Citizendium

Citizendium: The Citizens' Compendium
Citizendium logo400grbeta small fairuse.png
Citizendium.png
The Citizendium homepage with default skin as of 2008-04-04.
URL http://en.citizendium.org/
Slogan We are creating the world's most trusted encyclopedia and knowledge base.
Commercial? No
Type of site Internet encyclopedia project
Registration Optional (required to edit pages)
Available language(s) English
Owner Citizendium Foundation
Created by Larry Sanger
Launched October 23, 2006 (pilot)
March 25, 2007 (public)
Alexa rank 97278 [1]
Current status Beta

Citizendium (pronounced /ˌsɪtɪˈzɛndiəm/ "the citizens' compendium of everything") is an English-language wiki-based free encyclopedia project spearheaded by Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001.[2][3] The project aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by providing a "reliable" encyclopedia.[4] It hopes to achieve this by requiring all contributors to use their real names, by strictly moderating the project for unprofessional behavior, by providing what it calls "gentle expert oversight" of everyday contributors, and also through its "approved articles," which have undergone a form of peer-review by credentialed topic experts and are closed to real-time editing.

Citizendium was first announced in fall 2006 as a complete "fork" of the English Wikipedia,[5] but that idea was abandoned prior to its March 2007 public launch in favor of emphasizing its own original articles. As of November 2008, the project had over 8,600 articles[6] and 80 approved articles.[7]

Contents

Founder viewpoints

Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of Citizendium.

Sanger said in an October 17, 2006 press release that the Citizendium "will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online".[8] In August 2007 he captioned its pages "The world needs a more credible free encyclopedia."[9] The project began its pilot phase in October and November 2006.

On January 18, 2007, a change of plans was announced. Sanger announced on the CZ mailing list that only articles marked "CZ Live", those which have been or will soon be worked on by Citizendium contributors, would remain on the site, and all other articles forked from Wikipedia would be deleted. Not all Citizendium contributors were supportive of this change, but Sanger emphasized that this deletion was "an experiment" and a new set of Wikipedia articles could be uploaded if the experiment were deemed unsuccessful.[10]

Nature of the project

Fork of Wikipedia

According to statements and essays on Citizendium.org, the project was initially intended to begin as a fork of Wikipedia, carrying a copy of each article — under the rules of the GNU Free Documentation License — as it existed on Wikipedia at the time of the Citizendium's launch.[11] However, after initiating the idea of not forking, and then soliciting comments on the matter from Citizendium mailing list and web forum members, Sanger said that a complete fork at launch was not a "foregone conclusion."[12] On January 18, 2007, Sanger announced that the pilot would, as an experiment, only carry articles that had been, or would soon be, worked on by Citizendium contributors, instead of a complete set of Wikipedia articles. He stated that the experiment "represents a reconception of our project's basic aim."[10]

No announcement has yet been made on the Citizendium in languages other than English, but Sanger has stated in his essays that they may be forthcoming after the English language version is established and working successfully. In a review of Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur, Sanger comments ironically on Keen's favorable treatment of Citizendium: "The first example of a "solution" he offers is the Citizendium, or the Citizens’ Compendium, which I like to describe briefly as Wikipedia with editors and real names. But how can Citizendium be a solution to the problems he raises, if it has experts working without pay, and the result is free? If it succeeds, won’t it contribute to the decline of reference publishing?"[13]

Project goal

The stated aim of the project is to create a "new compendium of knowledge" based on the contributions of "intellectuals," defined as "educated, thinking people who read about science or ideas regularly."[14] The Citizendium hopes to foster an expert culture and a community that encourages subject specialists (presently named as "editors") to contribute, and "citizens" (to be called "authors") to "respect" the expert contributions (by what he referred to as a "gentle process of guidance").

