Dave Truncellito wrote: > And, even if I had scads of free time to devote to CZ, it remains unclear what it entails.
This is by design: in my experience, a key feature that makes online communities like Wikipedia (and before that, other communities I helped manage) robust is precisely that the contributors are co-founders and co-designers of the project. My role is to guide (and sometimes force!) the development of something that many participants feel, quite rightly, they have a hand in creating. By contrast, many, many a project withers on the vine because it is designed from the top down, as one person or a small group of people take it upon themselves to say exactly what is best for their future participants. Quite frequently they get it wrong. Anyway, if you really do want to know what at least on my latest view it entails, then go here: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium_Pilot:Policy_Outline > Is it for experts only or for everyone?) This last question is especially important to me. The reason I joined the project is that the Fundamental Policies (http://www.citizendium.org/fundamentals.html) indicate CZ will be "based on...expert opinion" and that editors will be "subject area experts". But it sounds as though you're now suggesting that those of us who think that CZ is for experts only are mistaken. So, can you reconcile this aspect of the policy with what you said in this email? I can reconcile them. On the one hand, the content of CZ is to be "based on...expert opinion," and indeed there are many "subject area experts" who already are serving as editors. On the other hand, in my e-mail I said, "CZ is not for experts only!" This means that people who are not experts can have a hand in creating it, and I encourage them to. Are you saying that you didn't realize that there would be a category of non-expert authors? That's kind of hard to believe. I quote from the very first sentence on http://www.citizendium.org: "The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a 'citizens' compendium of everything,' will be an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance." It is Citizendium, not Expertendium. I find it frustrating that people quite frequently insist that things must be either all of one thing or all of another. The world, and the best possible systems, are hardly every so black-and-white. --Larry _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
