Slashdot Log In
A Look Inside Citizendium
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 12, 2006 08:11 PM
from the rack-up-the-editing-cred dept.
from the rack-up-the-editing-cred dept.
Raindance writes "I've posted an in-depth look at Citizendium, Larry Sanger's new project and Wikipedia's new competitor. In a nutshell, Citizendium isn't just about building a better encyclopedia (though that is their goal) — it's also a pilot project for a new model of expert-guided radical collaboration with implications for things from open peer review to genome wikis. If you'd like to help out, they need both volunteers and donations."
Related Stories
[+]
Slashback: SCO, COPA, AllofMP3, Navier-Stokes, and More 144 comments
Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: IBM speaks about the SCO suit, another angle on COPA, AllofMP3 followups, Navier-Stokes solution withdrawn, a librarian's guided tour of Wikipedia, and the iPod's 5th anniversary. Read on for details.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
How long.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Or something.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Will the Citizendoids reflexively assume the opposite editor?
Will the fresh reinforcements tip the balance in favor of either editor in Teh Eternal Struggle?
Anything to save us from the crap on cable news...
It seems to me as if it's already begun... (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice: A fancy french term, a nice quote, precocious diction, and TWO citations just in the intro.
This seems to be quite a little passive-agressive/bullying hint from the wikipedians.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe it's just me, but wikipedians seem to be obsessed with portmanteaus. I swear to god, every article tangentially related to a portmanteau just has to mention it. Like it's some secret that only nerds on the internet know about and just need to educate everyone else about.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Still no wiki? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought only Carol and Eve were interested in their conversations.
Vaporware (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the nice things about wikipedia is that it has nearly 1.5 million articles in the english language version.
There a lot of knocks against wikipedia in the article, but the reality is that it is running and extraordinarily useful already to many people.
My impression is citizendium are going to copy wikipedia articles (and likely even use wikipedia's software), then edit them to be better and then try to stay in sync if they can with wikipedia.
I think it'll be worth checking back in 3 years to see how they've done, but at this point way way to early to tell. I personally am not to optimistic, but do wish them well.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say it's far from vaporware though, since an outline of policy exists, and at least a pilot will be up in 10-14 days. Recall that Larry hadn't told anyone about the idea until 9/15, so it went from an idea to waiting on a server and funding in a matter of weeks. We already have the first 100 people in the community, and we already have 3 part-time technical volunteers. It's nowhere near ready, but that's sort of early to expect something.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Dr. Sanger will be announcing more details in the next week.
The vapor is evaporating.
-Jason Potkanski
Member Citizendium Core Technical Staff
Vaporware Evaporation (Score:2)
We are finally moving from "talk" to action. The Vapor you speak of will evaporate very, very quickly.
Dr. Sanger will be making an official announcement next Friday. I'll see you in a few weeks, not three years.
-Jason Potkanski
Member Citizendium Core Technical Team
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So they create a term which in any other context would be equivalent to 'steal' and give it a positive spin. cool.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with them using articles from Wikipedia. but coming up with your own phrases to describe it? Talk about spin!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd much have prefered a system where all contributions go to WP, and they merely maintain a system where they attach a quality-score to a certain version of certain wp-articles. That way you could have a view of wikipedia which included only those articles that are scored atleast "good", or atleast "excellent". This view would show only rated articles, and only the precise version that was rated.
Wikipedia is already working on such a project though, blessed version [wikipedia.org]. This will allow anyone to form a group, and approve certain versions of certain articles.
Thus you could get together with a group of math-experts, review and bless a certain set of math-related articles, and then publish (automatically) a version of wp consisting only of those precise versions of those precise articles.
Parent
As a Wikipedia admin ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I really think it would be easier to just modify Wikipedia to do what he wants.
Give every modification a "verified" bit. Give viewers the option of looking at either "latest" or "verified" pages. Put any modified pages into a queue to be re-verified. That way you don't have to waste time rewriting everything when most of Wikipedia is dead-on already.
I think Wikipedia is good as it is. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mangled by the mob.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sanger (and others) believe this atmosphere alienates many academics and experts who find their contributions mangled, reverted, or trivialized by a clueless, faceless mob...
It's definitely frustrating to have technical edits reverted [wikipedia.org] or messed up by someone who doesn't understand the subject matter as well as you do. There are many cases where there are just too many people who believe something with no evidence [wikipedia.org] to keep it out of the article for long. Wikipedia is great for finding out what most people interested in a field think, but it's not always a good way to get facts or for more in-depth explanations and finding less well-known facts, especially when they're contradictory to "general knowledge".
Re:Mangled by the mob.... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Remember h2g2 ? (Score:5, Informative)
Does someone remember BBC's h2g2 [bbc.co.uk] ? It had some excellent articles (like the link in my sig).
I met Jimbo Wales recently, on his visit to India. He was very very clear about one thing - wikipedia is not a technical innovation. The technology for wikipedia has existed for the last 10 years, but it has come of age with the checks & balances recently. H2g2 died out because it didn't really focus on the editors, but on the content - Mediawiki is somewhat heavily editor oriented, with easy ways to watch pages, revision history and all that - which provides no value to the "user". Editing community is what makes wikipedia run.
