Citizendium After One Year

Larry Sanger writes "Citizendium, 'the Citizens' Compendium' — a free, non-profit, ad-free, wiki encyclopedia with real names and a role for experts — has just announced that it's celebrating the one-year anniversary of its wiki, an occasion for which I wrote a project report. Make up your own mind about whether 'we've made a very strong start and an amazing future likely lies ahead of us.' We have been the subject of a lot of misunderstanding, but we've still proven a lot, such as that a public-expert hybrid wiki is consistent with accelerating growth and leads to high quality, or that eliminating anonymity helps remove vandalism. Signs are good that we are starting into a serious growth spurt. Might the Web 2.0 umbrella be expanded to include real name requirements and roles for experts? It's looking that way."

Comments

Keeping things Web 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Might the Web 2.0 umbrella be expanded to include real name requirements and roles for experts? It's looking that way. You can have my anonymity when you pry it from my cold dead hands!

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[mrbluze]

You can have my anonymity when you pry it from my cold dead hands! This is a good comment, it's not off-topic, and is indeed the reason why many experts will choose not to contribute to a wiki that reveals their identity.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Grandiloquence]

Just tell us who you are and where we can find you and we'll be right over with a crowbar!

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Stephen Ewen]

David W. Boles at his very popular blog "Urban Semiotic" makes some highly salient comments on the issue of anonymity and the Net. See his post, "Why do You Hide Your Identity?" http://urbansemiotic.com/2007/03/06/why-do-you-hide-your-identity/

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[owlnation]

I wholeheartedly agree. The fundamental problem with "experts" in the wiki-sense is that they are self-appointed. And invariably self-aggrandizing.

Citizendium has the advantage, perhaps, that it's clear from the start that there is a hierarchy. At least potential cabals are the more transparent.

Wikipedia is rife with cabal-ery, and in many cases admins are deeply involved in that. This has been exposed time, after time, after time, after time, after time, all the way to the top - and even then it's probably only the tip of the iceberg of the data manipulation that goes on. Nota bene -- I do NOT mean "vandalism". "Vandalism", like "terrorism" is an emotive abstract tool exaggerated to permit lock-down and control of information. "Vandalism" is not nearly as bad as the deliberate manipulation of data to service a political agenda, for example.

The best solution is to remove all, repeat ALL, admins. If you are truly interested in the goals stated in the wikipedia mission statement, if you are interested in truth -- not wikiality -- then that is the only thing that will give you that. For every other possible scenario involving admins you are compromising truth.

Anyone who trusts anything on an encyclopedia ruled by self-appointed experts deserves all that they get.

Anonymity, free speech, and freedom from wikinazis -- it's the path of truth.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Rakishi]

Interesting, you try to put value on his argument based on the fact that it's a popular blog. So much so that you mention it in your post. You want us to value his words not because they are right in their own sense but because of the person who wrote them (ie: popularity of a person makes what he says true).

Your very own post highlights why some people prefer anonymity online, it makes everyone equal and prevent counter-productive social safeties (ie: popularity) from clouding the arguments in play.

I already wrote in another post why his view on point 3 is silly. Apparently he doesn't understand the issue at hand or the reasons people do this, he doesn't even try to understand. Either that or he does understand it but purposefully doesn't show the arguments for one side as that would make his own claim weaker. See if you to understand an issue truly you have to be able to argue both sides, if you only portray one side you either don't understand the other side or are hiding it. In other words he's either ignorant or deceitful. Also his writing has an amazing lack of information content and argument value, just fluff (circuses and bread) to appease the public it seems.

Nonetheless you put value on his writing without understanding the issue yourself either simply because HE said it.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Rakishi]

Also point 1 is likewise stupid. It assumes the blog poster is a total idiotic attention whore, which I am guessing is what the author is but not everyone is like him. I know a number of people very well and I could almost never find their online blogs with that alone no matter how much I search. Likewise it is perfectly trivial to hide enough details to prevent people from finding your real name from a blog even if they try real hard. It is a straw man argument or close to it, or rather making downright false claims and generalizations to justify a point.

Yet again I point out how humorous it is that you put so much value on his point, apparently simply because of his popularity.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[jotok]

Awful arguments on that page--his conclusion is contained within his premise.

And the conclusions themselves are garbage:

You have an ISP. You have an IP address. You have an email address. All three of those elements can quite simply reveal the when and the what of who you are -- so why not just confess from the start who you are and why you are here and there and the everywhere?

Well, you got me. I got an ISP. My IP...? Well, there are several layers of TOR between me and you. E-mail? Come on, aren't we talking about fake names right now? Does he really think my name is "Biggus Dickus?"

This guy might want to stick to anonymity or at least use a nom de plume.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[smilindog2000]

The reason I post as smilindog2000, rather than put my full name out there, is also not listed. My poorly thought-out opinions can be embarrassing, and I don't want it to rub off on my employer.

Anyway, I'm not allowed to be completely honest on Citizendium. I just tried to sign up for an account... it wont let me because my name is so common that someone else has already used it. This has been a problem for me since I started my career. The day I started working at National Semiconductor, fresh out of college, I was issued a subpoena that accused me of some serious wrongs, and told me that I was being sued for millions in damages. I had to call the lawyers and tell them they had the wrong guy. Just to add insult to injury, I shared a cube with a great then-young engineer, but the a-hole next door had just expanded his cube at our expense, and I had to crawl over my desk just to get into my chair. My chair had only 3 wheels, with the fourth missing, and the stuffing in the seat was long-gone, so my first task was rebuilding the damned thing. I was told I couldn't just go buy a chair, as it was against company policy (National was later sued into submission on this point, after some serious back injuries occurred). Later, while working at HP, another guy on the floor above me had the same name, and he had the obvious e-mail address that I should have had (first.last@hp.com). He was a serious a-hole who spammed the whole building with hate-mail, and I had a hard time being around co-workers simply because they thought I was him. My credit reports have been semi-trashed by at least three a-holes who happen to share my name. Retailers who get screwed will spam whatever credit report they can semi-match.

So... I seriously recommend making up a name that has never been used, and sticking with it :-) You can just call me Smilindog2000 in public. Will that work on Citizendium?

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[MoxFulder]

Citizendium seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem...

We already have a widely-used free encyclopedia that a lot of people see as reliable, broad, and timely... or at least a good enough combination to be useful: Wikipedia.

When I heard about Citizendium, I expected that the articles it produced would be very thorough, thought-provoking, and clearly written. But I'm pretty disappointed. Take a look at the article "Biology", for example. It meanders through a lot of history and philosophy of biology, without getting into much of the actual material, and without even clearly identifying subfields or specific topics. Way too general. Contrast it with the wikipedia article, which is of a similar length but much more USEFUL in my opinion. The wikipedia article gets straight to the point in outlining the framework of modern biology, identifying subfields and topics of interest, containing useful images, and ABOVE ALL the wikipedia article has extensive links to almost any term that might be unclear or simply merit further interest.

Obviously the experts who are in charge of the citizendium articles really know their stuff, and are good at writing... but are they good at really providing a dense framework of information? To me that's the most useful thing about wikipedia... anyone can write an article on anything they know a bit about, and have it appear quickly. So a user can almost effortlessly investigate the details of a subject, and its interconnections with other topics.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[DavidD_CA]

The above post was made from 39.210.95.83 on 2007-10-30 17:26.

A reverse lookup shows that it belongs to one Stephen Andrews who lives at 2092 North Hunter Blvd in Reno, NV.

Please leave your anonymity on your door step when we come to collect it. Resistance is futile. You will be ousted.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[pairo]

You mean to say you find that salient? One of the most superficial evaluation of anonymity I've ever seen. Also, I've skimmed his 'very popular blog', and I would have problems believing he actually has anything intelligent to say. (See the math problem, for example...)

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey john! where have you been? :)

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

...Just to add insult to injury, I shared a cube with a great then-young engineer, but the a-hole next door had just expanded his cube at our expense, and I had to crawl over my desk just to get into my chair. My chair had only 3 wheels, with the fourth missing, and the stuffing in the seat was long-gone, so my first task was rebuilding the damned thing. I was told I couldn't just go buy a chair, as it was against company policy...

...so I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[UbuntuDupe]

You can just call me Smilindog2000 in public.

