Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Marc Riddell wrote: > >>> But this website's defensive attitude and approach to serious >>> academics is well known. And that attitude goes back to its roots. >>> >>> Marc > > on 4/23/10 2:13 PM, Fred Bauder at fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: >> >> There was certainly a lot of misunderstanding. You can go back to the >> early history of the article "reality" a little article I created March >> 11, 2002: >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=27840 >> >> At a certain point Larry will chime in... >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&diff=356398&oldid=356321 >> >> His comment is typical of him in arrogant mode, "Start on an actual >> article on this subject, with further explanation as to why the former >> article didn't really concern the topic" as he removes all prior content >> and substitutes his view. >> >> You see, what he taught sophomores in his Intro to Philosophy class >> trumps all other content. Note the complete absence of any reference. >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=356398 >> >> At least the intro to the current article is not bad. Not an easy >> subject, but certainly one that concerns material outside the discipline >> of philosophy. Not long after this he wanted to ban me, but Jimbo vetoed >> him. >> > Thank you for this, Fred, it certainly appears to have been an uneasy > beginning. My comments are based mostly on the present. I am in regular > weekly contact with several key academic research groups throughout the > world. This involves many hundreds of individual scholars (academics, if you > will) in a variety of disciplines. Without fail, anytime the subject of > Wikipedia comes up, there is an overwhelmingly negative feeling about it. > Many have stories about their contributions being edited, scrutinized, and > finally deleted by persons who haven't the faintest knowledge of the > subject. When they protest, they are told of the "proper channels" they are > required to take: circles within circles. And, if that isn't enough, what > serious scholar is going to take the time to contribute to a Article in > their field when one minute later a totally anonymous, unaccountable > someone, can come along and vandalize it? These are just a few of the > comments I have heard over time. Much needs done before the Wikipedia > Project can be both popular and authoritative. > > Believe it or not, I do see and value the potential of the Wikipedia > Project. But to be continually touting its positives without taking a look > at and dealing with its problems is a recipe for disaster. > > Marc I think this varies widely across the project. There are small areas which aren't at all friendly to academics or experts, and other areas which are dominated by experts including leaders in the field. The areas which aren't friendly to them are a real problem, one which I don't want to minimize, but there are other areas which are glowing successes or at least tolerable situations. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 3:56 PM, David Gerard wrote: > On 23 April 2010 15:54, Marc Riddell wrote: > >> The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. Stick to numbers, Charles, >> the human equation clearly eludes you. > > translation: "I have not even anecdotes to support my position, so > will resort to ad-hominem abuse." Ah, a proper wiki-en-l dust-up. Been a long time since one of those rolled around. :-) Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> Interesting phenomenon I have noticed here and there: these experts > choosing to work on Wikipedia on an entirely different topic > altogether. That is to say, someone quite qualified and competent to > write articles on Assyrian archaeology in the way we normally mean > when we say "expert", but instead writing at some length about > eighteenth-century music, on the grounds that Assyrian archaeology is > too much like the day job - besides, the articles are a mess, and this > other stuff is fun, damnit. > > Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I leave as an exercise to > the reader. > > -- > - Andrew Gray > andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk I never had much interesting in editing articles on law; and, after a little experience with a "developer", little enthusiasm about arguing about generally accepted legal principles with a half-educated horse's ass. So I argued with a guy with a doctorate. Dumb arguments are maddening. Just how is one supposed to prove which way is up? Fred ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Thomas Dalton wrote: > We only started insisting on references once we realised > people were, against all expectation, actually using the articles we > were writing! You shouldn't judge people's historical actions by > modern standards. True. Remember at the time there was little or no assumption on our part that our articles were even being read by anyone but "us." -Stevertigo ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