Merely starting off with a copy of the current wikipedia does not automatically provide it with crowd of editors.
Wikipedia with a New Bigger Fuller Ego! (Score:2)
Self-appointed editors; someone controlled / elected by the contributors at large?
My problem Wikipedia (Score:2)
Example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity [wikipedia.org]
It would be nice if there were some translations.
Re: (Score:2)
Not a good start (Score:2, Funny)
Larry's response is... (Score:3, Informative)
"Exactly the same things were said about "Wikipedia," another name I coined."
Don't start from scratch; branch (Score:3, Insightful)
But I wouldn't start over from scratch. Wikipedia's too far ahead. I'd copy the content of Wikipedia, and then let the copy diverge.
Aside from not having to start from scratch, there's also the benefit that people could do a careful analysis of various articles to see how they evolved, and see which system seems to be yielding the highest quality encyclopedia.
It is free to copy, redistribute, and modify Wikipedia, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
Overall, the plan is to have editor-approved versions shown to readers first, and have the un-approved versions a few clicks away.
Re: (Score:2)
Larry Sanger (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not niche enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Update (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot AFD (Score:5, Interesting)
However several wikipedians believe that the information is not notable or such claims are unverifiable. When it's obvious that the source is Slashdot itself which keeps a written oral history. It would be silly to delete an article about Beowulf* because the sources are dubious or self-referential.
Anyway this just highlights one of the problems of the Wikipedia community. They have self-knighted themselves to be the guardians of knowledge. Anything that does not fit their worldview of what is "Wikiesque" will be removed. The official Wikipedia policies are malleable and can be interpreted to fit their conclusions. It reminds me of what happened in Bolshevik Russia; whatever does not fit the Party line does not exist.
*Yeah I know it's silly to compare Beowulf to the hot grits guy but you get the point.
Re: (Score:2)
There are certain philosophies that have developed on Wikipedia. Inclusionists vs. Exclusionists. Anarchists vs Progressives. Immediatism vs. Eventualism. If you design a community where everyone wins...no one wins either.
"Policy is not one size fits all."
No Original Research is not good in the scientific realm...but for a Slashdot Trolling history is probably acceptable.
There is plenty of active discussion on defining both problems and solutions for Wikipedia.
-Jason Potkanski
Citiz
Re:Slashdot AFD (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with specific goals. It doesn't intend to be a catch-all repository of facts. Think for a second: Would this be a good topic in an encyclopedia? Yes! Would Britannica take this article as it is? Heck no, no, no.
And the most important question of all: Is Wikipedia the end of all knowledge? Can't we do some stuff outside of Wikipedia too? Heck, Wikipedia seems to quote a lot of stuff from outside, don't they...
Instead of "My favourite topic doesn't fly with Wikipedia, their methodology apparently sucks, therefore Wikipedia sucks", you didn't think of doing the constructive thing: "My favourite topic doesn't fly with Wikipedia, as it conflicts with their goals and policies; How could we rebuild this article in a way that it doesn't conflict with their goals and policies, and generate an external source that could benefit not only Wikipedia, but Slashdot community as well?" It's entirely understandable to get mad if you get slapped. It's prudent to get up and think of what to do to repair the damage.
The reason the article is up for deletion is not "dubious" at all.
This article (and other Slashdot culture articles that were up on AfD lately) was basically formed like this: A bunch of Slashdotters visit Wikipedia, someone gets the bright idea "hey, it would be cool if we had an article on Slashdot trolling." They begin working on the article, adding random bits of troll-lore.
Which is all fine with regular Slashdotters. They know it's right. They won't challenge a single word. I mean, I wouldn't.
But then comes the problem: Someone who's a bit skeptical. Someone who's probably new to Slashdot and don't know a lot about what's going on here. They want to know if this stuff is really true. They can come to Slashdot and read (Score: -1, Troll) comments all day; They can conclude that the article may be basically right, but they can't find an authority that says so. They can't tell if all these people who have been editing the article are "authorities" or not. Other articles have sources that can easily be used to verify that stuff. Stuff written by experts and journalists. Good enough.
I can't remember if I edited this particular article, but I think I edited the "recurring jokes" article (how silly of me, considering I was in favour of deleting it): A curious user can check that "Hmm, User:Wwwwolf added something about Evil Bits;" (pokepokepoke) "Yep, this is WWWWolf (#2428) on Slashdot, he's probably been there long enough to remember the pain and blood and suffering of that fateful April Fools Day, 2003." But can they do the same research on all "experts"? Even the ones behind an IP addy? (As a side note, I really hope Citizendium folks have an answer to this problem!)
The article doesn't point to three-digit-UID user's peer-reviewed work that explores the trolling in a conclusive way.
