{"id":1349,"date":"2010-07-23T20:59:53","date_gmt":"2010-07-24T00:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=1349"},"modified":"2010-07-28T20:49:02","modified_gmt":"2010-07-29T00:49:02","slug":"citizendium-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2010\/07\/23\/citizendium-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizendium: failure to thrive, in search of peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

After early months of interest and glory — peaking in a spike in mailing list traffic that was\u00a0moderated<\/strong> for being too active — Citizendium’s growth all but shut down<\/del> levelled off and has\u00a0declined steadily<\/a> since 2008. \u00a0 Now it is\u00a0looking for a long-term home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have mixed feelings about Citizendium. \u00a0I was excited about it in 2006 — at first blush, it offers a serious alternative for expert editors who want to contribute to free knowledge but feel unappreciated or unwelcome at Wikipedia. \u00a0And in general, compatibly-licensed alternatives to Wikipedia are a very good thing – the whole point of using free licenses is to encourage reuse. \u00a0 But to succeed on the scale of its original dreams, Citizendium must overcome its insularity and make good on its core promise of quality. \u00a0Not unlike<\/strong> Wikipedia<\/a>, it is currently known as much for its\u00a0humorous highlights<\/a> as for its best work. \u00a0And it faces the same problems with difficult and misguided editors — some who have quite solid credentials — only with a much smaller community to handle that workload.<\/p>\n

I still hope for a proliferation of cousin projects, all competing to find the best way to spur collaboration around free knowledge. \u00a0There is so much to explore in the way of how to create welcoming communities for different audiences of writers and creators. \u00a0Community atmosphere<\/strong>, and a limitation in the types<\/strong> of knowledge that can be easily shared, are among Wikipedia’s major bottlenecks. \u00a0 It is welcoming to a narrow[ing?] audience, and if this does not change it may face its own dramatic slowdown in participation – more joyful models are welcome. \u00a0(My recent favorite, in style, tools, and atmosphere:\u00a0fotopedia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The questions that inspire Citizendium remain: \u00a0How can we expand collaborative production of educational works to topics that require rare expertise in a field? \u00a0How can\u00a0we verify new works as quickly as they are produced, and how much does this speed depend on the commonality of the knowledge involved? \u00a0
\n<\/p>\n

Verification processes are time-consuming, as the slow but steady\u00a0output\u00a0of Nupedia, CZ, and even\u00a0Veropedia<\/a> show. Since 2006, CZ has produced roughly 150\u00a0verified articles\u00a0(almost triple Nupedia’s output and, well, 150 more than\u00a0Wikipedia’s own<\/a>). The\u00a0featured article<\/a> and\u00a0peer review<\/a> processes on various language Wikipedias are likewise nororiously slow.<\/p>\n

CZ and others try to accomplish this by raising the bar for personal credentials of contributors, and increasing the personal responsibility of a group of meta-editors for the quality of work in a topic. \u00a0 Some common dilemmas:<\/p>\n

Verifying expertise is difficult without it.
\nExperts face demand on their time from many projects.
\nPast expertise is no guarantee of future quality of work.
\n<\/em>Professional\u00a0reputation <\/strong>can be tied to a particular theory.
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a dilemma special to Wikipedia’s commitment to NPOV: experts often have strong opinions about which theories are right and wrong in their fields. \u00a0 How can they contribute in peace to a discussion whose end result will not take a position on which is right?<\/p>\n

Two thoughts:<\/p>\n