visibly associated with all articles
        * all articles are reviewed by experts in their particular fields, offering suggestions and criticism as the articles evolve with the goal for each article to be "approved"
        * that vandals, trolls, and disruptive editors are quickly and permanently banned from further work on the project.

It's MUCH smaller than wikipedia at present , but also not loaded with garbage and editorial pissing matches. Take a look, join the community, and help make the next generation online encyclopedia better.

I'm excited to hear this, but -- wouldn't the Citizendium be more appropriate, given that the experts could actually be recognized as experts, and the work could go towards a recognized polished page?

What, unlike the rest of the internet (and Fox News)???

I mean, it would be a shame if students could just go to some other site that carried the exact same articles.

YouTube.

"Require credentials and end Wikipedia."

The co-founder of wikipedia, Larry Sanger, has already created a fork with that exact goal.

http://www.citizendium.org/

Although looking in the latest news it seems they have decided to start from scratch now.

sounds a lot like citizendium.

The real problem is that when the story first broke, Jimbo refused to believe that the problem was serious. It isn't EssJay that appaled me so much (while I believe it to be completely wrong), but Jimbo's arrogance in thinking it was minor. It's about Jimbo that the issue lies, not EssJay. Read the editoiral note (especially the last paragraph) at the end of the New Yorker article that percipitated all this and judge for yourself. Note that the New Yorker talks about the persona, but Jimbo states he has no problems with it, regarding a whole fake persona on the level of a psuedonym.

THAT is the real issue. EssJay claimed that he was someone that he wasn't, got busted by New York post, and Jimbo didn't even think he did anything wrong. Larry Sanger argues the point more coherently than I can.

EssJay's lies were strong enough for the New York Post to print a correction (that he wasn't who he said he was)

The major thing to remember about Wikipedia is that it *isn't* the ideal, 'everyone is equal and qualifications don't matter' playground that it claims to be. It is a dictatorship, and everyone that participates in Wikipedia is at his pleasure and descretion. (It reminds me of real-world communism.) These days, it's rather quiet (used to be brushed under the rug) that Bomis.com (Jimbo's original company) originally sold online soft-core porn. Or the edits that he did to the page about him, no matter HOW minor. (Something that Wil Wheaton rightly refrained from doing - to the extent of asking someone else to make a minor factual correction on the article's talk page).

For the record, when directly asked about the New Yorker article, the following interchange took place on a now deleted talk page: (as best as I can still find online, anyway.)
-------
Your New Yorker bio
(Removed post from banned user. Essjay (Talk) 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC))

It's in the archive but he explained that it was disinformation. My question is how the New Yorker hasn't gotten its butt kicked for publishing it as fact without the slightest fact-checking. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I did six hours of interviews with the reporter, and two with a fact checker, but I was really surprised that they were willing to do an interview with someone who they couldn't confirm; I can only assume that it is proof I was doing a good job playing the part. Essjay (Talk) 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
--------------

Who am I? I'm an Anonymous Coward. I'm not misleading you about my identity, as I'm not claiming to have degrees, qualifications or charateristics that I do or do not have in real life. EssJay, whoever he was, did.

Also, the Citizendium does not give privileges to people who claim to be experts, as you say; we give some small privileges to people who actually have them. Or perhaps you think that every college professor and every professional is just merely claiming to be an expert?

Jimmy has more questions to answer. He makes no attempt to explain several fundamental points that got people worked up in the first place. What did he mean in telling The New Yorker "I have no problem with" Essjay's duplicity? When did he learn of that duplicity? (I think it was last January, since that's when Essjay got on the Wikia payroll.) And then why did he ignore the obvious moral implications of that duplicity--to the point of giving him a job and even appointing him to Arbitration Committee--until now? Jimmy needs to answer these questions convincingly, if he can.