That's what Wikipedia demands; It doesn't demand the users to be experts, it demands the users quote or paraphrase or summarise an expert's work, as "expert" is defined by society at large. If you're an expert of some field and editing Wikipedia, that does help, because you probably have a good idea on who taught you.
[I'm supposed to be an "expert" on computer science, and I can easily say: "I'll write something about some design pattern. Hmm, didn't Martin Fowler write something about this?" ...or "Hmm, someone doesn't have a good source on this claim about shell sort. Hey, Knuth's TAoCP had something about this..."]
Don't get me wrong: The way this article was built was marvellous. I like it a lot. However, it's not a good way to build a good Wikipedia article according to Wikipedia's policies. It's a good demonstration on how wiki concept can accumulate information. It's a bad example of an article according to Wikipedia's standards of research.
So what's my recommenda
Parent
What's wrong with Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia's anonymous editing is a huge headache. It takes the constant efforts of several hundred people just to deal with the vandalism and incoming junk. At least you now have to register to create an article.
Having 1.5 million articles is a bug, not a feature. There are several thousand articles on Star [Wars|Trek|Gate]. There's one for every Pokemon. There's one for every episode of South Park. There's one for every city alderman of Calgary since the city was founded. One for every station on most subway lines of the world. A sizable fraction of Wikipedia is dreck like that. It's so easy to add.
Then there's stuff for which Wikipedia is just the wrong tool for the job. There are articles for a huge number of CDs, but they're not organized into a useful database like Gracenote. There are articles for musicians, actors, and movies, but they're not in a database like IMDB with all the proper connections. There are articles for books, but they're not catalogued as a library would catalogue them. There are articles for most US state highways, but they're not organized into a map or atlas system. It's an "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem.
In time, Wikipedia will either have to tighten up who can edit, or the thing will sink under all the dreck and vandalism. Actually, Wikipedia probably peaked in quality a while back. It's rare today that anyone adds an article that matters. Look at the last 50 new articles added [wikipedia.org]; perhaps one or two actually belong in an encyclopedia.
Re:What's wrong with Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
Then there's stuff for which Wikipedia is just the wrong tool for the job. There are articles for a huge number of CDs, but they're not organized into a useful database like Gracenote. There are articles for musicians, actors, and movies, but they're not in a database like IMDB with all the proper connections. There are articles for books, but they're not catalogued as a library would catalogue them. There are articles for most US state highways, but they're not organized into a map or atlas system. It's an "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem.
This is an underlying design/usability problem with Mediawiki and not necessarily Wikipedia itself. Building a proper database framework to be more encompassing (if not all encompassing - damn close) is a Citizendium design goal.
Thanks for the perspective, it helps define the problem better (in a way I hadn't thought of yet).
-Jason Potkanski
Citizendium Core Technical Team
Parent
Re:What's wrong with Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an underlying design/usability problem with Mediawiki and not necessarily Wikipedia itself. Building a proper database framework to be more encompassing (if not all encompassing - damn close) is a Citizendium design goal.
For most of the categories mentioned, the obvious tool for the job is a relatively conventional forms-driven database. Most proper names belong to some well understood category (people, places, companies, books, movies, songs, audio recordings), and those should be handled by some form-based input mechanism which captures the appropriate information for the category. In some cases, it may be possible to obtain data sources to populate or check the database entries. Such entries might also have an associated wiki-type free comment area, but the finding and linking mechanism would be more structured than that of a general wiki. As with IMDB and Gracenote, it should be possible to ask questions like "what films was this actor in" and get a useful result.
From the reader perspective, the output could look much like Wikipedia with subject matter templates. But from the editor perspective, it would be form-based for common article types. This allows for much more input validation. Disambiguation and spelling problems can be caught and corrected during input validation, rather than after the fact by someone else.
With proper names handled separately, the main less-structured wiki space becomes focused on more general concepts. This should reduce clutter substantially.
I'd definitely encourage a division between proper names and other material as a basic organizing concept. It's an easy to understand distinction.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly enough, Wikipedia is always getting lambasted for perceived "liberal" bias by right-wingers, too.
I'm fairly left-wing, and I've never noticed overt bias in Wikipedia (at least, none that's not obviously quickly-removed vandalism). OTOH, I've heard legions of very, very left- o
Re: But neutrality is unfair sometimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Equal time to unfair arguments is unfair to fair arguments.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"According to Cambridge University historian Christopher Andrew, who undertook the task of processing the Mitrokhin Archive, another competing group, the FSLN, was formally organised in 1961 by Tomás Borge Martínez and Silvio Mayorga and recent KGB recruit Carlos Fonseca Amador. According to Andrew, this was one part of Aleksandr Shelepin's 'grand strategy' of using national liberation movements as a spearhead of the Soviet Union's foreign policy in the Third World
Re: (Score:2)
you can get all the pro-Commie rubbish you can stomach.
After the USSR tanked, the Stanford Bookstore had a sale: "All Communism 40% off". I still have a copy of Gorbachev's last address to the Central Committee. I regret not buying a copy of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in English; that's now a collector's item.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)