David Gerard wrote: > It's evident, however, that Citizendium's alternative approach has > been a resounding failure, whereas Wikipedia wouldn't be a top 10 site > if it wasn't actually useful to people. > So the question becomes: how to get more expert oversight in? Keep in mind that Wikipedia has only been a resounding success because of its open ethics. No other reasons come close. Talk about "expert oversight" is just Nupedia-speak. -Stevertigo ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Tim Starling wrote: > Note that Sanger's didn't magically become difficult to get along with > after he left Wikipedia. He annoyed people in 2001 just as he does > now. Wikis have a way of losing history, or at least making it hard to > find, but you can find hints of discontent at pages like: Um, remember that in 2001, Sanger was *paid to annoy people. Anyone who is paid to do a task nobody else gets paid to do, will naturally have ideas about performing up to some impossible standard. -Stevertigo ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 23 April 2010 19:13, Fred Bauder wrote: > You see, what he taught sophomores in his Intro to Philosophy class > trumps all other content. Note the complete absence of any reference. You shouldn't hold the lack of a reference against him. I started editing a few months after those events and references were few and far between. We only started insisting on references once we realised people were, against all expectation, actually using the articles we were writing! You shouldn't judge people's historical actions by modern standards. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 23 April 2010 18:54, David Gerard wrote: > That said, any hypothesis claiming Wikipedia is fundamentally > expert-hostile needs to account for the fact of the startling > quantities of experts actually here and contributing. You can hardly > move on Wikipedia without bumping into someone with a doctorate. Interesting phenomenon I have noticed here and there: these experts choosing to work on Wikipedia on an entirely different topic altogether. That is to say, someone quite qualified and competent to write articles on Assyrian archaeology in the way we normally mean when we say "expert", but instead writing at some length about eighteenth-century music, on the grounds that Assyrian archaeology is too much like the day job - besides, the articles are a mess, and this other stuff is fun, damnit. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I leave as an exercise to the reader. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Fred Bauder wrote: > A lot of this sort of trouble results when an expert edits without citing > good sources. Students often can edit more successfully because they have > appropriate references at hand. > Interesting. This all sounded like absolutely standard "blog comment" complaint: the kind of beefs you get whenever someone blogs about WP, and contributions to the debate are largely anecdotes "I edited Wikipedia once and ...". So I thought I'd try a Google on "wikipedia is"+blog. And the _very first hit_ contained two gems: - someone complaining in 2010 about a one-line unreferenced BLP speedied CSD A7 in 2006 (which is the kind of thing I meant); but also - the WMF's current CTO writing this: "I've heard horror stories from many of my friends around the FOSS world who have tried to edit in areas where they are domain experts, only to give up because its too hard to get edits to "stick"." So which is it: Wikipedians are phobic about academics _and_ "Free and open source software" experts? Its own traditional demographic. Or there is the issue of "user unfriendliness" being read as "hostility"? The latter is an issue identified by the usability initiative, broadly speaking. It is perfectly reasonable to identify the "edits sticking" issue as troublesome. As with the first example, you would have to know more about the circumstances. Is this is the system working as it is intended to, or on the other hand some self-styled Linux wizard reverting from the hip? Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> Many have stories about their contributions being edited, scrutinized, > and > finally deleted by persons who haven't the faintest knowledge of the > subject. When they protest, they are told of the "proper channels" they > are > required to take: circles within circles. > Marc A lot of this sort of trouble results when an expert edits without citing good sources. Students often can edit more successfully because they have appropriate references at hand. Fred ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
>> But this website's defensive attitude and approach to serious >> academics is well known. And that attitude goes back to its roots. >> >> Marc on 4/23/10 2:13 PM, Fred Bauder at fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: > > There was certainly a lot of misunderstanding. You can go back to the > early history of the article "reality" a little article I created March > 11, 2002: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=27840 > > At a certain point Larry will chime in... > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&diff=356398&oldid=356321 > > His comment is typical of him in arrogant mode, "Start on an actual > article on this subject, with further explanation as to why the former > article didn't really concern the topic" as he removes all prior content > and substitutes his view. > > You see, what he taught sophomores in his Intro to Philosophy class > trumps all other content. Note the complete absence of any reference. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=356398 > > At least the intro to the current article is not bad. Not an easy > subject, but certainly one that concerns material outside the discipline > of philosophy. Not long after this he wanted to ban me, but Jimbo vetoed > him. > Thank you for this, Fred, it certainly appears to have been an uneasy beginning. My comments are based mostly on the present. I am in regular weekly contact with several key academic research groups throughout the world. This involves many hundreds of individual scholars (academics, if you will) in a variety of disciplines. Without fail, anytime the subject of Wikipedia comes up, there is an overwhelmingly negative feeling about it. Many have stories about their contributions being edited, scrutinized, and finally deleted by persons who haven't the faintest knowledge of the subject. When they protest, they are told of the "proper channels" they are required to take: circles within circles. And, if that isn't enough, what serious scholar is going to take the time to contribute to a Article in their field when one minute later a totally anonymous, unaccountable someone, can come along and vandalize it? These are just a few of the comments I have heard over time. Much needs done before the Wikipedia Project can be both popular and authoritative. Believe it or not, I do see and value the potential of the Wikipedia Project. But to be continually touting its positives without taking a look at and dealing with its problems is a recipe for disaster. Marc ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Fred Bauder wrote: > You can go back to the > early history of the article "reality" a little article I created March > 11, 2002: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=27840 > > At a certain point Larry will chime in... > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&diff=356398&oldid=356321 > > His comment is typical of him in arrogant mode, "Start on an actual > article on this subject, with further explanation as to why the former > article didn't really concern the topic" as he removes all prior content > and substitutes his view. > > You see, what he taught sophomores in his Intro to Philosophy class > trumps all other content. Note the complete absence of any reference. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=356398 > > At least the intro to the current article is not bad. Not an easy > subject, but certainly one that concerns material outside the discipline > of philosophy. Not long after this he wanted to ban me, but Jimbo vetoed > him. > [[User:Larry Sanger/Larry's Text]] was still causing trouble a year later. I think the distinction between "serious" and "solemn" is useful in dealing with "serious academics". Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> But this website's defensive attitude and approach to serious > academics is well known. And that attitude goes back to its roots. > > Marc There was certainly a lot of misunderstanding. You can go back to the early history of the article "reality" a little article I created March 11, 2002: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=27840 At a certain point Larry will chime in... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&diff=356398&oldid=356321 His comment is typical of him in arrogant mode, "Start on an actual article on this subject, with further explanation as to why the former article didn't really concern the topic" as he removes all prior content and substitutes his view. You see, what he taught sophomores in his Intro to Philosophy class trumps all other content. Note the complete absence of any reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reality&oldid=356398 At least the intro to the current article is not bad. Not an easy subject, but certainly one that concerns material outside the discipline of philosophy. Not long after this he wanted to ban me, but Jimbo vetoed him. Fred ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 23 April 2010 17:33, Marc Riddell wrote: > Fred, I will not present further to my remarks to Charles - they stand as > stated. But this website's defensive attitude and approach to serious > academics is well known. And that attitude goes back to its roots. It's evident, however, that Citizendium's alternative approach has been a resounding failure, whereas Wikipedia wouldn't be a top 10 site if it wasn't actually useful to people. So the question becomes: how to get more expert oversight in? That said, any hypothesis claiming Wikipedia is fundamentally expert-hostile needs to account for the fact of the startling quantities of experts actually here and contributing. You can hardly move on Wikipedia without bumping into someone with a doctorate. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
>> On 23 April 2010 15:54, Marc Riddell wrote: >> >>> The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. Stick to numbers, >>> Charles, >>> the human equation clearly eludes you. >> >> >> translation: "I have not even anecdotes to support my position, so >> will resort to ad-hominem abuse." >> >> >> - d. > on 4/23/10 12:09 PM, Fred Bauder at fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: > It is a surprisingly harsh comment; Charles comments seemed on point and > interesting. They added to the discussion. > Fred, I will not present further to my remarks to Charles - they stand as stated. But this website's defensive attitude and approach to serious academics is well known. And that attitude goes back to its roots. Marc ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> On 23 April 2010 15:54, Marc Riddell wrote: > >> The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. Stick to numbers, >> Charles, >> the human equation clearly eludes you. > > > translation: "I have not even anecdotes to support my position, so > will resort to ad-hominem abuse." > > > - d. It is a surprisingly harsh comment; Charles comments seemed on point and interesting. They added to the discussion. Fred ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 