There's something utterly breathtaking, and ultimately tragic, about Jimmy telling The New Yorker that he doesn't have a problem with Essjay's lies, and by essentially honoring Essjay after his lies were exposed. As Blogworld quite rightly said, "By his [Jimmy's] actions or lack thereof ... and [by] his words he is endorsing fraud." I've become increasingly disillusioned with Jimmy's behavior, but this I simply wouldn't have expected. It's one thing to revise history self-servingly. But this new incident seems self-destructive on a level beyond previous incidents. Doesn't Jimmy realize that this could well blow up in his face-that it could well be picked up by the news media and severely damage not only Wikipedia's reputation, but Wikia's bottom line (since Wikia is, still, Essjay's employer)? The media is already making some noise (the story broke yesterday) and it's likely only to get hotter. The media now loves a good Wikipedia scandal. Since this one has such a compelling narrative line, and a "you can't make this stuff up" quality to it, how can tech reporters resist? And how can respected observers of the scene then fail to draw some obvious conclusions, as the blogosphere is already doing in its usual vigorous way? Doesn't Jimmy know that this has the potential to be even more damaging to Wikipedia than the Seigenthaler situation, since it reflects directly on the judgment and values of the management of Wikipedia? (More on my blog...)

Is this what you're looking for?

Updated approved version of "Biology" just uploaded (accessible from the main page).

They made people register just to SEE the site,...

Hey, we badly want to be open to the world! But it's expensive!

I can make a little announcement. Wikis are huge resource hogs, so to grant just read access to wiki pages indiscriminately will require more resources than the big souped-up but single server we have at present. Quite frankly we have been holding out for an infusion of funds for sixteen servers. It's clear now that we can launch with less than that, with a number that we can afford with our very limited present budget. So we'll be bravely forging ahead with an only temporarily adequate number of servers!

The Citizendium wiki will be launching for public read access as soon as (1) we get a few new servers set up (it'll be a small enough number to be within our budget), and (2) we make a few technical changes (e.g., change the "Citizendium Pilot" namespace to "Citizendium"; and lots of other stuff).

Now, when will that be? Not sure; now it's a matter of getting and setting up the equipment and making those software changes, and it's impossible to predict how long it will take to do this, as we are mostly relying on volunteers (and one part-time contracter) to work on our software. But on the order of weeks, not months. If you want to help us with the software stuff, I bow to your geekiness and invite you to our forge.

Hope that clarifies our situation anyway.

Hey, we badly want to be open to the world! But it's expensive!

I can make a little announcement. Wikis are huge resource hogs, so to grant just read access to wiki pages indiscriminately will require more resources than the big souped-up but single server we have at present. Quite frankly we have been holding out for an infusion of funds for sixteen servers. It's clear now that we can launch with less than that, with a number that we can afford with our very limited present budget. So we'll be bravely forging ahead with an only temporarily adequate number of servers!

The Citizendium wiki will be launching for public read access as soon as (1) we get a few new servers set up (it'll be a small enough number to be within our budget), and (2) we make a few technical changes (e.g., change the "Citizendium Pilot" namespace to "Citizendium"; and lots of other stuff).

Now, when will that be? Not sure; now it's a matter of getting and setting up the equipment and making those software changes, and it's impossible to predict how long it will take to do this, as we are mostly relying on volunteers (and one part-time contracter) to work on our software. But on the order of weeks, not months. If you want to help us with the software stuff, I bow to your geekiness and invite you to our forge.

Hope that clarifies our situation anyway.

Another big problem is the Citizendium policy on "obscene" material. The goal as stated by Larry Sanger is "Basically, and this is a position I look forward to articulating and defending, I think the Citizendium should be family-friendly" (see http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,49.0. html).

That statement led to the longest thread on their forum, and for good reason. A lot of subjects are going to be severely censored on Citizendium because they are not (in Larry Sanger's opinion) family friendly. This includes articles in areas like gender studies, homosexuality, illegal drugs, criticism of religion, etc.

