Co-Founder Forks Wikipedia 382
tmk writes "Larry Sanger, first editor-in-chief of Wikipedia, plans to fork the project. In Berlin he announced the start of Citizendium — the citizen's compendium. Main differences: no anonymous editing, and experts will rule the project. Members of Wikipedia were not amused."
Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Not a wiki? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Informative)
The free on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia is a success project: Straight ago times Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger drew up the web page, in which each InterNet user could take part - in illusory hope to five years that from the web page an encyclopedia would become. The illusion fulfilled itself to a large extent: Wikipedia is today one of the 20 to most called web pages in the InterNet, over five million article in over 100 languages the unpaid freiwilligen already gathered.
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But Larry Sanger does not hand that. He sees the Wikipedia only as prototype to its that can be achieved. "I am still a large fan of the Wikipedia", insure Sanger, "however starting from a certain point must one the courage have a new project to start." Its criticism to the Wikipedia: The project is not much too much the Amateurhaftigkeit arrested, for expert a place. Sanger knows, about which he speaks: He was the first editor-in-chief of the Wikipedia, separated however in the controversy from the project.
Discussion around contents
The question of the quality of the Wikipedia articles is intensified discussed in the last months: The projectproject project cut last yearly off with a comparison of the science magazine "Nature" end only little more badly than the traditional Encyclopaedia Britannica. But in the past months Wikipedia head Jimmy Wales had deplored the quality of contents ever more frequently.
Reason were among other things several breakdowns. Thus a fun bird provided in the past year for a scandal, when it had angedichtet the outstanding US journalist John Seigenthaler an entangling into the murder John F. Kennedys - over months the lie stood undiscovered in the Wikipedia. And also in the US election campaign Wikipedia provides always times again for headlines: Thus for instance US politicians tried to blacken their opponents by Wikipedia articles - or the own Biografie to beautiful.
Race with the Wikipedia
Wales wants to against-steer. In the past months it recruits increased the participation of scientists in the free encyclopedia. But the efforts step on the place. Since of Wales to months announces the mechanism "more stably" article versions, which should be more reliable than normal articles. The conversion takes time however. First experiments are to begin end of the yearly in the German-language Wikipedia.
Sanger gives itself optimistically that he can achieve the goal rather as his former employer: "I point them, as one make", said Sanger to Berlin.
Expert instead of amateurs
Substantial difference to the Wikipedia: It will give no anonymous cooperation in the new project. Each participant is to announce itself with his material name - with the Wikipedia does not usually even have one to announce oneself, in order to along-attribute at the articles.
A further difference: Sanger wants to recruit more authority in its on-line encyclopedia intensified experts, them give. Qualified editors are to clarify questions obligatorily, while in the Wikipedia some discussions and disputes across months and years are led.
"a doctor title is not necessary, over with Citizendium as an expert to be recognized", says Sanger. In addition, the title alone is not sufficient, in order to get the privileged status as an expert. Who wants to apply as an expert in the Citizendium, must on its user side a personal record deposit. In addition, without special qualifications one is to be able to write articles.
Financing still unclearly
As exactly the project wants to finance itself, is still unclear. Sanger expects potent sponsors. It had already angeheuert years ago with the project "dig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizendium (Score:2, Informative)
Scholarpedia (Score:5, Informative)
"just showing why it is needed" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, it's a form of self-deprecation. Slashdotters are chagrin about themselves often posting without reading the f'in article. The GP (grandparent post) is somewhat humorously stating "Few of us actually read the articles before sounding-off. So why would the article being in German (or some other wacky language) be a problem???"
--Bitte schön
Re:Sprachen sie Deutsche? (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go:
Re:Scholarpedia (Score:3, Informative)
Note that freedom in the GNU sense is orthogonal to the "Wiki freedom" of anyone being able to edit in-place. Free Software projects are usually handled in a very "unwiki" way. OTOH, "true" Wikis can have a very restrictive license.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nupedia (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not a wiki? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Strange logic (Score:4, Informative)
It's going to be a progressive or gradual fork, which means that articles people haven't worked on in the Citizendium will be refreshed on a regular basis with the latest Wikipedia article. So, for the articles that aren't being worked on by CZ, the CZ copy will benefit from whatever WP work is done.
Eventually, who knows, maybe we'll change the color of links to pages that have been changed by CZ, so that people know to maintain and work on those copies (on CZ) more carefully. In the long run it'll be like a game: how many Wikipedia articles have you cleaned up and substantially improved? Here's my list...
We might have a rule, too: don't edit a WP-originated article unless you make some very substantial changes. Otherwise, if you change too little, then the CZ copy might become "stale," i.e., substantially worse than the corresponding WP article.
Generally, the number of articles from WP edited by CZians will be proportionate to the number of CZians. There's no reason to think we'll bite off more than we can chew.
More from the parent post: "Even worse, seeing the much lower editor/article ratio, i cannot see how he thinks to ever archive some kind of quality census. A random article browsed there will be with a very high likelyhood just a copy of the wiki article." The former does not logically follow from the latter. Since the unchanged articles will be copies of Wikipedia articles, if the articles that CZ has worked on are better than the corresponding WP articles (and that's the hope), then the CZ will at least be better than WP to that extent. That's nothing to sneeze at, is it?
Finally: "So trying to get people to think its more reliable (and thus view it with less suspicion/ less "thinking") is a bit like cheating the user." Please, rtfw [citizendium.org]. Besides, we aren't going to try to make claims about reliability; our claims will be even more modest than Wikipedia's. We're going to call it a compendium, not an encyclopedia. We won't vouch for anything, even for the articles that editors have placed "approved" tags on.
Another project, the Digital Universe Encyclopedia (of which the also wiki-based Encyclopedia of Earth [earthportal.net], not yet publicly launched, is the first installment), can have the fun of actually officially approving and "publishing" advanced-version CZ articles (if they want to, and if licensing doesn't get in the way).
Re:Who decides who is an expert? (Score:2, Informative)
The nice thing about this proposal (which I can't take credit for, by the way) is that it is relatively objective, i.e., not open to the politicizable individual judgment found in, for example, academic tenure committees. In a hugely distributed worldwide project like this, it's best to avoid the possibility of politicization. We will have to have a review workgroup of some kind, though, for oversight--to let people in who don't have the credentials but obviously have the ability, and to eject people who have the credentials but don't have the ability.
Besides, this sort of self-assignment seems somehow very well in keeping with the wiki way.
Re:Nupedia (Score:5, Informative)
Not saying you haven't put your finger on a problem. If the only available expert on a specific topic is an ideologue, that puts the authors working on the article in a tough spot. They need some recourse. Well, there will be. There will be subject area workgroups they can appeal to, and then cite the neutrality policy.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Hey, wait a minute; German doesn't even come close to the wackiness of English.
Any reasonable scale of wackiness would put English right near the top. Of major world languages, the only real challenger for the top wackiness position is probably Japanese (what with its three writing systems that are routinely intermingled).
In comparison to English and Japanese, German is a model of sanity and probity.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
The language is so jacked up that linguists don't even know what it should be categorized as. It'll probably end up just being listed as a language isolate.
I do have to agree with you about German, though. It's an extremely logical and simple language in many ways. The grammar is very logical and has few exceptions compared to other languages. Once you learn the grammar the pronunciation and vocabulary are likewise consistent. It can be easily learned by an English speaker in 6 months of immersion.