An appeals process for disagreements between editors and authors, and between different editors, will be in place, according to a provisional "Citizendium Policy Outline" published by Sanger.[15] Experts will be required to verify their qualifications openly, for transparency and publicly accepted authority.[15] This contrasts with the open and largely anonymous nature of Wikipedia, where subject specialists have neither any verifiable special knowledge of their subject nor agreed special status. Sanger has stated that editors will not have pre-approval rights over edits by ordinary authors, though editors will have somewhat undefined authority over articles that fall within their specific area of expertise.

Criticism of Wikipedia

See also: Reliability of Wikipedia and Criticism of Wikipedia

Many of Citizendium's proposed policies are attempts to correct perceived flaws in the original design and present public image of Wikipedia that have led to problems with Wikipedia's acceptance as a valid and trustworthy resource.[16] Some academics maintain that Wikipedia is a valuable starting point for knowledge but (as agreed by co-founder Jimmy Wales[17]) should not be used as a sole or primary source,[18] and citing Wikipedia is not accepted in some schools and universities in formal papers. Some educational institutions have blocked Wikipedia in the past while others have limited its use to only a pointer to external sources.[19]

Regarding Wikipedia's oft-cited problems, Sanger wrote that "this arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to…academics" and as such appears "committed to amateurism."[14]

In November 2007, deciding the Citizendium licence, Sanger stated of Wikipedia that "We are not in business to put Wikipedia out of business. But we do hope to outdo them in value --that is, in quality, quantity (in the fullness of time), and in the maturity and responsibility of our community... On balance, I remain a fan of the project I engineered. I merely think we can do better--and so we should try."[20]

Policies and structure

The Citizendium does not allow anonymous editing. People are asked to register under their real names with a working e-mail address, in order to participate.

Sanger decided that Citizendium administrators, or sysops, would be called "constables," and need a bachelor's degree to qualify. He has also instigated a minimum "maturity" requirement — 25 years of age — for constables.[15] The "head" constable is the Chief Constable (Ruth Ifcher), and the head editor is the Managing Editor.[21]

For the moment, Sanger operates as Editor-in-Chief, the "main individual in charge," part of and answerable to a Board of Directors. Sanger states that final decisions about management structure will not be made "until more of the (future) primary stakeholders are on the scene."[22] In a Citizendium blog entry of November 10, 2006, constable Sarah Tuttle announced the formation of an "executive committee" consisting of herself, Sanger and eleven others, which works on issues of "long term governance" of the project.[23]

Citizendium articles are subject to an "approval" process after they have achieved reasonable quality. A subject expert "editor" selects a version of the article to be identified as "approved." Further editing of the article is however allowed, at least to some extent. If those further edits are judged by the editor to be improvements, a newer version of the article is chosen as the approved version. This approval process appears to be a response by Sanger to criticisms from some members of the Citizendium mailing list and web forum that the new project would not be sufficiently controlled by experts . There is a dispute-resolution process for disagreements about which version should be selected as "approved."[15]

In an October 26, 2006 post to the Citizendium web forum, then Managing Editor David Marshall indicated that the approved version of an article, if it exists, will be the default version displayed to a visitor to the site. If a contributor wishes to modify or add to the article, login will be necessary to work on the "dynamic wiki page" open to editing:

“ All reader searches will auto-forward to the most recently approved version of the page (assuming that a version has been approved). Once at an approved page, the reader will be given the option to register/log in as an author and move to the dynamic wiki page in current use for development purposes."[24] ”

The project is being carried out under the auspices of the Citizendium Foundation,[21] although it is still phased under the Tides Center as an incubator project.[25]

Content

Breakdown of the articles in December, 2007.

Citizendium original articles are available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (cc-by-sa).[26] "Articles that originated in part from Wikipedia are available under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2."[27] Though the two licenses are currently incompatible, they are expected to become compatible in the future.[28] The decision for a commercial-allowable license for its original articles comes on the heels of extended community debate, with about half of Citizendium contributors preferring a non-commercial license.[29][30] The decision was announced on December 21, 2007, about a year after the launch of the pilot project, with Larry Sanger's long essay on the reasoning behind the decision.[20]

History

Graph showing the number of articles since the launch of the pilot project.