It's also clear from his posts that Citizendium is "his". He often repeats that if you do not like the policy, there is no point in discussing it but you should find another project. Perhaps he should rename it Sangerendium to avoid confusion :)

You just deleted the inactive articles, right? The "CZ live" articles appear to be forks of their wikipedia counterparts (like Wheat). Unless you rewrote from scratch, it's still a fork.

Wikipedia will always, by nature, be more reactive to world events than Citizendium. Minutes after a major event occurs, the related wikis are updated. Once articles have been tied down and relegated to an editor, it falls to the editor to react to changes in content relevance.

Completely wrong and reflects an ignorance of what CZ is doing. Articles are not, they are in no way, "tied down and relegated to an editor." When we say that editors and authors work shoulder-to-shoulder on the website, we mean it! If you actually come to the wiki and do some work, you will find that it is very much like Wikipedia--only with a higher proportion of well-educated people, who are using their own real names, and who behave themselves like adults instead of self-important 17-year-olds. Editors have two main official roles: approve articles, and articulate article plans and make decisions about questions of controversy as they arise. Neither of these roles puts the kibosh on very active article development. They also have a helpful unofficial role of, well, showing the way--which they do, and which no one really credibly does on WP, in my opinion.

Therefore, I fully expect CZ's news backgrounder articles to be just as dynamic as, and probably considerably higher in quality than, WP's articles on the same topics--obviously, after we have grown some more. There is absolutely no reason at all that we cannot be just as dynamic as Wikipedia.

Also, we don't "lock down" articles. TFA is incorrect on this point. If you want to read our stable version of "Biology" (and you've joined the pilot project), then go here: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology If you want to work on the latest version of that article, in the same dynamic way you work on any wiki article, go here: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology/Draft

I'm also talking to a professional journalist, a retired major network producer; we're strongly considering the possibility of launching a wiki news summary project soon.

Wikipedia will always, by nature, be more reactive to world events than Citizendium. Minutes after a major event occurs, the related wikis are updated. Once articles have been tied down and relegated to an editor, it falls to the editor to react to changes in content relevance.

Completely wrong and reflects an ignorance of what CZ is doing. Articles are not, they are in no way, "tied down and relegated to an editor." When we say that editors and authors work shoulder-to-shoulder on the website, we mean it! If you actually come to the wiki and do some work, you will find that it is very much like Wikipedia--only with a higher proportion of well-educated people, who are using their own real names, and who behave themselves like adults instead of self-important 17-year-olds. Editors have two main official roles: approve articles, and articulate article plans and make decisions about questions of controversy as they arise. Neither of these roles puts the kibosh on very active article development. They also have a helpful unofficial role of, well, showing the way--which they do, and which no one really credibly does on WP, in my opinion.

Therefore, I fully expect CZ's news backgrounder articles to be just as dynamic as, and probably considerably higher in quality than, WP's articles on the same topics--obviously, after we have grown some more. There is absolutely no reason at all that we cannot be just as dynamic as Wikipedia.

Also, we don't "lock down" articles. TFA is incorrect on this point. If you want to read our stable version of "Biology" (and you've joined the pilot project), then go here: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology If you want to work on the latest version of that article, in the same dynamic way you work on any wiki article, go here: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Biology/Draft

I'm also talking to a professional journalist, a retired major network producer; we're strongly considering the possibility of launching a wiki news summary project soon.

The parent comment here has several facts wrong. The Citizendium fosters collaboration in a very similar way to Wikipedia. It's a wiki. We use the same software and anyone can edit any page at any time (contrary to something TFA says)--unlike Wikipedia. Wikipedia locks down all sorts of pages. Since we will have slightly tighter controls on who joins the project, and because we take a no-nonsense approach to rules enforcement (for one thing, we don't have a rule that says "Ignore all rules"), we can afford to let any CZ author or editor work on any article. It's true that one cannot edit approved (stable) versions of articles, but one can edit the "/draft" page attached to that article. That's already happened in several cases with our approved articles.

