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Today's Topics:
1. Geogra-thon report (Larry Sanger)
2. What's the point? (Larry Sanger)
3. Re: What's the point? (Larry Sanger)
Message
All,
The Geogra-thon was a success, put us over 4,100 articles, and helped
give the wiki a post-Thanksgiving kick in the pants, too. Thanks to
Derek Harkness for organizing it! We created (or edited) many
geography articles, including a lot of articles about towns:
Sydney
New South Wales
Uganda
Hong Kong
Antarctica
Cheshire
Ghana
Guilin
Macau
Amherst
Alaska
Lebanon
Egypt
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Seward's Icebox
Argentina
Quebec City
Argentina
Cuba
County of Lebanon
City of Lebanon, Pennsylvania
Guatemala
Zugspitze
Leipzig
Sweden
Nice, eh?
For links, go to
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Geography_Workgroup/Gazetteer/Geogra-thon#The_Partiers
--Larry
All,
I just had a thought. (I'm not sure how these thoughts come to me, they
just do.)
Many people have essentially asked me, "Since Wikipedia is 'good enough,'
what is the point of the Citizendium?" The answer, of course, is that
Wikipedia *isn't* good enough, and given its policies, it is highly unlikely
that it ever will be. More to the point, over the long haul, the
Citizendium can do better.
But that's always my reply. It now occurs to me that the underlying insight
has not been emphasized enough. As I look at various encyclopedia
articles--and my own writings--I am struck by *how much work* there is to
do, to perfect them. For example, to find exactly the right reference, and
place it at exactly the right place, is very difficult and time-consuming.
Most people don't spend the time needed to get it exactly right. A work is
hailed as brilliant if it merely doesn't get anything too badly wrong.
Well, the great thing about the Citizendium is that we have the (growing)
community and the (developing) policies that is allowing us to grow not just
*another* encyclopedia, but a *continuously improving* encyclopedia. That
is the brilliance of our plan.
The day we look forward to is not the day when we have millions of articles,
but the day when serious professionals say, "The Citizendium articles in my
area are of such stunning quality that I can't imagine how they could be
improved. They have been worked and reworked by hundreds, or thousands, of
specialists, in my field. They contain, of course, no known factual errors.
The coverage is complete; the tiniest details are covered in more
specialized articles. The writing reflects consistently superb
craftsmanship: accessible to the college student on more basic topics
(without removing accuracy), and clear on more advanced topics. The
citations are brilliantly chosen, always reflecting the best (original, or
most authoritative) sources. They do not favor any side in any controversy,
but provide full details of the debate, so that the reader can be fully
informed so as to make up his or her own mind. The bibliographies and
external links, fully annotated, list virtually every credible source on
their topics. The other supplementary material, on subpages, is of equally
high quality. In short, the only reason to change the articles (and whole
clusters) now is that the field itself changes."
An article is one thing. A magisterial article is quite another. The
difference is huge and hugely important.
It's a long road from here to there. Wikipedia is very, very far from that
point, and again I doubt it will ever reach that point; if I thought they
did, I wouldn't have started CZ. We, however, have a chance!
In fact, in view of this, you might well ask yourself: what is the point *of
Wikipedia*? It's never going to get past a certain level of mediocrity. I
think that, as the years go by, we are going to find more and more people
asking themselves that--and coming to CZ. Because it's *not* just about
quantity. It's about quality. And we have the nascent community and
policies in place that actually have a chance to achieve the sort of high
quality a global collaboration of scholars can achieve.
Mind you, I still think it's all right if we start with stubs; we have to
start somewhere. But we should also keep our eyes on the prize, because our
substantial promise of achieving that sort of stunning quality is really
what makes it all worthwhile.
--Larry
P.S. Could someone, please, adapt the above and add it to either
[[CZ:About]] or [[CZ:FAQ]]? Also, I'd like to see recommendations on the
forums about how this might clarify our implicit mission statements in
[[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]] and also [[Main Page]].
A summary, added to the blog:
The bottom line: our aim is quality, not quantity. We already know that
"crowds" can produce massive quantities of content. Big deal. The
*Citizendium* is about developing our massive quantities of content into
works of stunning quality, over the long term. We have a better shot than
*anyone* at doing this.
--Larry
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