Pilot project

The project was announced by Sanger on September 15, 2006, at the Wizards of OS 4 conference in Berlin. He gave no deadline for the full launch of the wiki.[31][32] However, on October 2, 2006, Sanger released a pilot project announcement that envisioned a fully functioning wiki within "one to two months."

In an apparent attempt to quicken the pace of the project, on October 2, 2006 Citizendium web forum moderator Peter Hitchmough suggested what he called an "alpha test" of the concept. Hitchmough proposed the forking of a limited number of Wikipedia articles to a site where Citizendium web forum and mailing list members could "rewrite a complete section" of Wikipedia content.[33]

Larry Sanger reacted enthusiastically to the idea and at first suggested his already existing Textop wiki as the site for the alpha test. Sanger later posted that Textop would not be a good choice, but showed continued interest in the proposal. He envisioned a "restricted-access" wiki where the idea could be tried and requested further discussion.[34]

No access to the pilot version of the Citizendium, even read-only, was allowed to the general public. Sanger stated: "Only invited people will be able to view and edit the pilot project wiki."[35] Sanger also said that constables for the pilot project will be chosen by the chief constable.[36]

In a press release on October 17, 2006, Sanger announced: "the fledgling Citizendium Foundation will launch a six-week pilot project open to potential contributors by invitation". Several editors and other project leaders were named. It was also announced that the Citizendium Foundation had "started the process of applying for 501(c)(3) status [non-profit status]" and had "received a firm commitment for a significant seed grant from a foundation, as well as small personal donations."[8] In a follow-up post to the press release, Sanger said that the initial group allowed access to the pilot would consist of "ten editors, three constables, six authors, and me."[37]

The pilot project began operations on October 23, 2006.[38] On November 8, Larry Sanger reported that 263 user names had access to the pilot wiki, 183 articles on the wiki were "live" (meaning "someone is or intends to be working on them") and there were about 300 total edits to the wiki on November 7.[39]

Graph showing the creation rate (articles per day).

In a January 17, 2007 post to the Citizendium forum, Sanger stated that "we have had only 10–20 (very) active people out of 500 accounts created." As a result, Sanger decided to delete all articles besides those marked "CZ live" from the pilot project in an attempt to motivate greater participation.[40] On January 22, 2007, the Citizendium experimented with a new self-registration procedure: read/write access was granted automatically after creation of the account.[41] There were a few instances of vandalism after this change, though the vandalism was quickly reverted.[42] On January 19, Sanger announced the formal organization of the Citizendium as a legal non-profit organization.[43]

On February 16, 2007 in response to rising site vandalism, automatic account creation[41] was put on hold while increased protections were being put in place to counter vandalism.[44] The next day, page moves were limited to constables as an additional measure against vandalism.[45] In addition, Sanger continued the process of un-forking the Citizendium from Wikipedia by inviting contributors to delete any Wikipedia content that had changed only superficially since it was imported.

Citizendium goes live

Default style of the homepage through early 2008; users have the ability to choose this skin and others.

On March 25, 2007, the Citizendium ended its pilot phase and went live, into its beta phase, and the site became publicly readable.[46] The launch coincided with a feature-length Associated Press article that ran widely, with a title in USA Today of "Citizendium aims to be better Wikipedia."[47]

The day prior to launch, Sanger released an essay, "Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed" in which he stated that activity at the Citizendium grew from 100 edits a day in the first month to over 500 prior to launch.[48] After the launch, on March 27, 2007 a press release quotes Sanger as saying "You don’t have to choose between content and accountability. We have shown that we can create open and credible content. We can, in fact, be open to all sorts of participants, but still hold people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community."[49]