After all that, don't you think "Frownindog2000" would be more appropriate? ;-)

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[smilindog2000]

Ha ha! Yes, Frowningdog2000 is better suited. The source of the name is stupid. My wife and I adopted a cute puppy, and we fell totally in love with it. As a birthday present, back in 1998, I bought her the domain smilindog.com, so she could post cute puppy pictures. Our first yahoo ident was thus smilindog, but when it started getting spammed, I changed to smilindog2000 in the year 2000, the same year that my daughter was born. At the moment my daughter was born, I realized that my cute puppy had grown into a not-so-cute dog, and that buying him croissant from Starbucks every morning was just stupid. And now... I'm literally named after my dumb dog.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[Larry Sanger]

This is basically a lie. You can easily sign up for an account using some other variant of your name. I could be Lawrence Sanger, Larry M. Sanger, Lawrence M. Sanger, etc.

Sheesh.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[AuMatar]

First off- why should he have to? Secondly, there's only so many variants. If you have a common name, they can easily all be taken. If your name is "John Matt Smith", I'd be willing to bet every variation already is.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[ddyer-bennet]

There are very valuable roles for anonymity, and I really have no business knowing much of anything about what you read on the web.

On the other hand, there's a role for real-world reputation on the web, too, and one that flows both directions, and I can see it being very valuable to Citizendium.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[RockDoctor]

Anyway, I'm not allowed to be completely honest on Citizendium. I just tried to sign up for an account... it wont let me because my name is so common that someone else has already used it.
[SNIP]
was issued a subpoena that accused me of some serious wrongs,
[SNIP]
another guy on the floor above me had the same name,
[SNIP]
My credit reports have been semi-trashed by at least three a-holes who happen to share my name.

Blame your parents.

If your parents claim the "it's a family name" excuse, tell them that they can live with the name, and you go off and change your name to whatever you want which is sufficiently uncommon for your needs.

It doesn't make the manifest injustices that adhere to the inefficient matching of names and identities correct. In a Slashdot mode of thought, the naming convention of GivenName FamilyName was designed for a relatively small namespace - a village where there was unlikely to be more than one Mr Smith, because there was only enough blacksmith work to support one smith (and family). These days, the namespaces we live in are larger, which are simply going to require larger names.
There are several ways this can be tackled :

• we could all be named with 64-bit integers ;
• you could increase the number of elements in your pool of names (effectively, counting in a higher base);
• you could use more elements in one name (as in the Russian imya/ patronymic/ familiya system or the Hebridean first-name/ middle-name/ clan-name system ; both systems which have worked fine for many generations).

What you can't do is continue to use an outmoded namespace in a current situation. The world can only support so-many "John Smith the Fifth" without running into exactly the problems you describe.

Exercising rationality in name choice doesn't (necessarily) mean rejecting cultural or family traditions ; my father was left in no doubt that I had to have saint's names (which I don't care about despite my atheism), in no doubt that I needed an Irish name (following family history), and in British tradition it is decidedly unusual for a child to not be given the family name of one or both parents. So the solution was simple - go through the dictionary of saints to find the first Irish-born saint who my father had never heard of. Throw in another whose only purpose is to disambiguate me from people with the same initials. End result is a name that hasn't ever resulted in a name collision, and initials that only rarely collide ; all family traditions are maintained ; and I get a number of uncontroversial conversation lines for lubricating those first few minutes of "who are you" introductions. And I've never suffered the way that Dweezil Zappa does (or would have if his father wasn't so famous. And rich.). Or that the OP has.

I guess the corollary to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has to be applied :
It's broke. Fix it.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[looseSpark]

I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).

While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either.

Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities).

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[looseSpark]

One thing often overlooked when comparing the Citizedium expert-led model to the Wikipedia so-called egalitarian model is that, although there is no "expert" role on Wikipedia as such, your contributions are often watched over by other Wikipedians who have a vested interest in the article (whether they wrote it or have a strong enough motivation to make sure that their opinions remain the dominant theme in the article). In these cases, you are at the mercy of whoever feels more strongly about their edits and whoever has the time or inclination to hang around continually reverting any edits made that they disagree with. I and many others have come up against this problem on wikis--well-reasoned arguments don't always win out. The problem with this approach is that dominant users don't even have to be experts in a subject matter (even quite the opposite), just someone with a strong enough axe to grind along with time and motivation to keep at it. At the very least, on Citizendium, it is a policy that where there is an unresolved disagreement between contributors on a matter they must defer to the judgement of an expert.

This is all, of course, not going to be perfect but I think there's a chance it might be better at resulting in balanced articles rather than the "wikiality" found in most wiki models. It may be too soon to tell if this is going to be the case yet but, as I said in my parent post, time will tell as Citizendium gains more contributors and has more time to grow and evolve their articles.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[MoxFulder]

I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).

While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either. Fair point, Wikipedia does have a significant head start (although some of Citizendium's content is explicitly a "fork" of Wikipedia content used as a base).

However, I am instinctively a believer in the "more eyeballs" theory of open source development... more people poring over, tweaking, and writing code will improve its quality. If Citizendium is seen as limiting or discouraging by potential contributors, the articles won't be worked on as much, and I expect it will suffer in the long run. Then again, I do wish them great success, and if they attain it, I have no doubt that other projects will learn from their experience of emphasizing expert input!

Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities). Yeah, that's a good point. Although I believe that there's a widespread perception that non-experts aren't so welcome at Citizendium. This is probably wrong, but maybe they need to do a better job of advertising this fact. Personally I am a PhD student and might be close to expert qualifications in one small field, but many of the topics I edit on wikipedia are peripheral to or outside of this field... and yet I think they're my most valuable contributions.

I guess I basically don't feel that Wikipedia is lacking or shoddy in any of the fields where I rely on it for technical information (condensed matter physics, materials science, signal processing, computer programming). Some articles lack sorely in terms of having a coherent narration of their topic, but in terms of fact-checking and having ability to follow up with more in-depth references, I'm very pleased. So perhaps I just don't clearly see what the separate expert role brings to the table...

I ought to play around with Citizendium more and find out for myself.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[looseSpark]

Fair point, Wikipedia does have a significant head start (although some of Citizendium's content is explicitly a "fork" of Wikipedia content used as a base).

There is much less Wikipedia content than a lot of people believe (good or bad, right or wrong) and it seems, in practice, the pendulum has swung sharply in favour of original articles.

However, I am instinctively a believer in the "more eyeballs" theory of open source development... more people poring over, tweaking, and writing code will improve its quality. If Citizendium is seen as limiting or discouraging by potential contributors, the articles won't be worked on as much, and I expect it will suffer in the long run.

I can see how Wikipedia may be stronger on the matter of more eyeballs but for the same reason is probably going to be weaker--more people doing damage (and despite the number of eyeballs they don't always notice it). To continue the open source software analogy: in most open source projects you cannot just add code to the main trunk without an account or at least someone with an account looking over a patch you emailed before it gets integrated. To allow this would be crazy and asking for trouble with your code! But in this analogy, yes, at the moment there is not a way for a person to anonymously to submit a "patch" to a Citizendium article without an account; I don't know if this would ever change. I suppose one reason to keep it is to actually encourage people to sign up for an account which could make them more likely to contribute more often (and be more eyeballs checking articles on a regular basis). If people could submit anonymously how many of them would bother signing up for an account (which, at the moment, it is pretty easy to do this) as the whole point of making people post without anonymity is to increase reliability. As Larry says, this is still an experiment to see if this approach can make a more reliable encyclopedia and there is a possibility it might not work but it is still early days yet and things are looking positive so far.

Yeah, that's a good point. Although I believe that there's a widespread perception that non-experts aren't so welcome at Citizendium. This is probably wrong, but maybe they need to do a better job of advertising this fact.

Unfortunately, this perception is mostly because people have spread false information (either by accident or by design) on various websites and forums (perhaps it's Wikipedian F.U.D! :-P ). To be honest, I cannot think of anything more anyone at Citizendium could have done to counter this. Larry mentions it continually in his blog, official Citizendium articles and articles on other websites and in press releases this idea still seems to persist.

I guess I basically don't feel that Wikipedia is lacking or shoddy in any of the fields where I rely on it for technical information (condensed matter physics, materials science, signal processing, computer programming). Some articles lack sorely in terms of having a coherent narration of their topic, but in terms of fact-checking and having ability to follow up with more in-depth references, I'm very pleased. So perhaps I just don't clearly see what the separate expert role brings to the table...

