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60 Comments
- iOsiris, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33The funny thing is when that director left Wikpedia citing roughly 'Wikipedia is crap' to establish Citizendium. He started off using a 1 to 1 copy of Wikipedia for Citizendium.
- AntBing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+29What if the mod is an idiot too?
- Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24I think you hit the nail on the head, that the volume of content has a direct relationship to the number of errors. The man power that goes into the Wikipedia is astounding, you couldn't produce a work so vast, so quickly without so many contributers anonymous and otherwise. The problem is that editorial control takes lots, and lots of energy. So either you get an even larger base of users, or you have less content that is more correct.
People often criticize the Wikipedia for it's inaccuracy, but really compare it to the only thing larger in scope- the entire web. A random webpage on a topic has much less editorial control than even the most contested Wikipedia entry. For its scope the Wikipedia is surprisingly accurate. - nickv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Citizenidum: There is no page titled "new york". You can create this page.
Weak. - kypen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Knock it all you want, but competition is never a bad thing. If it works for companies to drive quality up, why shouldn't it work for something like this? I think this is positive any way you look at it.
- macaddct1984, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13@Davidlow
But I would say the majority of Wikipedia submissions (even the excellent ones) are from people who don't have PhD's or official degrees, but from aficionados and self-proclaimed experts.
Also, the registration process for Citizendium is rather tedious and, being how skeptical people are on the internet, a big invasion of privacy. They require:
1. Your real name.
2. Your endorsement of the Citizendium Statement of Fundamental Policies.
3. A biography of 100-500 words.
4. A Web link or two that tends to establish your identity. (E.g., a link to your CV online.)
5. Send your request through a non-free email address that bears your name or a portion thereof.
A lot people who make valuable contributions do so once and without registering. Wikipedia is self-correcting, and does so (on average) pretty quickly. Yes, the more people that have access the more vandalism will occur. However, you also have more people correcting it, and those people usually stick around. Vandalism is often a one-time deal. - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14"Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy."
So they will just trust anyone on whatever info they provide? How is that different from wikipedia, except that potential trolls will end up having moderator powers? On the internet anything can be faked, and if someone's out to deliberately burn them, by requesting "credentials" they're just ensuring that they're gonna get burned by the best and most motivated on the field. - electrophile, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15agreed. lamest name ever.
- barneytoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Not sure how I EVER got anything done before wikipedia. I use it routinely for work and play. So what if there are a few errors. Most of it is amazingly accurate.
- brianjlowry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9No one can unseat MySpace because they aren't getting creative enough with their own websites. Most of the other social netorking sites look real *corporate* and from traffic analysis, it appears that people don't like a corporate-feeling website.
Citizendium will fail because:
1. its hard to remember the spelling
2. it brings nothing new to the table aside from a more difficult signup process which will limit traffic
3. it friggin looks exaclty like wikipedia.org... what is that? is that the standard encyclopedia layout?
View Source > Control + A > Control + C > Control + V ? - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Anything can always be reversed back to any state easily.
- utcursch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"I've always thought there should be a version of Wikipedia where all edits have to be confirmed, and the regular Wikipedia could remain as a "sandbox" for edits to be made."
Wikipedia:Release Version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Release_Version
Tentative list for 2007:
http://2007-wikipedia-cd-selection.fixedreference.org/wp/index/alpha.htm
Wikipedia:Version 0.5 CD (coming soon, free download + sale if you want to support):
http://www.wikipediaondvd.com
Also, they are working on the "Stable versions" feature -- a function in the wiki so that the readers can see some form of approved version of an article. A developer is hired to work on that function:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/30700 - neuropsychguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane."
Probably when it's being written by the people who really know what they are talking about! Have you ever read research articles? - quomen, on 10/12/2007, -8/+16in online terms, wikipedia is to citizendium as myspace is to facebook.
put everything on a real name basis with real faces and people will stay humbled - Razak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I don't even have an email with a portion of my real name, and I wouldn't give any company a real email address either, those free ones are made for the sole reason of avoiding the spam that would likely occur from giving a company my email. Yeah this lets in those people who make 1000 emails just to have false accounts and such, but if companies wouldn't sell our emails to the lowest bidder so easily and we could actually entrust our emails with them, perhaps this wouldn't even be an issue because people would be more prone to give real emails.