Sometime after the launch, it was noted that the Citizendium's family friendly policy would mean the project would likely tend to avoid articles on slang terms for sexual activity, and particularly explicit articles on sexual practices.[50] The Citizendium has a "professionalism" policy for editors, which Sanger said is different from most online communities.[51]

On June 29, 2007, Sanger announced an initiative via the project-wide mailing list that he dubbed "Citizendium 2.0". Characterizing his comments as a "project planning document", Sanger detailed a series of initiatives designed to launch the Citizendium into its next phase of development. The document outlined plans for a judicial board, an advisory board, a personnel manager, a new chairman of the editorial council, wider participation in the project by volunteers, a system of subpages for articles, and an expanded article checklist.[52]

A number of media reports appeared in late October and early November 2007 about the one-year anniversary of Citizendium. One story in the Financial Times quoted Larry Sanger predicting strong growth for the project: "At some point, possibly very soon, the Citizendium will grow explosively - say, quadruple the number of its active contributors, or even grow by an order of magnitude. And it will experience that growth over the course of a month or two, and its growth will continue to accelerate from that higher rate."[53]

Citizendium was honored on December 5, 2007 as an award finalist of The Society for New Communications Research. The Society describes itself as a nonprofit global think-tank "dedicated to the advanced study of new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society". The Society chose Citizendium for an award because it considers it "a leading organization" in these respects.[54]

Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ "citizendium.org - Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa. Retrieved on 2008-04-19.
  2. ↑ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia", ABC News, Associated Press. Retrieved on 2007-03-26. "The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial — Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it ... Wales insists that Sanger was a subordinate employee of his, and by that measure, 20 other people would deserve co-founder status. Wales claims Sanger wrote those early news releases to inflate his role; Sanger responds that Wales approved the releases." 
  3. ↑ Moody, Glyn (July 13, 2006). "This time, it'll be a Wikipedia written by experts", The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-03-25. "Larry Sanger seems to have a thing about free online encyclopedias. Although his main claim to fame is as the co-founder, along with Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia, that is just one of several projects to produce large-scale, systematic stores of human knowledge he has been involved in. [Jimmy Wales] saw that I was essentially looking for employment online and he was looking for someone to lead Nupedia... Career: 1992-1996, 1997-1998 Graduate teaching associate, OSU; 2000-2002 Editor-in-chief, Nupedia; Co-founder and "chief organiser," Wikipedia." 
  4. ↑ "The Citizendium's Statement of Fundamental Policies", Citizendium (September 6, 2007). Retrieved on 2008-02-25. 
  5. ↑ Andrew Orlowski."Wikipedia founder forks Wikipedia, More experts, less fiddling?", The Register, September 18, 2006.
  6. ↑ "Main_Page". Retrieved on 2008-11-18.
  7. ↑ "Category:Approved Articles". Citizendium. Retrieved on 2008-11-18.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Larry Sanger. "Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version of Wikipedia: Pilot Project for the Citizendium to Launch This Week", Citizendium.org, October 17, 2006.
  9. ↑ "CZ:Monthly Write-a-Thon", Citizendium (August 1, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-08-01. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Larry Sanger. "OK, let's delete the Wikipedia articles (an experiment)", Citizendium-l mail list, January 18, 2007.
  11. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Why we should fork all at once", Citizendium-l mail list, September 29, 2006.
  12. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Forking argument summary", Citizendium forum, September 29, 2006.
  13. ↑ Larry Sanger (2007-07-17). "Review of Keen’s "Cult of the Amateur"". Citizendium Blog. Retrieved on 2007-11-22.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Larry Sanger. "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)", Citizendium.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Larry Sanger. "Citizendium Policy Outline", Citizendium. On the Citizendium blog, Sanger wrote this caveat about the provisional outline: "This is a work in progress. Therefore, I hope the Wikipedia article about the Citizendium will not say tomorrow that CZ will have features X, Y, and Z. These are in most cases negotiable policy ideas, a place for the invitees to the policy project to work from." Sanger also stated that future versions of the policy outline would be posted on the restricted-access pilot wiki: "The most current version will be available on the pilot project wiki. To see that, you’ll have to be a member of the pilot project."
  16. ↑ Youngwood, Susan (April 1, 2007). "Wikipedia: What do they know; when do they know it, and when can we trust it?", Vermont Sunday Magazine, Rutland Herald. Retrieved on 2007-04-05. "Perhaps the most important thing to understand about Wikipedia - both its genius and its Achilles heel - is that anyone can create or modify an entry. Anyone means your 10-year-old neighbor or a Nobel Prize winner - or an editor like me, who is itching to correct a grammar error in that Wikipedia entry that I just quoted. Entries can be edited by numerous people and be in constant flux. What you read now might change in five minutes. Five seconds, even."  — Susan Youngwood.
  17. ↑ "Wikipedia Founder Discourages Academic Use of His Creation", The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 12, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-08-10. 
  18. ↑ Maggie Morris (2007-02-22). "Expert: Wikipedia won't go away, so learn how to use it". Physorg.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-09. "[Purdue University assistant professor Sorin] Matei recommends Wikipedia be used as a search engine that acts as a springboard to other resources and that it never be cited as a primary source of information."
  19. ↑ Chen, Lysa (March 28, 2007). "Several colleges push to ban Wikipedia as resource", The Chronicle Online. Retrieved on 2007-04-05. 
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Sanger, Larry (2007-12-22). "An explanation of the Citizendium license". Retrieved on 2007-12-22.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Larry Sanger. "Constables, editors, and the Citizendium Foundation", Citizendium-l mail list, September 23, 2006.
  22. ↑ Larry Sanger. "How should we manage growth?", Citizendium forum, October 2, 2006.
  23. ↑ Sarah Tuttle. "Your executive committee", Citizendium blog, November 10, 2006.
  24. ↑ David Marshall. "My ideas on presenting consistently high quality content", Citizendium forum, October 26, 2006.
  25. ↑ "Project Directory: Citizendium Foundation". The Tides Center. Retrieved on 2007-06-05.
  26. ↑ Sanger, Larry (2007-12-21). "The Citizendium encyclopedia project picks a Creative Commons license". Retrieved on 2007-12-25.
  27. ↑ "Citizendium:Main Page". Citizendium. Retrieved on 2007-12-01.
  28. ↑ Lessig, Larry (2007-12-01). "Some important news from Wikipedia to understand clearly". Retrieved on 2007-12-23.