I think Wikipedia is great in the sections where its main user base is strong (the fields you mentioned) and pretty good on others too but one of the things Larry is wanting to address with Citizendium is not just actual unreliability but the perception of unreliabilty; it seems he wants to build an online encyclopedia where people eventually feel they can rely on it, say, in academic articles. Admittedly it would take some time to get to that stage but it's early days yet.

I think it would be excellent if you joined and contributed your knowledge to the project. You seem like a very knowledgeable and level-headed guy, the kind of expert Citizendium needs. You'd be made to feel very welcome. You can read more about what experts do here.

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[MoxFulder]

Thanks, I will definitely look into it! As I said, I'm not so confident that I'm quite there at expert level yet, but it does sound like I could make some good contributions.

One thing I'm hesitant about: have they figured out what will be the license for Citizendium's original content?

Re:Keeping things Web 1.0

[looseSpark]

That's great news--I hope you do join. One of the things I enjoy about Citizendium because I enjoy writing, is the ability to contribute significantly to new articles.

The license is still under consideration but will be decided this month. There is no doubt it will be one of the free licenses (looking to be CC-by-nc for original content but that could change in the final decision).

The time taken to pick a license I believe is for several reasons: 1) No-one near the top sees themselves as a license expert. 2) It's awkward to change a license once it's been set so it's best to get it right first time 3) there is a desire for meaningful feedback from the community which is not really been possible until a certain state of maturity has been reached (which is probably the case now). Having read some of the arguments for and against certain licenses I can see why it is not a simple decision.

Wikipedia

[nlitement]

Compare both wikis' articles on "tennis":

Tennis is a sport played between either two players ("singles") or two teams of two players ("doubles"). Players use a stringed racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Citizendium

Tennis is a game played between two players (singles) or between two teams of two players (doubles). Players use a stringed racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Wikipedia

Just an interesting note. Also, Wikipedia had started out as Nupedia, based on the same idea as Citizendium. In the end, it's really up to the end-user to weed out bad information.

Re:Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Citizendium *might* (and I do stress might) be able to get the balance right. Wikipedia has a lot of positives - but with one big negative. It burns through good editors... and there are endless bad editors and trolls.

Wikipedia is a fucking nightmare to work on unless you have endless patience with red tape, and/or friends who are admins, or you are working in some obscure area that no-one else cares about.

If Citizendium can add a *sensible* amount of respect for expertise to settle arguments and control a page... then it might well be a more balanced and rewarding Wikipedia.

We shall see.

Re:Wikipedia

[jd]

Both encyclopedias would be wrong if that is the only definition, as that only defines one form of Tennis. There are actually multiple variants of the game - no great surprise given that it's actually quite an old sport. One of the problems with any "flat file" article within an encyclopedia is that it cannot possibly include all of the relevant context. It can only include a small fraction and refer/link to related information in the hope that the reader compiles all of the important links in their mind into one meta-article. This rarely happens - very few humans have the memory or time to create a world-view perspective on something, then eliminate the extraneous.

Ideally, then, you'd want the encyclopedia to do this. You'd specify what you want to know and some information about what sort of context would matter. This would mean a system with far smaller article fragments, which could be compiled into actual articles on demand. It would also mean a system with far more sophisticated natural language processing ability and superior weak natural language AI than currently exists, so don't expect a meta-encyclopedia any time soon.

Re:Wikipedia

[utkarshraj]

Both encyclopedias would be wrong if that is the only definition, as that only defines one form of Tennis.

Wikipedia article says, "For other uses, see Tennis (disambiguation)." Citizendium will take some time to catch up; hopefully, you'll see articles on other forms of Tennis in a few days.

Real Names

[Rakishi]

uhhhmm...how about no.

Are you going to require SS, driver's license or passport numbers as well? After all my high school alone had 50 Chans in it, for example. I mean if you want people to be accountable you need to tie their identity to a person and a name does not tie to a person. A name ties to many people quite often.

However if you're not blessed enough to have a generic name that means that anyone can find everything you ever did under your real name. Anything online (and often even not online) you use your real name for is possibly tied to you, irrevocably and forever. This is the real world, not some fantasy world where everyone is nice and happy and non-prejudiced. People are petty and selfish and biased. I don't want to lose a potential job because some HR person decided they don't like my hobbies. Neither do I want to find myself in jail because some idiot policeman or prosecutor decided that my hobbies make me guilty of some crime (lots and lots of cases of innocent people getting shafted for being in the wrong place or time).

Re:Real Names

[E 99]

Uhhh... I can't help but wonder what your hobbies are, that you think some "idiot policeman" is going to throw you in jail for. Bicycling? Parcheesi? Stamp Collecting?

Re:Real Names

[David Gerard]

My user name on Wikipedia (and Citizendium) is my real name. My first edits to Wikipedia were on neo-Nazis and Scientology. Somehow I remain employed. I wonder how that is.

Re:Real Names

[Ed Avis]

That's exactly the point. If you're not prepared to stand by your contribution under your real name, and have it be part of the public record that you wrote it, then you can't add it to Citizendium. (You can of course post on thousands of other websites such as this one.)

IMHO, using your real name isn't so much about hard accountability, having someone to sue, or other legalistic FUD. It's more about setting an appropriate atmosphere for discussion, where you remember that the Internet is a part of the real world rather than separate from it, and that online discussion is a conversation between real people and not avatars or cyber-personalities. You'd use your real name if you were contributing code to Linux, or writing a letter to a newspaper; contributing to an online knowledge base should be no different.

Perhaps in some Office Space corporate environment having an online presence could lose you a job. I think it is more likely to help you get one. When I get CVs through for possible new hires I like to Google the candidate's name and see what he has contributed online. Someone who is a total nonentity with zero relevant hits doesn't impress me much.

Re:Real Names

[Anonymous Coward]

I was among the first people to sign up for Citizendium. I was tired of all the cabals and "offence is a good defence" followers on Wikipedia. And to tell you the truth, removing Anonymous access is a big deal - you are contributing under a login name. Because, in all seriousness, you ARE going to write something which will be read and taken seriously by hundreds of thousands of people, and will probably be sold on a CD, and will be copied all over the internet and so on. It is just responsible to be creditable.

But the real deal breaker is that you have to prove that you are individual, that can be reached by following things. I mean come on, authors of great novels use a fake name, responsible journalists use fake names, everyone who is concerned about privacy uses a fake name.

How and why should I post my real info on a high traffic website?

Re:Real Names

[mgrivich]

Anything online (and often even not online) you use your real name for is possibly tied to you, irrevocably and forever. This is the real world, not some fantasy world where everyone is nice and happy and non-prejudiced. http://www.xkcd.com/137/

Re:Real Names

[Rakishi]

Oh joy, someone who can't understand an argument based on possibilities and sees the world as only black or white.

First of all I never said I'd get fired but that I may lose a potential job or a potential promotion or a potential networking ooprtunity. Those weeding out employee resumes google their names and who knows why they may not like someone.

I gain pretty much nothing from using my real name in many online situations. Nonetheless I may lose quite a bit by doing so. Or I may not but I'm slightly paranoid.

If you want to use your real name for something then you are free to do so right now. If you don't want to then you're free as well. That's how I prefer things.

Re:Real Names

[Attila Dimedici]

Uhhh... I can't help but wonder what your hobbies are, that you think some "idiot policeman" is going to throw you in jail for. Bicycling? Parcheesi? Stamp Collecting? I can easily imagine a police officer under certain circumstances deciding that someone whose hobby is playing D&D (or other FRPG) is guilty of a crime. Or to take another example, I could see a policeman going: "You go to Renaissance Faires in costume (correct terminology would be garb). You wear a sword as part of that costume. One of your neighbors was killed with a sword. You must be the killer." Never mind that the sword that you wear as part of your garb is a never sharpened western style sword and the murder weapon was a sharp katana. There are many innocent hobbies that are publicly perceived as being the province of freaks and potential criminals.

Re:Real Names

[jjohnson]

I see: because perfect accountability is impossible, no attempt at accountability can ever succeed, even partially. It's just not possible for there to a cumulative effect that raises the overall level somewhat, even if there exist failures of its accountability scheme.

Re:Real Names

[Rakishi]

Amazingly being quasi-anonymous online let's me both prevent annoying excessively-sensitive people in RL and let's me express my thoughts without bounds.

Also idealism attached to your real name is great, it caused two of my grandparents to get a government sponsored all expenses paid trip to Siberia and another to die relatively poor. And they were the lucky ones from that generation.