I would also argue, that yes as a professional you would likely want the credit yourself for the purpose of recognition. But you can already do that on wikipedia (sure I could make Jack Thompson's account for him and talk about various untruths, but he does that anyway).
I don't disagree with the concept of having verified people in charge of certain sectors and doing the editing and what not to make sure that something is correct though. But it doesn't need to be for anyone wanting to make a post. (after all, how can you verify someone's credetials in a list of big breasted porn sites anyway).
Plus the name citizenatopiapediaaddrandomsyllablehereapy is really silly and even if they were the inventor of the wiki idea, that name would not work and they should know better. I bet the guy who thought of it can't remember it half the time. - Comatose51, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@Davidlow: On the contrary, I contribute to computer science article whenever I can but the vast majority of those articles are already pretty good. If I was to contribute, I would contribute to the Wikipedia because I know it will serve the most people. The whole point of a wiki is to have a low cost of entry. Having to sign up, provide info, and somehow prove that my degree is in CS (which still doesn't prove that much), is just too much of a pain. You don't need certified experts in a field to spot errors.
- Ascendant, on 10/12/2007, -10/+15It shouldn't be too difficult to have very few errors on a site that will simply have very little content.
No one's managed to unseat MySpace- despite all of MySpace's flaws which are quite well known to all diggers.
And Wikipedia is a hell of a lot better than MySpace - the idea of trying to unseat it seems rather laughable. - Hyperreality, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4... But I like Wikipedia!
- xtmno3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@kypen:
Competition helps if the people running something do so with a motivation to succeed (and keep their jobs). Competition will hurt Wikipedia and Citizendium because it is not populated with data by the people who operate it. Random John Q. Publics won't go to both sites to enter the same data twice just so both can be complete. If anything, it will take the full set of data that would be contributed and split it into two sources people now have to check to get information on a topic.
By splitting the data into two groups (most likely not linked to each other since they are competition), people now have less convenience.
This will do nothing but harm the Wikipedia community. - davidlow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@Homunculiheaded,
Let's also look at this from a contributor's point of view. If you were contributing in an area of your own expertise, wouldn't you rather do it in Citizendium? As an expert, you would be more rigorous and more thorough than the others involved, and the prospect of having a non-expert pick apart your work is a strong deterrent to donating your time. I mean, your specialized knowledge might even be the basis for your income and now you're considering doing one for free. Unless you're intention is to be an anonymous corporate whistle blower you'd probably choose Citizendium.
For non experts & other people charitable with their time and knowledge, Wikipedia makes more sense. Citizendium will have much slower growth than Wiki did. It won't be much of an attraction for years. - davidlow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Compare two entries between Wikipedia & Citizendium.
CHIROPRACTIC
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic
Citizendium: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Chiropractic
METABOLISM
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism
Citizendium: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Metabolism
Notice the differing biases in the Chiropractic entries. Since the Citizendium entry must be written by someone already part of the chiropractic field, it is less critical (less objective) of that field than Wikipedia. From the reader's point of view (as opposed to the contributor's), if Citizendium ever catches on, Wikipedia will remain a very useful tool and will not be replaced. There's more going on here than simple competition. - kabronkline, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Can't even take the time to come up with a good name...? This is a joke, I predict that I will never hear, "Citizendium" ever again after burying this article.
- xtmno3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There is no page titled "United States of America". You can create this page.
There is no page titled "Earth". You can create this page.
There is no page titled "George Bush". You can create this page.
There is no page titled "Net Neutrality". You can create this page.
There is no page titled "Car". You can create this page.
etcetera - muller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@kypen
Yes, competition is usually good for the consumer, but by multiple accounts, Wikipedia has been close to going under this year. There's no guarantee of a better product here, and it could very well put Wikipedia away for good. - GeneralKickass, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Citizendium sounds like *****. I'm all for Wikipedia.