CZ fills a need that Wikipedia does not. For this and other reasons, I'm increasingly optimistic about our prospects. I began the project as officially skeptical. I'm now in the "cautiously optimistic" category.

Good post.

There's definitely a distinction to be made between accuracy and vandalism-- the title of this story is a bit unfortunate in that regard, because Citizendium aims to be much more than a graffiti-free Wikipedia.

The million-dollar question seems to be whether large numbers of contributors or editorial evaluations make for more accurate articles. I would say there's no reason Citizendium can't have both, but ultimately this seems like an empirical question. I'd suggest taking a look at Wikipedia's article on Biology and compare it to Citizendium's article on Biology - if there's something to Citizendium, the proof should be in the pudding.

Mike Johnson
Citizendium Executive Committee

We have content. Who said we didn't? If you want to see an approved article, here's our first. If you want more, ask me or someone else in the project, or just get on the wiki.

First, let me be yet another person to say that I won't use any encyclopedia that forces me to register before I can read. I know that's probably a temporary flaw, but it's a major one.

You are correct that it is a temporary situation. Currently we're only open to contributors. You can get a small sample here. Obviously, that'll change, because we want people to read our stuff.

In terms of vaporware, I'll just point you to one approved article. It's in PDF form because that's easier than screwing with the HTML and making a portable reference. Compare that to the Wikipedia article on Biology and see what you think.

No encyclopedia is going to be perfect, but I would recommend that you check out Citizendium once we're officially launched. I believe it'll deal with most of the concerns you bring up.

Someone is taking steps. See the lowdown on the Citizendium project .

If you care to RTF (which no real slashdotter is proud of), Citizendium is going to do what they called "Progressive Fork" by first copying everything from Wikipedia. If the articles are changed in Citizendium, they will stay that way, but if they aren't and the same articles in wikipedia is updated, Citizendium will sync to the new version

Hi all, yep we've been making progress. The big news is that, after a few weeks of negotiation with many different possible hosts we've chosen one today and they instantly put up a server for the pilot project for us. We didn't exactly plan for this Slashdotting, but you should know that we will have a pilot project wiki up in a few days. There's lots of other news. We've got three very experienced sysadm/network admin guys making up the lead technical team, we've got a commitment of significant support from a foundation, we've formulated a Statement of Fundamental Policies, we're gearing up for a major recruitment drive, etc. I could go on but I'll save it for the press release which should come out Friday next week.

Hi all, yep we've been making progress. The big news is that, after a few weeks of negotiation with many different possible hosts we've chosen one today and they instantly put up a server for the pilot project for us. We didn't exactly plan for this Slashdotting, but you should know that we will have a pilot project wiki up in a few days. There's lots of other news. We've got three very experienced sysadm/network admin guys making up the lead technical team, we've got a commitment of significant support from a foundation, we've formulated a Statement of Fundamental Policies, we're gearing up for a major recruitment drive, etc. I could go on but I'll save it for the press release which should come out Friday next week.

One little thing: in your manifesto you write that editors will have the right to place articles in an "approved" category. I think you should say: editors will have the right to declare particular article versions as "approved". After all, later editing of an approved article may make it worse. There are patches for the Mediawiki software which add a feature to mark article versions as approved, see Article validation feature. Once an article version has been marked as approved, the article remains open for editing, and you have to decide whether readers will by default be presented with the approved version, or with the most up-to-date version, carrying a prominent link to the approved one (I prefer the latter approach).

If they're truly admitting only experts

Second, if you're interested, may I suggest (maybe after you look at the long or short version of the introductory essay and/or the FAQ) that you sign up to a project mailing list, and especially (since there are so many geeks reading this) the Citizendium-tools list?

You see, I have this crazily optimistic deadline of September 30 for actually setting up the servers and wiki. I can set up and manage a wiki myself that doesn't get slammed a lot, but I know I can't set up Citizendium's wiki (and server(s)). So I need your expert advice!