Re:Real Names

[jlarocco]

What the hell do you do on the internet that's so "dangerous"? I'm trying to see your side, but I'm really struggling. If you're posting legitimate content (eg not trolling), who cares if your future employer finds it? What're they gonna say? "This guy strives for accuracy and correctness, let's keep looking"? or maybe "This guy is a little too knowledgeable"?

Even if they discriminate against you, who cares? Do you really want to work for somebody who wouldn't have hired you because they disagree with something you do in your personal time? You're better off not working with people like that anyway.

Forcing people to use their real names is pointless, but I just can't see how it'd cause harm. It's not like Wikipedia and Citizendium are whistle blowing sites.

Re:Real Names

[Cairnarvon]

Most people (even most people in the US, for that matter) can't afford to be that picky about employers, or to be that gung-ho about possible discrimination (that is, even assuming the laws of their country are supposed to protect them from it; actually getting that protection can be quite costly in practice).

Re:Real Names

[Reality Master 101]

My user name on Wikipedia (and Citizendium) is my real name. My first edits to Wikipedia were on neo-Nazis and Scientology.

Considering you can be put in jail for thinking the wrong thoughts in certain countries in Europe, I would be very, very careful what you write on those subjects.

This is not theoretical -- people can, and are, put in jail for writing the wrong things in supposedly free countries in Western Europe.

Re:Real Names

[nomadic]

Oh joy, someone who can't understand an argument based on possibilities and sees the world as only black or white.

Quick, someone elect that man President!

Re:Real Names

[Rakishi]

"Dangerous"? No I simply don't assume that people don't judge others for the most inane of reasons. We usually can't help it, how we perceive people depends on tons of essentially inane reasons. I support the war in Iraq, I oppose the war in Iraq, I support Bush, I oppose Bush, I support gun control, I oppose gun control and the same things on hundreds of other topics. Maybe you contribute to topics of competing companies? Maybe you contributed a lot to topics about bi-polar disease. Maybe it was bondage. Maybe it was pro-Palestinian topics. Did you edit that entry on LARPing? What about that one on furries (cue furries screaming about using that name for them)? Did you make a lot of gun related edits while living in a highly liberal area? Microsoft may not look too kindly on all those Linux edits.

See I try to be open minded which means if nothing else that I know at least some about a lot of sometimes odd areas. I'm not involved in many of them in any real way myself but I may know people who are or have stumbled upon it some other way. If you tell me you're a black polygamous homosexual fur suit wearer who loves bondage and supports themselves by prostitution, then I'd be amazed at you for being secure enough to tell me but not much else. Well not quite, I would always have that description attached when I think of you even if the topic isn't related. A lot of people would view someone quite negatively if they even had one of those characteristics.

A resume may be seen by many people and even more may influence your chances of promotion or networking opportunities. I don't need to work for such a person but simply be X degrees of association from him or her. These people may be perfectly pleasant and you wouldn't ever notice that little hidden bias unless you knew them quite well.

I admit that I am paranoid (not that much compared to some people) and that I may be wrong but that's my own bias. I have however seen first hand how people view certain people with disdain despite knowing little about them, people who otherwise are perfectly nice and rational. Likewise I have heard first hand what the government can do and what it can turn into in a single decade.

Re:Real Names

[McFadden]

Uhhh... I can't help but wonder what your hobbies are, that you think some "idiot policeman" is going to throw you in jail for.

How about going to watch soccer?

From the Observer (British Newspaper):

Tickets to a Manchester United game found during anti-terrorist raids sparked fears of a suicide attack on Old Trafford. But they were for an old match and had been kept as souvenirs by the suspects, who were fans of the club.

The revelation will lead to further criticism of the operation which led to the arrest of 10 people by armed Greater Manchester police in dawn raids last month. All have since been released without charge.

These men (I believe they were members of the British Iraqui Kurdish community) were arrested under suspicion of planning a terrorist attack on live television at a major British football (soccer) ground. Except they were just fans going to watch a game, and it turned out to be total bullshit.

Re:Real Names

[Rakishi]

It's more about setting an appropriate atmosphere for discussion, where you remember that the Internet is a part of the real world rather than separate from it, and that online discussion is a conversation between real people and not avatars or cyber-personalities. You assume that this makes a discussion better, I say it may make it worse. Historically a lot of writing has been anonymous or quasi-anonymous. Also there is reputation as within any single forum or discussion board or wiki (or across many in some cases) there are reputations attached to people's usernames. There is as a result accountability IF you value such a thing.

When I debate online I don't see names but only arguments. If I knew these people I couldn't help but be biased yet online I can't be. Likewise I don't need to triple think every thing I say to make sure I don't offend a particular person. As a result everyone is equal here, I have no reason to hold back or lie or not argue what I really think. I have no reason to hold back for fear that my actions in one context (discussion about say bondage) will negatively affect me in another context (job whose boss is say a conservative christian). I won't get fired or sued or sent to prison (well not with the same likelihood). Likewise what other people or me do outside a given context doesn't matter, someone being a high school drop out stripper doesn't matter if they know the subject absurdly well (and have demonstrated it).

Like I said people can't help but be biased, even if they try not to be they will perceive you differently depending on what they know about you. They may not even realize that they do.

I see real names as an ugly hack for accountability, using a more limited system (real life) instead of designing a proper way of doing what you want. You seem to want experts, a fluid way of defining (and levels of them) and maintaining experts. Instead you add a kludge system based on stuffing everything a person is into a single identity. You try to not define someone as a good source for a topic because of their history or knowledge but because others perceive all those biases attached to his name in a positive way. If Bill Gates was editing a topic on model airplanes do you think it would matter how much or little he knew on the topic or would it matter more that he is Bill Gates (and everything non-model airplane related attached to that, good or bad)?

We are social animals and have evolved a lot of inane irrational systems to help us cope with that. Instead of trying to find a way to bypass those limitations of evolution the idea seems to instead be to magnify them. Instead of knowledge alone mattering, now all the social attachments matter. Wikipedia is a mess because of all those things yet instead of trying to fix it the answer proposed is to make them even worse.

You'd use your real name if you were contributing code to Linux, or writing a letter to a newspaper; contributing to an online knowledge base should be no different. I may not use my real name for those things, it really depends on the subject in question and if I care.

When I get CVs through for possible new hires I like to Google the candidate's name and see what he has contributed online. Someone who is a total nonentity with zero relevant hits doesn't impress me much. My online real name identity is quite positive, lacking in recent activity but my field does not require me to maintain one.

Re:Real Names

[FunWithKnives]

... Also idealism attached to your real name is great, it caused two of my grandparents to get a government sponsored all expenses paid trip to Siberia and another to die relatively poor ...

You should be proud that they actually stood up for what they believed in, despite those consequences. Anonymity is an essential tool in certain situations, but if we were all anonymous, all the time, there would be no change. The work of Thomas Paine and others was done specifically to incite idealistic reaction, which then lead to idealistic action. This type of thing cannot be accomplished if everyone is too afraid to be identified as supporting a cause and to deal with the consequences accordingly. Absolutely nothing would get done.

Anecdotally, I think that anonymity on the internet is, to a small extent, playing a role in my generation's lack of motivation both politically and socially. When you are so used to being able to spout off your opinions without fear of repercussions (just as I am doing right now, ironically), you tend to end up complacent and reluctant, and to avoid confrontation when the same type of situation occurs in meatspace.

I apologize for going somewhat offtopic there, this just kind of relates to what I have been thinking about lately.

Re:Real Names

[Rakishi]

You should be proud that they actually stood up for what they believed in, despite those consequences Fighting for your beliefs is pointless if you fail horribly in the end and achieve nothing, or as my grandparents did aid your future enemy. There are plenty of sheep to die for the cause when needed, I prefer to get a gun as they do so I can shoot the wolf.

Anecdotally, I think that anonymity on the internet is, to a small extent, playing a role in my generation's lack of motivation both politically and socially. When you are so used to being able to spout off your opinions without fear of repercussions (just as I am doing right now, ironically), you tend to end up complacent and reluctant, and to avoid confrontation when the same type of situation occurs in meatspace. You could argue that it also let's people more effectively question their own ingrained environmental values with a lot more freedom. Activism requires a somewhat fanatical and blind devotion to a cause even if reality doesn't agree with you. Harder to do when your arguments and views just got ripped to shreds by some random guy online.