- okokitsme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ antbing:
By now I guess there are enough Wikipedia editors as to do a system based on a Peer Review on articles, if they really want to check and moderate. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review )
This could be a bit simplified, but it seems to work in scientific publication. - scootinger, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Finally, it's about time! It's good that there will be an encyclopedia without all of the stupid decisions commonly made by power-hungry Wikipedia admins - i.e. the guy who claimed to be a college professor, deletion of articles such as GNAA and Brian Peppers, etc. Additionally I've always thought there should be a version of Wikipedia where all edits have to be confirmed, and the regular Wikipedia could remain as a "sandbox" for edits to be made.
- AgentEntropy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ iOsiris
I suspect that he was referring to Wikipedia as an organization. And since he's basically trying to make a better Wikipedia, it wouldn't be unreasonable to start with what Wikipedia has already done and improve upon that, rather than start completely from scratch. - utcursch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@CAvenger
The reason why Wikipedia admins are perceived as ugly dictators is because they're involved with the dirty tasks that tend to cause heartburns (blocking, deleting pages etc.). Citizendium (or any other community-driven site) will face similar problems as it grows in size.
Yes, there have been a few cases of admin abuse but it doesn't mean that all 1156 admins are rogues (as I write this, there are 1156 admins on English Wikipedia alone).
If you ever run into trouble with a rogue admin on Wikipedia, just file an RfC agains him/her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFC/ADMIN#Use_of_administrator_privileges
Many admins have been been stripped of their powers after their misconduct was reported:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_de-adminship#Cases - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7You will be dugg down here. Remember, a wikipeida admin is all knowing, never wrong, always objective, and slams racist phrases when he/she deletes an article deemed unworthy.
..oh shi*turth hidden beneath the storm of -diggs* - saska, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=California_Gold_Rush&action=history
Relevant random bizarre vandalism that would easily be prevented by auto-locking after too many edits. - Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm, haven't we had enough introductory stories on Citizendium by now?
As for the project, given Wikipedia's "minor" content advantage :-p it will be a hell of an uphill for that project. Granted, they can copy GFDL-licensed material, but then they're also copying a lot of what they're saying is bad. I also think they need to be more open to, if not contributors, at least *readers* than they are now. - thedobber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Anything can always be reversed back to any state easily."
Ever hear the punchline "You can unscrew a lightbulb" - tawker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2On average, "obvious" vandalism under 30 seconds. Page blanking and the likes, under 5, often close to 2 seconds.
It's the content vandalism you really have to worry about, people changing dates, introducing factual errors etc. Sadly, I haven't found a way to fix that as quickly - can't really automate it. - tawker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, it really comes down to who you are dealing with. 99% of the time you are dealing with actions that could almost be automated (like someone replacing a page with nothing or randomly inserting vulgar language) - indeed, a large percentage of those vandalism edits are already automatically reverted by software. Of course, someone can go and complain to their heart's delight how they are being harassed by admins who blocked them for their vandalism edits, but where do you cross the line, if it's so blatantly obvious as to be automatically reverted there is no judgment call whatsoever.
I'm not saying there are not bad WP admins, I'm pretty sure there are. You are talking about the 10-15th busiest site online, a site TIME called "the premier online reference" and yes, it's not going to be perfect. Governments are not perfect, nothing is perfect. All we can do is take constructive criticism and try and improve. - KicktheDonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There are a lot of red links on them-there pages...
- kernelhappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Jimbo needs to face the fact that wikipedia is growing and along with it so are the malicious users. I can understand that they don't want to ebb the flow of information for multiple sources, or install controls that would let few users censor articles to their personal views, but something needs to be done. I've noticed that vandals have become far more savvy in spreading misinformation. It's gotten to the point where if you want to revert obvious vandalism you have to review the articles entire history and do some research to make sure that you are restoring it to a accurate state rather than to a less obvious instance of vandalism.
My personal pet peeve is with wikizealots who hold no original research to zero tolerance under the premise that it undermines the integrity of the article, but will accept some rather flimsy citations. (Read the discussion and history on some of the Heroes (TV 2006) entries, if someone said Nathan Petrelli had the power of flight because he observed it in an episode, it was original research, but citing a TV guide article where the author made the same conclusion, that's ok.) It's a difficult challenge to balance the ability to leverage multiple people against the credibility of the content, but it feels like it's already leaning in one direction.