Second, if you're interested, may I suggest (maybe after you look at the long or short version of the introductory essay and/or the FAQ) that you sign up to a project mailing list, and especially (since there are so many geeks reading this) the Citizendium-tools list?

You see, I have this crazily optimistic deadline of September 30 for actually setting up the servers and wiki. I can set up and manage a wiki myself that doesn't get slammed a lot, but I know I can't set up Citizendium's wiki (and server(s)). So I need your expert advice!

Second, if you're interested, may I suggest (maybe after you look at the long or short version of the introductory essay and/or the FAQ) that you sign up to a project mailing list, and especially (since there are so many geeks reading this) the Citizendium-tools list?

You see, I have this crazily optimistic deadline of September 30 for actually setting up the servers and wiki. I can set up and manage a wiki myself that doesn't get slammed a lot, but I know I can't set up Citizendium's wiki (and server(s)). So I need your expert advice!

Second, if you're interested, may I suggest (maybe after you look at the long or short version of the introductory essay and/or the FAQ) that you sign up to a project mailing list, and especially (since there are so many geeks reading this) the Citizendium-tools list?

You see, I have this crazily optimistic deadline of September 30 for actually setting up the servers and wiki. I can set up and manage a wiki myself that doesn't get slammed a lot, but I know I can't set up Citizendium's wiki (and server(s)). So I need your expert advice!

It's going to be a progressive or gradual fork, which means that articles people haven't worked on in the Citizendium will be refreshed on a regular basis with the latest Wikipedia article. So, for the articles that aren't being worked on by CZ, the CZ copy will benefit from whatever WP work is done.

Eventually, who knows, maybe we'll change the color of links to pages that have been changed by CZ, so that people know to maintain and work on those copies (on CZ) more carefully. In the long run it'll be like a game: how many Wikipedia articles have you cleaned up and substantially improved? Here's my list...

We might have a rule, too: don't edit a WP-originated article unless you make some very substantial changes. Otherwise, if you change too little, then the CZ copy might become "stale," i.e., substantially worse than the corresponding WP article.

Generally, the number of articles from WP edited by CZians will be proportionate to the number of CZians. There's no reason to think we'll bite off more than we can chew.

More from the parent post: "Even worse, seeing the much lower editor/article ratio, i cannot see how he thinks to ever archive some kind of quality census. A random article browsed there will be with a very high likelyhood just a copy of the wiki article." The former does not logically follow from the latter. Since the unchanged articles will be copies of Wikipedia articles, if the articles that CZ has worked on are better than the corresponding WP articles (and that's the hope), then the CZ will at least be better than WP to that extent. That's nothing to sneeze at, is it?

Finally: "So trying to get people to think its more reliable (and thus view it with less suspicion/ less "thinking") is a bit like cheating the user." Please, rtfw. Besides, we aren't going to try to make claims about reliability; our claims will be even more modest than Wikipedia's. We're going to call it a compendium, not an encyclopedia. We won't vouch for anything, even for the articles that editors have placed "approved" tags on.

Another project, the Digital Universe Encyclopedia (of which the also wiki-based Encyclopedia of Earth, not yet publicly launched, is the first installment), can have the fun of actually officially approving and "publishing" advanced-version CZ articles (if they want to, and if licensing doesn't get in the way).

According to my proposal, only people who arrive on the wiki and claim to be editors have to give a CV, or link to information that constitutes evidence of their credentials. See this discussion for more. For everyone else (called authors), it will be recommended but not required. Also, if you read the FAQ (OK, I know it's long), you'll see that there is too a plan to solve the "problem" of organizing work via mailing lists. Citizendium will be a wiki! The hope and plan is to have the wiki and whatever network of servers might be necessary set up by Sept. 30. I hope we'll be able to attract support for this from any of a number of sources. I'll be very curious myself to see what sort of uptake this has among academics and scientists. As a natural skeptic myself, I don't know if it will work. But I think they'll probably have a more active interest than you had in Wikipedia precisely because they're empowered to make content decisions about their areas of expertise.