Mostly however I think we simply live in an absurdly nice and peaceful society which makes it hard to muster up the drive to do anything to fix, in our eyes, minor problems.

Re:Real Names

[Rakishi]

I don't know whether to laugh at you or feel sorry for you. What a useless human being. If you're that worried about offending someone, you should probably just kill yourself. So says the anonymous coward. Likely one with social issues. In real life we all hold back because we don't want to offend other people, those who don't fail miserably at life.

Protip: It's not your behavior on the internet losing you jobs. It's your lack of spine and fear of being yourself. Why would how I act online lose me jobs, not like my potential employers know. I'm actually doing very well in RL, I see no reason for introducing minor potential problems into it for no reason at all. If nothing else I argue too much with my superiors at work, of course I do that for work related reasons. My bosses have no reason to know my political views for example and I prefer if they didn't know them.

Nobody likes a kiss ass. There is a difference between not offending people pointlessly and kissing ass. Anyone successful knows it very well and that you don't says a lot about you. You don't make people your enemies unless you gain something from it and you don't do so needlessly.

The really funny part is, unless you're this delusional in real life, employers don't need to look at your internet activity to find most of that stuff. Delusional? Using my real name online gains me nothing, for the purposes I use the internet for that is, while having the potential to cost me something. I as a result decide that using my real name is not worth it. You claim that is delusional? Or do you simply not comprehend such a simple argument?

Re:Real Names

[ta bu shi da yu]

Oh if only I had mod points for that previous post!

Re:Real Names

[Kenji DRE]

I wouldn't want my employer to know that I've contributed to gundam...

Re:Real Names

[Ed Avis]

'Someone' might object to content in Wikipedia, but not anyone whose opinion I care about. I see no reason to cower behind an anonymous name for fear of offending 'someone'.

In totalitarian countries it may be different. But even there you need a way to measure reputation and track individual users, if only to distinguish between real people and astroturf campaigns by government supporters. It's a hard problem.

Re:Real Names

[Jedi Alec]

This is correct, and largely this is a result of the common sentiment of "never that again" in europe concerning what happened in WWII. Is this a restriction on the freedom of speech? Yes, most definitely. Do I feel it is a necessary one? Yes, most definitely. People are stupid and will believe whatever crap you shovel down their throat. This is one kind of crap we will not tolerate again.

Re:Real Names

[Reality Master 101]

Do I feel it is a necessary one? Yes, most definitely.

I think I actually find it more horrifying that so many people like you come to the defense of the thought police putting people in jail for years than the actual fact of it happening.

Re:Real Names

[bigmammoth]

atavists are rottenly arrested for bicycling in groups... At my own university students were put on a "credible threat" list for their "hobby" which was peacefully trying to end the American occupation of Iraq.

We need not speak in theoretical when talking about police throwing people in jail for their "hobbies" The value of online being anonymous and protections for free speech should not be downplayed given our current cultural/political context.

Re:Real Names

[McFadden]

It's unlikely they would. But unfortunately the British police seem to have adopted a policy of arresting anyone who 'looks a bit foreign' these days.

Re:Real Names

[E 99]

You really don't see the difference between being arrested for blocking some intersection with a group of bikers (presumably for the purpose of getting arrested), and being arrested for posting online that you like to bike in groups? Paranoia strikes deep.

Re:Real Names

[neomunk]

You've won this argument multiple times over (eloquently I might add), so don't let the anonymous trolls get your goat. People who flame you anonymously because you're defending the right to privacy are beneath contempt, safely ignore them.

Re:Real Names

[looseSpark]

It is useful to point out here that pseudonyms are not "banned" as such on Citizendium--you just need to email the "constabulary" and show you have a genuine need for one.

Re:Real Names

[looseSpark]

Amazingly being quasi-anonymous online let's me both prevent annoying excessively-sensitive people in RL and let's me express my thoughts without bounds.

Though you may not have intended your comment to refer to Citizendium in this case, it does raise an important point in this discussion: if a person is writing properly for a neutral encyclopedia it is unlikely you would be offending overly-sensitive people and definitely not expressing your boundless thoughts and opinions on a matter. Many of the arguments for anonymity on Citizendium are quite moot (with a few exceptions but pseudonymns are not banned on Citizendium but must be requested for separately).

Pseudonyms have their place on the 'Net as do real names. People can vent freely and anonymously on Slashdot forums and Usenet which are provided, in part, for that very purpose. Citizendium is not a place for venting and presenting private opinions and so anonymity is both unnecessary and, in most cases, not helpful.

Re:Real Names

[BigBilly]

Many people feel intimidated by using their real names. The real names rules should be more flexible in Citizendium. They will lose users because the current rule. By the way, many people do not like their real names. Why will they use it? If artists, photographers, writers, actors may use pseudonymous. Why not Citizendium users? I agree that users should show their names to avoid vandalism and trooling, but not as usernames. Maybe the real name in the authors/editors page would be sufficient. I myself would fell intimitade to see my name lots of times in the recent changes. It would be much better if we could use only our first or last name as usernames or even initials and write our real names only in our personal pages.

Tagline: Just Like Wikipedia

[Rogerborg]

Only Way Way Way Smaller and Your Contributions Can And Will Get Shitcanned by Anyone Who Signed Up Pretending That They are an Expert in That Subject!

Mmm, catchy!

Re:Tagline: Just Like Wikipedia

[Reaperducer]

Your Contributions Can And Will Get Shitcanned by Anyone Who Signed Up Pretending That They are an Expert in That Subject

And this is different than Wikipedia how...?

Oblig

[Kingrames]

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

My name is Anonymous Coward, I'm just posting anonymously.

And....

[djupedal]

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]

Misleading statement there

[GDubs]

we've still proven ... that eliminating anonymity helps remove vandalism. It certainly helps when there's no articles to vandalize and no members to do the vandalizing.

no, not yet anyway

[wizardforce]

Might the Web 2.0 umbrella be expanded to include real name requirements and roles for experts? It's looking that way."

That doesn't have any more of a chance than Slashdot doing that. The only thing that I can see causing the entirety of the "Web2.0" projects adopting such a system is through new restirctive laws passed by many governments across the world. Proably under the guise of preventing terrorism or some other nonsense.

Re:Experts

[JoshJ]

Wow, something went wrong there. That should read "but it should be worth it in the end".

Re: Wikipedia/Nupedia/Citizendium

[nil0lab]

... In the end, it's really up to the end-user to weed out bad information. ...

A lot of the wikipedia's success is because it's a lot easier to revert or delete than to create.

And because there are more people who want it to be right than want it to be wrong.

Re:"...year anniversary"

[mrami]

People started doing this after certain other people started using phrases like "two month anniversary". I tried to push the word "mensiversary", but everyone thought I was talking about menstrual poetry.

Who? What?

[allcar]

I'm afraid I had never heard of "Citizendium" until I RTFA. And that, it seems to me is the biggest problem that it faces: Wikipedia is ubiquitous, whilst Citizendium is obscure.
In addition, Wikipedia now has enormous scope. On almost any topic, I can feel confident that Wikipedia will have something to say. In spite of what many detractors will say, Wikipedia is usually informative and reasonably accurate. It should not be= seen as definitive, but it ia frequently a useful starting point. Citizendium has a long way to go before it can make such claims.
Whilst writing this, I could not help thinking about the fictional comparison between the entries for alcohol in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the Encyclopedia Galactica. That led me to check what each of the sources had to say about Hitchhikers itself. See for yourself:

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

I think we have a clear winner!
Don't get me wrong. Citizendium sounds like a great idea and I hope it is successful. It may be that they would be better off not trying to compete so directly with Wikipedia and to aim for a different niche. In that case, I think it's a shame that the article spent so much time addressing the inevitable comparisons.

Re:Who? What?

[cow_2001]

Right, Citizendium should aim for "The Definitive Resource On Everything" niche instead of "The Usually Informative And Reasonably Accurate But Not Definitive, Although It Is Frequently A Useful Starting Point, Resource On Everything" that Wikipedia currently inhabits...

Yuval Langer.

Re:Who? What?