I find the impetus behind wikipedia noble, but it's time to face reality. I personally do minor edits and watch for vandalism on articles where I know my knowledge is strong. I would not be offended if I had to prove myself by submitting minor edits and eventually work my way up to being autonomous. I can see the danger of controls like this allowing users higher up to force their views or censor others but I maintain that it wouldn't be very different than what is already being done in some articles, only the mechanism would change and with it stop some of the vandalism. I can totally accept that my solution may not be optimal or even feasible, but as it stands now wikipedia has a disease that's just being ignored. - daimposter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the problem with wikipedia is that it's toooooo easy to make edits. you shouldn't have to verify who you are with a real name but you should have a log-on, sign in to make changes. right now, any idiot can browsing for the first time can just click 'edit' and write whatever they want on the vast majority of articles.
just the other day, i was reading into the constitution and one of the amendments had a section where the actual verbage is written but instead it had "anyone can edit this. this is proof that wikipedia is worthless". I'm on wikipedia numerous times a week over the past year and I've seen at least 10 'vanadlisms' like this.
i will await for citezendium, but to be honest, they will have much less information and will only use them for very popular searches (i.e. famous people, wars, govermnent duties, cities and countries, etc). - dstz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Jimbo needs to face the fact that wikipedia is growing and along with it so are the malicious users."
I think that people who respect Wikipedia as it is, as it is intended, are optimistic and think that many interesting people will make their voice clearer than many stupid people, and that people against wiki are pessimists and think the contrary.
I'm rather optimistic. - changyang1230, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Who said it's weak? It's got Subcaudal scales!
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Subcaudal_scales
/sarcasm - xtmno3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@briandjlowry:
the reason it looks the same would probably be because they use the same software to run them: mediawiki. It sets up a template look whihc you can modify, but many people don't. - phlux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I always have very little repect for those that make a judgement based on very little data.
In the case of citizendium, I was skeptical at first. I read their goals, looked at the site a little then sent them an email simply stating who i was and why I thought the idea has merit and sent them a link to my resume.
Got an account very shortly after.
Here is why I think that citizendium is a great idea;
- dont expect it (or want it) to have the vastness that wikipedia has. citizendium can have a very specific purpose, which it claims to have.
- I made some suggestions to the layout, look, feel and direction of the site and UI and they seemed to be responsive to it
- in the case of citizendium their entry points are organized around regular disciplines, but there is a potential to have entry points that are organized around the industry/filed that the experts (contributors/authors etc) actually work in. In my case IT.
I would like this wiki to be organized in such a way that it shares a bunch of information on a field, such as IT and helps people find and understand contemporary experience dealing with each field.
so - I do think this idea has potential and people should make an effort to make something better. Simply complaining shows you have little to offer. - thadz1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2How are they going to generate income w/ no ads? Non-profit doesn't mean non-cost. These "experts" have better things to do with their time than browse through hundreds of articles written by clowns who know nothing about this "experts'" field. Just can't have an open editing w/out errors.
- AggroBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'll dig this just because it's not about Conservapedia. ;)
- jerwong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"The downside is that the free encyclopedia has its share of errors and juvenile vandalism, and sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane."
They forgot censorship. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Heh, if citzendium grew and was big, it would attract all the idiots wikipedia has.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Piffle on all that. If they want me to put my real name on my work then they can pay me a salary. I only "work" for free on wikipedia because if I mess up it is just an anon account that messed up, not me. Who is to say, for sure, whether they will reveal your identity or not.
Again, piffle on that. Give them your details if you want but not mine. - Grassmunk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Its not really the vandalism i have an issue with. Its those with the loudest voice and most persistence get to control the final version of the entry. I'm sure there aren't any blatant errors but it sure as hell could use some work cleaning up. Unfortunately those who offer their time to clean it up are often smacked down by other users and now hate Wikipedia. (i know i sure as hell do).
- Druidictus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It also has a Jewish bias toward history. Many refuse to use the site due to the Zionist Lobby's power ont he site.
- Gugel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1OMG, a business is not 100% perfect? *gasp*
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