23 April 2010 15:54, Marc Riddell wrote: > The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. Stick to numbers, Charles, > the human equation clearly eludes you. translation: "I have not even anecdotes to support my position, so will resort to ad-hominem abuse." - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> Marc Riddell wrote: >> And, on not-so-obscure websites, where there is a clear - and acute - >> academiphobia present. >> >> on 4/23/10 10:31 AM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: > I can show you the academic mathematicians editing, if you like. It's > worth analysing the "black legend" that Wikipedia hates academics, > though. Fred's comment "Serious academics are knocking down big bucks > and writing books" is partly wrong. It would apply to, say, [[Niall > Ferguson]], though it must be said that his reputation has taken > something of a hit recently. It would not apply to academics who are in > academia because money is low on their list of priorities (yes, these > guys are definitely not normal). It would not apply to academics who > enjoy intellectual work, while writing books is mainly work work. It > seems to me that we get many graduate students editing: now why would > these people be at the same time academiphobic, and putting themselved > into straitened circumstance to hammer on the door of an academic career? > > Having interacted with a couple of the more high-profile academics who > have run into serious trouble on WP, I think I know the conditions that > cause the trouble (roughly speaking, a lack of acceptance that a website > is going to have policies and is entitled to have them, quite > indepedently of the eminence of someone who would like to turn pages to > other uses). I believe there must be many more cases of "I think what > you're doing is not that interesting" from academics, than such > trainwrecks. I believe the attitude we have to credentials is relatively > sensible - typically a doctorate doesn't qualify anyone to pontificate > over more than a small area. > > And the clear blue water between WP and CZ is not necessarily > disadvantageous to us. They reportedly have some issues with fringe > science being supported by their hierarchy, to the extent that it could > be an embarassment to dislodge it. What WP certainly has is a > disrespectfulness for the person set against a respect for the > referencing of what they submit. I'm yet to be convinced that that is a > wrong decision. It certainly beats the other way round. > The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. Stick to numbers, Charles, the human equation clearly eludes you. MR ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Marc Riddell wrote: > And, on not-so-obscure websites, where there is a clear - and acute - > academiphobia present. > > I can show you the academic mathematicians editing, if you like. It's worth analysing the "black legend" that Wikipedia hates academics, though. Fred's comment "Serious academics are knocking down big bucks and writing books" is partly wrong. It would apply to, say, [[Niall Ferguson]], though it must be said that his reputation has taken something of a hit recently. It would not apply to academics who are in academia because money is low on their list of priorities (yes, these guys are definitely not normal). It would not apply to academics who enjoy intellectual work, while writing books is mainly work work. It seems to me that we get many graduate students editing: now why would these people be at the same time academiphobic, and putting themselved into straitened circumstance to hammer on the door of an academic career? Having interacted with a couple of the more high-profile academics who have run into serious trouble on WP, I think I know the conditions that cause the trouble (roughly speaking, a lack of acceptance that a website is going to have policies and is entitled to have them, quite indepedently of the eminence of someone who would like to turn pages to other uses). I believe there must be many more cases of "I think what you're doing is not that interesting" from academics, than such trainwrecks. I believe the attitude we have to credentials is relatively sensible - typically a doctorate doesn't qualify anyone to pontificate over more than a small area. And the clear blue water between WP and CZ is not necessarily disadvantageous to us. They reportedly have some issues with fringe science being supported by their hierarchy, to the extent that it could be an embarassment to dislodge it. What WP certainly has is a disrespectfulness for the person set against a respect for the referencing of what they submit. I'm yet to be convinced that that is a wrong decision. It certainly beats the other way round. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> on 4/23/10 8:31 AM, Fred Bauder at fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: > Larry is doing a lot better controlling his nasty side on Citizendium > than he ever did on Wikipedia; there is a collegial atmosphere, more or > less. The problem is with the conception, not with his particular > behavior. He has not attracted the highly qualified academics he would > have to attract to make it a success. Third rate "experts" are not > significantly better editors than amateurs are. Serious academics are > knocking down big bucks and writing books, they don't piddle around on > obscure websites. > And, on not-so-obscure websites, where there is a clear - and acute - academiphobia present. Marc Riddell ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