[interiot]

Heck, of the top 20 most viewed articles on Wikipedia, the following are missing from Citizendium:

• #3: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• #4: Naruto
• #5: Guitar Hero III
• #9: Harry Potter
• #10: Halo 3
• #11: Transformers (film)
• #12: Heroes (TV series)
• #13: Vanessa Hudgens
• #14: Luciano Pavarotti
• #15: Bleach (manga)
• #17: 50 Cent
• #18: Sex positions
• #19: World Wrestling Entertainment
• #20: Sex (PC terms like homosexuality, AIDS, contraception, etc. are mentioned, but any sort of anatomy isn't there... possibly due to the family friendly policy)

Granted, popularity isn't the metric that academians should necessarily go by, but the avoidance of certain types of anatomy is a bit weird.

Re:Who? What?

[pokerdad]

Heck, of the top 20 most viewed articles on Wikipedia, the following are missing from Citizendium:

I had never seen the list you linked to before, but it is just a ton of Slashdot articles waiting to happen:

• Wii ranks higher than xbox, ps3
• Halo 3 ranks higher than Bioshock
• Global warming ranks higher than Bush
• SSBB ranks higher than GTA IV
• Masturbation ranks higher than porn

Not that these topics or any of thousands of others you might generate this way are particularily interesting, but come on, this is Slashdot. Hey, if we can get two articles on Wiki forks on the same day, I can't believe that someone isn't making an issue about this list.

Re:Who? What?

[Lord of Ironhand]

To quote literally from their family friendly policy page: family friendly policy page:

Probably, we will not have graphic depictions of the sex act or photographs of human sex organs [...] That seems like a rather tainted idea of "family friendly" to me. When child that becomes interested in sexual topics (and inevitably, they will), and decides to use an online encyclopedia to learn more about it, on Citizendium they will find that any images related to the subject have been purposefully kept off the site. The message is clear: sex is bad, why else would images of sexual organs be kept off a site meant to provide objective information? Personally, that's not the sort of message I would want to send to children at the age where they start discovering this side of themselves, especially not with the inherent insecurity about the subject they are likely to have.

On the other hand, for ultra-religious parents who do in fact want to teach their children that sex is a topic to be kept in obscurity as much as possible, Citizendium will be an excellent resource to point their children to.

Re:Experts

[Daimanta]

...but the overall quality will be higher compared to Wikipedia.

Web 2.0

[Chicken_Kickers]

I don't know if it is just me, but I get turned off the moment I come across any reference to "Web 2.0". For some reason, this raises the snake-oil and marketeerspeak warning flags in my mind.

Re:Web 2.0

[wizardforce]

yep, buzzwords like "web2.0" are just code for "vaporware" or any eqivalent

Re:Web 2.0

[owlnation]

I don't know if it is just me, but I get turned off the moment I come across any reference to "Web 2.0".

Yes, agreed. As far as I can see Web 2.0 -- and most especially Wikipedia, and Citizendium too for that matter -- only exist because "search" is really not good enough for most people's needs.

It's been 10 years since Google, and what innovation has happened since then? Nothing much.

If search worked as desired you could go straight to the primary sources of data and not need to have it filtered and biased by self appointed "experts" or wiki-cabals. What need would there be for eBay, Facebook, Blogger, MySpace or YouTube or any of the rest of the Web 2.0 nonsense other than free hosting and easy content management.

My only hope is the Web 3.0 is about search that actually works, maybe then we can move away from snakeoil and wikiality.

Re:Web 2.0

[Rakishi]

So instead of a relatively open process you want your knowledge biased by a search engine that is supported by ads and uses an unknown algorithm to give back results?

Also I don't have time to read tons of primary sources when looking up some random topic for fun and analyze their importance. If I read wikipedia to know the 20 year history and time line of DC comics I do so because I don't WANT to have to read those 20 years of history.

Re:Experts

[JoshJ]

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. In the short term it'll have lots of holes because it's a slower process than what Wiki had, but in the long term it'll be better quality than Wikipedia. Seems like a win-win situation to me.

Anonymity is not about the Internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymity is about writing and, as the above poster points out, it's as old as writing itself. In fact, in the older literatures, specifically in early Chinese, it was considered low class and arrogant to sign ones name to a work of literature.

The people who get upset about anonymity tend not to be those who are not really interested in the text itself but rather in the politics of the text.

Let me provide a topical example that doesn't speak directly to annonymity but can be seen as a lesson on this topic. If J.K. Rowling's name was not synonymous with her writings then her comments about her character Dumbledore would be irrelevant since there is little evidence of them in the text itself. The lack of annonymity of the author makes this seem interesting but only to those who are in to the politics of the text as opposed to the text itself.

If your main concern is the text itself and you have respect for literary tradition then you should certainly have no problem with anonymity.

people's knowledge is shallow

[davejenkins]

The problem with citizendium is the basic premise that the masses aren't "qualified" to contribute. This is what made the wikipedia so much fun-- all of us dilletantes had a place to put in our smattering of knolwedge about history, geography, or punk rock. But only a minority of the population graduates college, and an even smaller minority have the advanced degree in place to be a qualified 'authority' to speak authoritatively on a given subject. Citizendium depends on this minority, and frankly wikipedia is migrating the same direction.

As a result, the masses are moving toward what they know: TV shows, pop culture, and fictional universe wikis. The Lyric wiki is 6th on the http://wikindex.com/, and the TV wiki is 13th overall. World of Warcraft, Star Trek, and Battlesar Galactica are bigger than many non-european language wikipediae.

People go where they feel smart. When citizendium makes things tough, only the tough will remain.

Re:people's knowledge is shallow

[wizardforce]

The problem with citizendium is the basic premise that the masses aren't "qualified" to contribute. This is what made the wikipedia so much fun-- all of us dilletantes had a place to put in our smattering of knolwedge about history, geography, or punk rock.

A lot of knowledge is available to the masses that doesn't require higher education. The problem is when people start contributing "information" when they 1) have none of the real world experience/knowledge needed to contribute useful knowledge. 2) FUD [take a look at the page comparing OSes specifically Windows and Linux, lots of FUD there] not that an expert would remove that kind of bias entirely, but there would likely be a lot more in the way of cold hard facts than a personal bias.

But only a minority of the population graduates college, and an even smaller minority have the advanced degree in place to be a qualified 'authority' to speak authoritatively on a given subject.

that's a tad disturbing isn't it? people speaking on a subject they have no idea about or the qualifications?

Re:people's knowledge is shallow

[ResidntGeek]

Citizendium isn't trying to create a feel-good community where everyone feels smart, they're trying to create a compendium of knowledge. They want only the tough to remain, basically, because they're working from the premise that the tough can contribute much better information than everyone else.

Re:people's knowledge is shallow

[Fred Ferrigno]

As a result, the masses are moving toward what they know: TV shows, pop culture, and fictional universe wikis. The Lyric wiki is 6th on the http://wikindex.com/, and the TV wiki is 13th overall. IME, TVIV is less complete and up to date than Wikipedia itself. Compare the articles on last week's episode of House on Wikipedia and TVIV. As for the Lyric Wiki... I'd be surprised if they actually have permission to post the lyrics to popular songs. Meanwhile, Wikipedia manages some very detailed articles on popular songs without including the lyrics themselves. (That song happens to be on the front page of Lyrics wiki at the moment.)

Re:people's knowledge is shallow

[Merusdraconis]

"The problem with citizendium is the basic premise that the masses aren't "qualified" to contribute."

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. It's even in TFA.

I'm honestly getting a big FUD vibe from /. here - oh noes, real names! Citizendium will be a failure just like that other site that uses real names, Facebook! Oh noes, Wikipedia is already too big, it'll never be a credible source of information like Wikipedia is - or Encyclopedia Britannica is, or Encarta is, or mass media was, or, or, or...

It's an ambitious idea, and I'd like to see it succeed because honestly competition will improve both, and Wikipedia and Citizendium are unlikely to share weaknesses, especially organisational weaknesses. It'll make both stronger.

Re:people's knowledge is shallow

[Fred Ferrigno]

They want only the tough to remain, basically, because they're working from the premise that the tough can contribute much better information than everyone else. In other words, "the basic premise that the masses aren't 'qualified' to contribute". And the point is that premise is wrong. Most issues don't need an expert to contribute positively. You don't need a PhD to correct a typo or start a basic article. Experts are only really necessary to sort out the nitty-gritty details when everything else is already pegged down. Citizendium had a chance with the initial plan to create a running fork of Wikipedia. Take the 90% that doesn't need an expert and finely polish the last 10%. By starting over, they're wasting resources just to catch up with Wikipedia when they're trying to be better than Wikipedia. That sounds like a failing recipe to me.

