My mistake, I sent the message to you directly, I sent it to the list again now.
> Nice to hear you are working on something like this. I think that > multiple-versions is the new frontier in encyclopedias, and what > citizendium primarily seems to be doing is maknig a moderated version of > wikipedia (and creating the editorial community around it.) Indeed. > Your idea needs a bit of effort on the part where you select different > versions. Instead of voting, there should be a simple way to determine > which version you want to see, so that users could select a pre-defined > selection of articles depending on their current needs (e.g. a scientists > encyclopedia, a philosophers encyclopedia). Each group would branch (fork) > off its own version tree, and edit it to make it specialized for their > needs, and they would have to do the work of keeping it up to date vis a > vis other branches. I see what you mean, but a disadvantage of what you suggest is that it does not allow the same text to be used by multiple peer-groups. This is a result of the coupling of the selection of texts for an user to view and their branching into different texts. Physically copying and modifying a text is something different from deeming it usefull for a certain peer-group. Actually the peer-group based voting system has a few more advantages over the physically forking of the content: * it allows competition between versions within peergroups (and thus it makes disallowing editing by anyone but the owner no problem, opening the gates for real intellectual responsibility) * the peergroups can be self-organizing (voting-power determined by votes from the peer-group on one's own contributions) * peer-groups can start off small and still be usefull, and can be layered (philosophers of history, choosing 'philosophy of history' as their first peer-group, and 'philosophy' as their second. Then if no rating is found for their first peer-group, the philosophy peer-group's rating is used for determining the version they see). > I would be interested in collaborating with your project, as it sounds like > it is on the right track. You're welcome. You could join the LogiLogi Manta mailinglist for a start: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/logilogi-list LogiLogi is written in Ruby (on Rails), and largely along the principles beautifully described in the book 'Getting Real', by the award winning web-development company 37 Signals (with the difference that LogiLogi Manta is Open Source). Rails is really a bliss for the developper, so even if you don't have any experience with it, you probably will enjoy learning it. > BTW Have you heard of Kim Veltman, from the > University of Maastricht? He is also working on knowledge organization, > and is a friend of mine. I worked on one of his projects 10 years ago. I have heard of him, but I never met him in person. Would be an interesting person to meet. > I think eventually if we can get this demo right, we could then patch > MediaWiki also, or extend it to support multiple versions, something > Rational's Clearcase does very well. I already investigated applying the peergroup-system to MediaWiki, and the other improvements that LogiLogi Manta brings, but it seems very hard, at best, not just technically, but also in terms of the re-structuring of the articles required (which is why we started from scratch). greetings, Wybo > I am a software engineer, btw, and have a personal non-professional > interest in knowledge organization that dates back 12 years. > > cheers, > Hasan Murtaza > > >From: Wybo Wiersma > > > >Hasan I fully agree with what you write below about the advantages of > >"according to"-settings. I already championed for simmilar features, > >but Larry's choice for a classical encyclopedia-style review process > >and MediaWiki as a platform makes a real combination of open-ness and > >quality impossible. > > > >LogiLogi Manta, a small project funded by the Philosophy Department of > >the RuG (a Dutch University) that was already defined and started > >before Citizendium was announced will implement what you propose in > >the form of peer-groups: > >http://en.logilogi.org/MetaLogi/LogiLogiManta > > > >In LogiLogi results from new research (due to the peergroup system) or > >articles for different levels of audience (thanks to to the section > >system) are no problem either. > > > >Of course I understand why a classical review-process is chosen for > >Citizendium, namely because it is known to and trusted by the target > >editors audience. The problem is however that it's not optimized for > >the web as a medium, as it neglects possibilities that the web offers > >like "according to"-settings. > > > >And MediaWiki is the only viable choice if one wants to build upon > >(all) content of Wikipedia. Nice, but MediaWiki is not designed with > >combining openness and quality in mind, and adding those features > >will take much longer than starting from scratch... > > > >Expected release date for LogiLogi Manta: around the end of 2006. > > > >Wybo > > > >> (Just as a google is 10 to the 100th power, a googleplex is 10 to the > >> googleth power. By similar reasoning, Just as a the wikipedia is a > >single > >> enyclopedia, a wiki-plex is an ensemble of encyclopedias where every > >article > >> has an infinite number of possible versions associated with it. > >(Anybody > >> can define their own version for themselves.) > >> > >> A complex set of preferences could be defined that lets the invidual > >reader, > >> select whose version of the encyclopedia they want to see, subdivided by > >> section or individual article. > >> > >> For example > >> > >> > >> # sample user configuration for the CZ > >> select latest version by "cambridge university philosophy department" > >for > >> articles on Philosophy > >> select latest version by nasa for articles on space > >> select latest version before 2006 by jimmy wales for articles on > >wikipedia > >> select latest modifications by citizendium_group for articles on > >anything > >> else > >> #etc. > >> > >> > >> With luck, the community will be able to regulate itself and there will > >not > >> be an N-squared explosion of versions defined by everyone and their dog. > >> One immediate benefit will be that the questions of fairness, > >censorship, > >> and credentials can be avoided in the near term, and these issues can be > >> pushed far into the future. > >> > >> > >> Everything I have seen in these discussions about the CZ seems to center > >> around clearing out the trolls, attracting new authors and defending the > >> realm with a new class of editors, essentially creating a moderated > >version > >> of wikipedia. Doing the things I mentioned above would truly make it a > >> citizens encyclopedia. Another way to understand this is that allowing > >> "private wikis" to coexist within the larger public wiki would be > >equivalent > >> to creating a merchant class in a medieval society, and it would be just > >the > >> thing to invigorate it with even more activity, and also solve all the > >> problems related to the lack of differentiation available in a > >monoversional > >> encyclopedia.) > >> > >> Hasan -- ::Student: - History, Informatiekunde (computer linguistics, IR, webtech) and Philosophy - Member of the Center for Metahistory Groningen (http://www.rug.nl/let/cmg) ::Free Software and Open Source Developer: - http://www.LogiLogi.org, innovative system for cumulative, shared commenting, publication and idea sharing: Web as it should be... - ComLinToo, a computational linguistics toolset written in Perl - Lake (LogiLogi.org Make), a make-replacement using makefiles in pure C++ ::Being: - In the world, go figure (http://nl.logilogi.org/HomE/WyboWiersma) _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