  29. ↑ "CZ:Should we permit or disallow commercial use of CZ-originated articles?". Citizendium. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  30. ↑ Larry Sanger (2007-11-19). "A fascinating license question". Retrieved on 2007-11-21."CZ:License_Essays". Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
  31. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Citizendium launch plan as of September 26", Citizendium-l mail list, September 27, 2006.
  32. ↑ WOS video stream containing Sanger's announcement
  33. ↑ Peter Hitchmough. "Proposal: Fork Wikipedia and launch with some A1-class model subjects", Citizendium forum, October 2, 2006.
  34. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Administrivia: interesting pilot project proposal", Citizendium-l mail list, October 2, 2006.
  35. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Call for applications to participate in the Citizendium Pilot Project", Citizendium.
  36. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Pilot Project Application Review Procedure", Citizendium-l mail list, November 13, 2006.
  37. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Ad hoc steering group kicked off", Citizendium-l mail list, October 18, 2006.
  38. ↑ Jason Potkanski. "Developers Wanted: forge.citizendium.org Open", Citizendium-l mail list, October 23, 2006.
  39. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Stats", Citizendium blog, November 8, 2006.
  40. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Would you contribute more if the wiki were blank?", Citizendium forum, January 17, 2007.
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 Larry Sanger. "Self-registration begins!", Citizendium-l mail list, January 22, 2007. The first act of vandalism was carried out via an account named 'Chris Nguyen', to vandalise three pages including the main one and that of Larry Sanger, apparently before the announcement was made. The account was indefinitely blocked a little over half an hour after the first improper edit.
  42. ↑ Citizendium pilot wiki. "Main page revision history", January 23, 2007.
  43. ↑ Larry Sanger. Upcoming announcements; your help requested, Citizendium-l mail list, January 19, 2007
  44. ↑ Vandal Assault at the Citizendium Blog
  45. ↑ "Page moves now require constable help; and semi-automated hand-approval of new accounts?", Citizendium-l mail list, February 17, 2007
  46. ↑ Larry Sanger. "We have launched", Citizendium blog, March 25, 2007
  47. ↑ Bergstein, Brian (2007-03-25). "Citizendium aims to be better Wikipedia". Associated Press. "This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls." — Brian Bergstein.
  48. ↑ Larry Sanger. "Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed", Citizendium, March 2007.
    "Our activity has grown from 100 edits per day in the first month to over 500 prior to launch. Every day, a large variety of people from many fields sign on and do some work. This is all in a period in which the project has been visible only to those who have applied to the project. In addition, while it has received a fair bit of press, we have done very little in the way of recruitment--but with good results when we have. More aggressive recruitment is our trump card, which we haven't played."
  49. ↑ Larry Sanger. Citizendium Opens its Free Online Encyclopedia Project to the Public Citizendium, March 27, 2007.
    "The modest success of our pilot project shows that there is hope that we can correct exactly the sort of abuses that people demonize Web 2.0 for,” said the project’s Editor-in-Chief, Wikipedia co-founder Dr. Larry Sanger. “You don’t have to choose between content and accountability. We have shown that we can create open and credible content. We can, in fact, be open to all sorts of participants, but still hold people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community."
  50. ↑ Sanger, Larry. "CZ:Family-Friendly Policy", Citizendium. Retrieved on 2007-06-07. "Probably, we will not have graphic depictions of the sex act or photographs of human sex organs; we will have few articles about pornography; we will not catalog every sex position and every fetish; we will not have gratuitous, and truly shocking and disgusting, pictures of gore (e.g., crime scene photos); and so forth." 
  51. ↑ Sanger, Larry. "CZ:Professionalism", Citizendium. Retrieved on 2007-07-15. "The Citizendium differs significantly from other online communities in its commitment to professionalism--that is, professional behavior--and low tolerance for incivility and disruption. For there to be efficient content output and motivated contributors it is crucial that we all treat each other "professionally," and each other's work respectfully." 
  52. ↑ Larry Sanger (2007-06-29). "Toward CZ 2.0". Citizendium-l. Retrieved on 2007-06-29.
  53. ↑ Waters, Richard (2007-11-05). "Citizendium vs Wikipedia", Financial Times. Retrieved on 2007-11-15. 
  54. ↑ Report: http://www.newsobserver.com/1566/story/803518.html. The Society for New Communications Research website: http://www.sncr.org. Also see Citizendium Blog entry.

External links

Wikipedia
Main articles
History · Wikimedia Foundation · Wikimania · MediaWiki · Reliability · Criticism · Deletionism and inclusionism · Academic studies about Wikipedia · WikiScanner
People
Jimmy Wales · Larry Sanger · Florence Devouard · Angela Beesley Starling · Sue Gardner · Erik Möller · Michael Snow
Events
Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China · Congressional staffer edits to Wikipedia · Essjay controversy · Seigenthaler incident · Chris Benoit double murder and suicide · Henryk Batuta hoax · Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia  · Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story
Related projects and forks
Bomis · Nupedia · Citizendium · Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español · Deletionpedia · Interpedia · MyWikiBiz · Veropedia · Wikia · Wikipedia Review · Wikitruth · Wikiweise · WikiZnanie · WikiPilipinas