> Charles Matthews wrote: >> Shrug. Sanger is no Wozniak. He did great things in the early days of >> WP. Subsequently [...] > > Anthony wrote: >> Meanwhile, they (especially Sanger) alienated a number of productive >> individuals by just not being nice enough. They closed down the >> mailing >> list just as it was starting to become heavily used. > > Note that Sanger's didn't magically become difficult to get along with > after he left Wikipedia. He annoyed people in 2001 just as he does > now. Wikis have a way of losing history, or at least making it hard to > find, but you can find hints of discontent at pages like: > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_drop-outs > > -- Tim Starling Larry is doing a lot better controlling his nasty side on Citizendium than he ever did on Wikipedia; there is a collegial atmosphere, more or less. The problem is with the conception, not with his particular behavior. He has not attracted the highly qualified academics he would have to attract to make it a success. Third rate "experts" are not significantly better editors than amateurs are. Serious academics are knocking down big bucks and writing books, they don't piddle around on obscure websites. Fred Bauder ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Charles Matthews wrote: > Shrug. Sanger is no Wozniak. He did great things in the early days of > WP. Subsequently [...] Anthony wrote: > Meanwhile, they (especially Sanger) alienated a number of productive > individuals by just not being nice enough. They closed down the mailing > list just as it was starting to become heavily used. Note that Sanger's didn't magically become difficult to get along with after he left Wikipedia. He annoyed people in 2001 just as he does now. Wikis have a way of losing history, or at least making it hard to find, but you can find hints of discontent at pages like: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_drop-outs -- Tim Starling ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 18 April 2010 20:47, Gregory Maxwell wrote: >> I don't agree. It's better you admit you can't measure the thing you >> want to talk about rather than passing off the measurement you can >> make as something it isn't. > > I think how much people use something is a reasonable measure of how > useful it is. Maybe it is only useful for entertaining people or > useful for satisfying idle curiosity, but that is still a use. Perhaps > you mean how useful something is for a particular purpose. If so, you > need to say what purpose you are talking about. Indeed. "Usefulness" is one of those terms that gets thrown around & debated a lot in the library science literature, and it turns out that usefulness is a deeply contextual concept that is difficult to measure by any metric: a reference work that is useful for settling a bar bet is not generally useful for writing one's thesis, and vice versa, even when it's the same subject in both contexts. This is actually often a helpful point to make to lay people who are concerned about student use, etc. when discussing Wikipedia. What are the useful functions of an encyclopedia? -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers gmail.com * ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 19 April 2010 17:52, David Gerard wrote: > On 18 April 2010 23:02, Anthony wrote: > >> Of course, change all this and they still likely would have never supplanted >> Wikipedia. Some sort of Wikiversity-like mission statement would have >> probably been more achievable. > > > Heh. Wonder if they would have gone for a bunch of trolls starting a > "how to troll" course. If you are going to have trolls, you might as well have competent ones! ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 23:02, Anthony wrote: > Of course, change all this and they still likely would have never supplanted > Wikipedia. Some sort of Wikiversity-like mission statement would have > probably been more achievable. Heh. Wonder if they would have gone for a bunch of trolls starting a "how to troll" course. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 10:15 PM, David Gerard wrote: > In March 2010, about 90 people made even a single edit to Citizendium: > > http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Statistics#Number_of_authors > > Compare Conservapedia, which has 76 at the time I write this. The > difference is, the latter is pretty much a personal website run by a > gibbering fundie lunatic which gets pretty much all its traffic from > sceptics making fun of it; the former was a serious project. > > This is terribly sad. What went wrong? > Lots of things. They should have never imported Wikipedia in the first place. They should have never changed the license. They shouldn't have taken so long to decide to change the license. They gave too much leeway to irrational individuals (especially if they happened to have degrees). Meanwhile, they (especially Sanger) alienated a number of productive individuals by just not being nice enough. They closed down the mailing list just as it was starting to become heavily used. Of course, change all this and they still likely would have never supplanted Wikipedia. Some sort of Wikiversity-like mission statement would have probably been more achievable. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