Re:Experts

[Smauler]

I'm curious - if you think that in the long term it'll generally have better quality articles than those on wikipedia, after a year, it should definitely have at least a few. Are there any?

I'm not denigrating Citizendium or attempting to here, just asking if if there are really better entries there.

Ouch...

[fractalVisionz]

I thought it said "Circumcision after one year!"

Real names

[zantolak]

"Might the Web 2.0 umbrella be expanded to include real name requirements"

This seems like the quickest way to kill off any Web 2.0 venture.

Vandalism

[WalksOnDirt]

Curious if there was any religious bias in pages, I looked up evolution. There I saw the following odd sentence:

Fossils are xxxx. Citizendium uses the same history tracking as Wikipedia, so I was able to go back many version to find that this was originally:

Fossils are critical evidence for estimating when various lineages originated. There may be more instances of vandalism to Wikipedia, but I've never seen such a blatant example last through so many edits.

Re:Vandalism

[Raindance]

Why do you say that's vandalism? Looks like the article is a work in progress to me.

Myth debunkery

[Larry Sanger]

A lot of the sort of negative comments above were anticipated and shown to be myths in TFA, right here.

Also, hey, think of this. On the one hand, (1) I have nothing whatsoever against anonymity online; there is a right to anonymity online. But (2) I also think that certain projects--like encyclopedia projects--can greatly benefit by requiring people to identify themselves. If you bring yourselves to realize that (1) and (2) are compatible, maybe you anonymity advocates won't be so hostile to CZ.

In short, I don't think that the right to anonymity requires that you have the right to be anonymous everywhere. You have the right to have sex with other consenting adults, too, but you don't have the right to have sex with other consenting adults everywhere. (Hey! Get off my car!)

Citizens?

[rossdee]

So do you have to be a citizen to contribute to this project? I take it illegal aliens aren't welcome. What about legal aliens who have yet to become citizens?

Re:Licence?

[MicktheMech]

For the love of God and all that is holy, why does every story have to be about licenses?

Re:Licence?

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, it's because the inability to even pick a license suggests that the folks in charge don't know what the hell they're doing. You don't launch an open-content initiative without figuring out the basics of the project.

Citizendium?

[Vexorian]

I am sorry but slashdot is probably the only place I actually read the word "citizendium", one year later I only find wikipedia links everywhere, and no single citizendium link. And I browse the web a lot.

Re:Citizendium?

[swordgeek]

It's a different project, with a different focus. It's not going to ever become as much of a populist phenomenon as wikipedia, partly because wikipedia was _first_. However, there's a place for it, and it's doing well on its own terms.

The Problem with Citizendium...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is that while the purpose of the project is a valid critique of Wikipedia, it's too extreme, what with locking down accounts and disallowing anonymous posting. The Wikipedia way of random anonymous people contributing works fine. And the "all knowledge is important!" aspect letting the comic book geeks in at least generates a ton of people who cruise the site and fix vandalism. The problem with Wikipedia - though I should add I am not an expert on its Administrator debates - isn't so much disrespecting the experts as respecting too much the cranks and trolls. Seriously, if Wikipedia would just ban people spreading their own crazy cult or psuedoscience or obscure on sight, it'd be much better off. This arbitration case I recently found seems a pretty good example of Wikipedia not at its finest; an admin banned a crank who'd been spreading their psuedoscience for two years with a solid number of other people saying "ban him," and got dragged into a messy dispute with arbitrators and all as his reward. That's not good. Nothing frustrates actual experts more than having to defend themselves and an article from cranks.

But aside from that niggle, Wikipedia is pretty much fine. "Ban the cranks" would work better and keep a larger user base than "scare away everyone but the experts."

Oh please

[svunt]

In short, I don't think that the right to anonymity requires that you have the right to be anonymous everywhere. You have the right to have sex with other consenting adults, too, but you don't have the right to have sex with other consenting adults everywhere. (Hey! Get off my car!)

You have built a hotel with a sign out front saying "NO FUCKING", and now there are bugger all guests. Now there's a surprise.

Re:Oh please

[Larry Sanger]

RRRRT! Thanks for trying, no prize. More uninformed remarks based on little more than your personal biases. Really, if you're going to reply, at least have the sense to read the debunkery.

You seem to think that projects like Wikipedia just instantly spring into existence. Well, they don't; they take time to build. Wikipedia certainly took time--I ought to know. But, on your view, if there aren't instantly Wikipedia-levels of participation, it means there are no participants at all.

Wikipedia also started with few active people. Our own fund of active people is growing, with (on average) over 40 people editing the wiki each day, about 40 people making 100 edits per month, and over 200 people making some edits per month. This might not sound like a lot, but the numbers are there and are clearly trending upward, and our rate of article creation is accelerating. Moreover, we're getting lots and lots of new people with this press release, the Slashdotting (gee, how can dozens of Slashdot readers be interested in joining CZ?!), and with the recruitment drive that just started.

Expand your mind a little: maybe there really are a lot of people who actually prefer to use their real names.

Re:Oh please

[stdarg]

"Bugger all" does not mean "absolutely zero". Try looking it up. I think it's pretty clear that the OP was saying that if you didn't have the non-anonymity requirement, you would have substantially more users. It's all speculation but your remarks as uninformed and personally biased as anybody else's.

The analogy of a hotel with a sign that says "no fucking" is actually pretty good. Not only does it prevent people who want to have sex from staying at the hotel (i.e. people who want to be anonymous editors), it also puts off people who don't want to have sex at the time but support the freedom to have sex on principle. Citizendium is not only losing the people who cannot (for whatever reason) risk losing their anonymity, but also the people who don't mind losing their own anonymity but support in principle those who do. You're stuck with the people who don't care about their own anonymity and don't care about anybody else's either.

Given Citizendium's policy of family-friendliness, which I think is ridiculous, many issues where anonymity would be deemed desirable will be entirely excluded anyway, so I'm not sure how much impact the real-name policy will even have.

Re:Oh please

[Larry Sanger]

Sorry to disappoint, but I do know what "bugger all" means, and my response was perfectly aimed: the phrase "bugger all" has the implication that we have virtually no one contributing, or not enough to matter. This is false, and obviously so, to anyone who is actually familiar with the facts about the project.

Sez you: "You're stuck with the people who don't care about their own anonymity and don't care about anybody else's either." Correct on the left conjunct, not on the right one. I care about people's anonymity, and most Citizens do too, I'll bet. We simply don't think we must have the right to be anonymous everywhere. But perhaps this is a subtle point.

You do make a general point that is correct. We do exclude those people who imagine they are taking a "principled stand" in favor of anonymity by steering clear of CZ. I'm not going to get terribly upset that we're effectively excluding that rather small group of people. Also, I'm actually glad that we're excluding people who think that experts have no place in an encyclopedia project. They have Wikipedia, and hopefully they'll always have Wikipedia, so they won't come bother us.

Now, if you go further, and imply that this very negatively impacts the number of valuable people involved in the project, forgive me for being a bit skeptical, as I go approve more new accounts...

Re:Licence?

[ta bu shi da yu]

Because otherwise, how are people going to know how they can reuse the content?

Might be non-free, might be free...

[MrvFD]

They still haven't decided on the license of their original articles:"All new articles will be available under an open content license yet to be determined.".

If they will go the oh-so-common route of choosing a license with "non-commercial" clause (hey, we're soo anti-commercial and soo "free"), they really won't be a competitor to Wikipedia since the reusage possibilities of Citizendium's material drops dramatically.

I would guess they will choose some free license, and choosing any other than GFDL (without invariant sections / covers) is going to be a big pain for them since they would need to handle the fact of license changing from article to article. But since they _still_ haven't chosen anything, I'd take that as a sign they really don't a) understand, b) care or c) want their material to be freely usable.

Thanks to the wonderful English language (lacking "libre"), we already have eg. Scholarpedia, "the free peer reviewed encyclopedia", "like Wikipedia" (just don't put any material on anything you're selling, oh and btw don't take more than 100 copies). I would hope for real competition from Citizendium, rather than fooling people with "free" sites and luring eg. professionals to write to them like Scholarpedia does.

Re:Might be non-free, might be free...

[David Gerard]

It would be sad indeed if Citizendium were to end up adopting a non-free license after having promised a free license for so long. "Non-commercial" licenses are not free licenses because they restrict reusers on the purpose for which they use things.

Re:Might be non-free, might be free...

