All, I've been approached by and will soon meet face-to-face with a major player online who may be interested in supporting a consumer information database. This could result in *large* amounts of support for CZ. So, I'd like to ask you to help me think through the opportunity and the best way to approach it.
In a global economy, with new companies and new products appearing all the time, with the main source of consumer information being manipulative commercials and box labels, what could be more valuable to the world than a *truly neutral* source of information about products? The idea requires that we radically expand the notion of what is included in an encyclopedia, to encompass, well, *anything* of general interest. It would really put the meat on the bones of "the citizens' compendium of everything." It would involve information about every product (and, perhaps in time, every business, and every movie, and every song...) that someone wanted to be listed. This is crazy, of course. But there is a major player who might provide truly significant support to help us bring it into being. The *only* way to make this feasible, I think, is to create a groundswell of public support for the project. For that to happen, there must be, as well, a *credible non-profit* organization behind it; the development of the database must be maximally open and transparent; the results must be open content, of course; and the system whereby information is input is as simple as possible. But the *first and most important* constraint on this project that came to my mind when I started thinking about it is that the information must be neutral, and there must be effective (but still efficient!) ways to make sure that the information remains neutral. We must tread *very* carefully if we want to become a purveyor of consumer information, because the financial interests who might want to get involved could make it *so* easy, of course, to corrupt the fairness and reliability of the database. But the best way to secure this is precisely for the project to be maximally public, open, and transparent. Another constraint is that entries for products should not be flat wiki pages, but database entries, with preassigned fields, and of course with fields differing depending on product type. In every other respect, however, it could be a wiki. There is no *good* reason that I can see why this should not be part of the same database that is the Citizendium. What is needed, for articles about Kings and philosophers, and for products, is a neutral source of general information. One last thing to mention is that, in negotiating with this major online player, we walk a fine line. We want to provide this entity an incentive to support the Citizendium. But we cannot do that and compromise the neutrality of the database. The question that I will be thinking a great deal about is why they should support a non-profit organization that is committed to neutrality. What reason can I give them? Of course, if I can give them no persuasive reasons, then we won't pursue the opportunity. --Larry _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