[Taxman415a]

I can't believe they haven't figured out this is their biggest problem. Not having a specified license after a year means that they are going to be in a license mishmash for years to come. They've already copied Wikipedia articles, so those have to be GFDL. If they go with another license, either they need to get rid of all their GFDL material (a step back) or go forward with multiple licenses and all the incompatibility mess that goes along with that. I for one refuse to contribute until they get the license mess sorted out. And I like the idea of a project where I don't have to put up with all the BS that comes with Wikipedia.

Re:Might be non-free, might be free...

[Larry Sanger]

Well, David, why don't you actually argue for this interesting position, instead of simply asserting it? We've invited people to contribute their thoughts. If you feel that strongly, why not contribute an essay? We don't have to host it. You can host it yourself and we'll link to it.

Re:Might be non-free, might be free...

[David Gerard]

I wasn't going to, since I've made, er, all of two edits to CZ, so am not a contributor so much as a general well-wisher ... but I will then :-)

Re:Might be non-free, might be free...

[Stephen Ewen]

You'd seem to know that sites with various copyrights is not that big of a deal. Note MediaWiki who has some help pages that are GFDL, some that are PD. This feature is coded into the software.

Re:Might be non-free, might be free...

[MrvFD]

Thanks for pointing that out, seems there are rather informed people there, though still too many who even consider the non-commercial clause. But most probably you'll be choosing between cc-by-sa and gfdl, and that's great. The former is going to be a bit more work.

Re:Myth debunkery debunked

[tagishsimon]

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Scientology

[mwvdlee]

Who dares to publish criticism of Scientology with their real name?

Basically ANY sufficiently controversial topic will be unreliable when anonymity is lost.

Religion, believes and cults are the obvious examples, but there's a lot more topics that stupid people get aggressive about.

Re:Scientology

[David Gerard]

You realise of course that plenty of critics of Scientology, e.g. me, write under their real names.

I want out of Web 2.0 !!!

[ThirdPrize]

If the future of the internet is watching crappy videos on youtube while reading half arsed articles on wikipedia and being spammed by "friends" on all the major social networks while Digg telly you what the "news" is, then I want out! Where is the quality? Web 1.0 was good enough for me.

Not trolling, honest, just stating a fact.

It's not bad.

[master_p]

Wikipedia is useful to get a first idea of what we are looking for, and then go to an expert's site and read the real stuff. If Citizendium can be of the latter, it's good.

Re:Myth debunkery debunked

[moonbender]

Well that was unexpectedly funny. Thank you very much. Choosing a dog, indeed.

Citizendium = English-only

[10Ghz]

At least, that's the perception one gets. Looking at their main page, there are no non-English articles. And what about their name? "Citizen" is English. Yes, "Wiki" is Hawaiian, but it has been adopted by other languages as well. Wiki is "wiki" in Finnish as well, whereas "Citizen" is "kansalainen". "Wikipedia" is a lot more universal word languagewise than "Citizendium" is. Not to mention it being a lot easier to pronounce. Again: Wikipedia is "Wikipedia" in Finnish, what would Citizendium be? I have no idea. What I do know is that "Citizendium" would seem totally alien to someone who speaks Finnish.

Starting from their name, Citizendium has adopted a policy of "English-only!". Maybe it's deliberate, maybe it's not. But that's just how things are. That is one of the biggest reasons I really don't see Citizendium surpassing Wikipedia anytime soon.

Re:Citizendium = English-only

[Stephen Ewen]

I guess you've not actually read the materials pointed to in the OP before posting. Plans are for Citizendium in other languages in 2008. As for the name, the same thing could be said about the names of innumerable websites that non-English speakers use routinely.

Re:Citizendium = English-only

[10Ghz]

while there might be plans for non-English articles, the fact remains that the name of the website is in English. That is not the case with Wikipedia. That is my point. And lets face it: "Citizendium" doesn't really roll off the tongue like "Wikipedia" does.

Yes, non-English-speakers might routinely use websites with English names (like "Slashdot"). But that doesn't mean that they wouldn't mind something with a more universal name. "Citizendium" seems like a club for English-speakers that graciously allow no-english-speakers to attend their meetings, whereas "Wikipedia" sounds a lot more universal. "Citizen" is English, whereas "Wiki" has been adopted by several languages.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Too many rules kill a project

[David Gerard]

Drive-by anonymous contributors are indeed of tremendous value on Wikipedia. No-one wants to create yet another web page login.

Mod up parent

[imsabbel]

Sorry, i am out of points, so i cannot do it myself.

Larry has invested so much clout in this project he will defend it till the end, no matter much much it sucks.
German wikipedia had a very similar case: Mr. Fuchs, an ex-moderator and oppinion-troll (is main idea was "TOO MANY ARTICLES! DELETE DELETE DELETE". To explain his idiocy: For him, the only notable movies are those who won academy awards...). Well, his wikiweise looks the same like this now: After 2 (or so) years, 50% of the edits are now done by 4 persons, one of them himself.

But you will never hear him accept any kind of misstake, even now. And he still has a blog where he rants about how poisoned the wiki is by bad information...

Re:Mod up parent

[Raenex]

Hmm, I have mod points, and I was going to mod this guy up, but I really hate the mod commanders. Oh well :)

Re: Wikipedia/Nupedia/Citizendium

[Watts Martin]

In the end, it's really up to the end-user to weed out bad information. That's really the root of the whole endless question cycle on Wikipedia (and wikis in general), though, isn't it? An end-user doesn't necessarily have the knowledge to weed out "bad information"; the most common usage scenario for an encyclopedia is, after all, to look up information you don't have. Vandalism will often be obvious and most of us will be suspicious of anything that's too badly written, but well-written, authoritative-sounding information on Wikipedia on a subject that you or I don't really know is likely to be taken at face value.

Furthermore, the problem with bias is more a problem of psychology. There's been a few studies recently (some linked on Slashdot, I believe) showing that someone actually has to have a certain depth of understanding in a subject to evaluate their own competency correctly: people who know nothing, or moderate to significant amounts, about a subject usually accurately rate their own knowledge, but people who know a little about a subject tend to overestimate their knowledge. Couple that with the ability in modern times to read a whole lot of articles that each show a surface understanding of something people get passionate over -- Marxist theory, the gold standard, 9/11 -- and it's easy for people to become absolutely sure about the "truth" of talking points that they've come across time and time again without really understanding that they're hearing one half-truth that's undergone intense amplification in an echo chamber. And Wikipedia's system makes it hard to identify these and even harder to remove them: why, of course this is true, because there are multiple independent links I can give as reference! Well, if all those links are alarmist articles that, if you dig far enough, come from the same source whose understanding of what they're raising the alarm over is incorrect (or just incomplete), maybe they really shouldn't be given that much weight.

I use Wikipedia and I don't know that Citizendium is going to solve these potential pitfalls. But I think it's important to understand that "harnessing the collective intelligence of the masses" really does have potential pitfalls. It's good to profess question authority, but the problem with it -- and this is something I see outside Wikipedia, of course -- is that it often fails to distinguish between authority that's been granted (ilisten to him, he's a CEO!) and authority that's been earned (listen to him, he's been studying this field for two decades and is a recognized expert). At the extreme, this gets a little perverse: I have more than one friend who seems less likely to trust someone who's presented as an authority than someone who's just an interested layman.

While I've been trying to avoid giving examples that would cause arguments in and of themselves, I think this is really important when it comes to "controversial" issues, and those are probably precisely the issues where Wikipedia's style can lead to the most confusion. When push comes to shove, I would rather have articles on evolution vetted by evolutionary scientists, on the gold standard vetted by economists, and on climate change vetted by climate scientists. This doesn't mean that there's no place in an encyclopedia to talk about drawbacks to "fiat currency" and criticisms of prevailing climate models, but it does mean that you don't get equal time just because you're a contrarian. When the overwhelming bulk of study on a given topic supports one viewpoint, that's the viewpoint that an encyclopedia article -- which is, after all, meant as a quick overview of the topic in the first place -- logically should spend the bulk of its time on.

Wikipedia isn't as bad for this as its critics make it out to be, but ultimately, its distrust, and sometimes active snubbing, of experts is probably its most serious drawback, and there's no way to address that without doing a lot of re-examination of the Wikipedia "culture" -- and from what I understand, self-appointed editors there are very, very resistant to that notion. I think Citizendium is an interesting experiment with a different organizational model.