David Gerard wrote: > On 18 April 2010 21:10, Thomas Dalton wrote: > > >> I think how much people use something is a reasonable measure of how >> useful it is. Maybe it is only useful for entertaining people or >> useful for satisfying idle curiosity, but that is still a use. Perhaps >> you mean how useful something is for a particular purpose. If so, you >> need to say what purpose you are talking about. >> > > > http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/200912/ > Considering that everybody in this sub-thread has at a *minimum* being talking about usefulness to _people_, I don't think it is an unreasonable query to ask if that statistic filters out _robots_ crawling the site -- for whatever reason. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Thomas Dalton wrote: > > You are aware that Nupedia wasn't a wiki, right? > > Certainly - I've even read the book I co-authored which mentions this fact. The point I was trying to make is more like "if you bolt a community like a wiki onto Nupedia-like processes, you can expect a sort of social sclerosis which is not unlike a generic online community that works but with a rigidity about its hierarchy". Which turns a more standard MeatballWiki analysis like http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/CommunityMayNotScale on its head, actually. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 19 April 2010 09:07, Charles Matthews wrote: > Thomas Dalton wrote: >> On 18 April 2010 22:25, The Cunctator wrote: >> >>> Actually, we do know, because Citizendium is just a retread of Nupedia, >>> which wasn't going anywhere. >>> >> >> Nupedia was supposed to be experts writing articles. Citizendium is >> (in theory) anyone writing articles and experts resolving disputes and >> approving articles. That is a very different model. >> >> > Different, not "very different". > > Anyway wikis of a certain size and achievement (done some useful writing > but not going to set the world on fire) tend, I guess, to have features > in common because of the type and scale of the communities involved. It > seems that "social structure" = "the rut we're in" is about right for > these communities, including Citizendium. > > I don't think the English Wikipedia is immune from the "rut", but we are > the ones with the "very different" model. I think what Phil Sandifer was > saying is not correct, but that is because I would argue that utility of > a piece of hypertext shouldn't be measured as if the hyperlinks don't > matter (we saw this when the big rush on [[Michael Jackson]] caused all > that traffic to [[vitiligo]]): surf's up. And I would also argue that > the policy and community superstructure is useful (though not all of it, > and not all uniformly useful, of course). You are aware that Nupedia wasn't a wiki, right? ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 18 April 2010 22:25, The Cunctator wrote: > >> Actually, we do know, because Citizendium is just a retread of Nupedia, >> which wasn't going anywhere. >> > > Nupedia was supposed to be experts writing articles. Citizendium is > (in theory) anyone writing articles and experts resolving disputes and > approving articles. That is a very different model. > > Different, not "very different". Anyway wikis of a certain size and achievement (done some useful writing but not going to set the world on fire) tend, I guess, to have features in common because of the type and scale of the communities involved. It seems that "social structure" = "the rut we're in" is about right for these communities, including Citizendium. I don't think the English Wikipedia is immune from the "rut", but we are the ones with the "very different" model. I think what Phil Sandifer was saying is not correct, but that is because I would argue that utility of a piece of hypertext shouldn't be measured as if the hyperlinks don't matter (we saw this when the big rush on [[Michael Jackson]] caused all that traffic to [[vitiligo]]): surf's up. And I would also argue that the policy and community superstructure is useful (though not all of it, and not all uniformly useful, of course). Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 21:10, Thomas Dalton wrote: > I think how much people use something is a reasonable measure of how > useful it is. Maybe it is only useful for entertaining people or > useful for satisfying idle curiosity, but that is still a use. Perhaps > you mean how useful something is for a particular purpose. If so, you > need to say what purpose you are talking about. http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/200912/ - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 22:25, The Cunctator wrote: > Actually, we do know, because Citizendium is just a retread of Nupedia, > which wasn't going anywhere. Nupedia was supposed to be experts writing articles. Citizendium is (in theory) anyone writing articles and experts resolving disputes and approving articles. That is a very different model. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Actually, we do know, because Citizendium is just a retread of Nupedia, which wasn't going anywhere. On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 6:24 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 17 April 2010 03:15, David Gerard wrote: > > In March 2010, about 90 people made even a single edit to Citizendium: > > > > http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Statistics#Number_of_authors > > > > Compare Conservapedia, which has 76 at the time I write this. The > > difference is, the latter is pretty much a personal website run by a > > gibbering fundie lunatic which gets pretty much all its traffic from > > sceptics making fun of it; the former was a serious project. > > > > This is terribly sad. What went wrong? > > Citizendium was not sufficiently better than Wikipedia (one can argue > over whether or not it was better at all, but whatever difference > there was it was small) and was obviously much smaller, so it didn't > attract readers or editors: Wikipedia was "good enough" and people > rarely switch from something that is good enough. In order for a > project like Wikipedia or Citizendium to be successful you need > exponential growth (initially) caused by readers becoming editors and > writing articles that attract new readers. Citizendium has shown > almost perfect linear growth since its creation because that cycle > never happened. Its editors are, from what I can tell, mostly > disgruntled Wikipedians and it doesn't have any readers. > > We shouldn't conclude from this that the idea behind Wikipedia is > better than the idea behind Citizendium. The main factor is that > Wikipedia came first. Whether Citizendium would have succeeded if it > had come first, we'll never know. The only way a new project will ever > rival Wikipedia (assuming Wikipedia survives, anyway, and it is so big > now that it is hard to imagine it completely failing, although it > could change considerable) is if it is very much better than Wikipedia > in some respect (it can be worse in others). Such a project could then > start to attract readers who would kick off exponential growth. It is > readers that are important to attract - once you have those, they will > become the editors you need. > > You will note that I talk about Citizendium in the past tense. That is > because I concluded it was a failed project a year or so ago. I > suspect Larry Sanger has made the same conclusion, although he > (understandably) won't say so outright, since his involvement has been > steadily reducing and he has been working on new projects. > > One very interesting Citizendium statistic is the median article > length in words. It has been reducing by about 6 words a month for > years. I think that means most of the new articles being created are > stubs, or not much more than stubs, and nobody is working on expanding > existing articles. I feign no hypotheses for why this might be. I > don't have comparable statistics for Wikipedia, so for all I know we > are doing the same thing (although that seems unlikely now that > article creation has reduced). > > ___ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 20:47, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > I don't agree. It's better you admit you can't measure the thing you > want to talk about rather than passing off the measurement you can > make as something it isn't. I think how much people use something is a reasonable measure of how useful it is. Maybe it is only useful for entertaining people or useful for satisfying idle curiosity, but that is still a use. Perhaps you mean how useful something is for a particular purpose. If so, you need to say what purpose you are talking about. > Though we can measure some more useful things, E.g. Are subjects which > are more popular on Wikipedia than on third-party sites (e.g. google) > older or newer articles. Given the proportion of our hits that come from Google (about half of hits that don't come from people following links within Wikipedia), I doubt there will be any significant difference between how often something is viewed on Wikipedia and how often it is googled. Any difference there is will tell you more about the ways different groups of people do research than anything else. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > It's not a perfect metric, but it is probably the best one we can > actually measure. A metric we can't measure is completely useless. > When choosing a metric you always have to compromise between ease of > measurement and strength of correlation to the quantity you are > interested in. I don't agree. It's better you admit you can't measure the thing you want to talk about rather than passing off the measurement you can make as something it isn't. Though we can measure some more useful things, E.g. Are subjects which are more popular on Wikipedia than on third-party sites (e.g. google) older or newer articles. Current events and pop culture get the most traffic due to factors entirely unrelated to Wikipedia (they also get the most traffic in Google, for example). Today's current events and pop culture articles came late in Wikipedia's life (due to either the subject not existing / being well known in the past or due to the changing definition of what belongs in Wikipedia). So I'd _expect_ the most popular articles tend to be newer— and yet I think that expectation tells us very little about the _usefulness_ of the later created articles compared to the earlier ones. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 20:22, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Thomas Dalton > wrote: >> On 18 April 2010 19:54, Philip Sandifer wrote: >>> >>> On Apr 17, 2010, at 8:26 AM, David Gerard wrote: Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find useful. >>> >>> I'm not entirely sure of this. It is accurate to say that Wikipedia is >>> found useful by people - but I'm not sure the current community and >>> bureaucratic structures have anything to do with why. I suspect the useful >>> parts are unevenly distributed towards articles older than five years. >> >> Interesting hypothesis. It is testable, too - we just need a bot to >> sample a few thousand articles and compare their hits over the last >> month, say, with their creation dates. I suspect you are wrong, >> though, since you haven't accounted for current affairs articles and >> pop culture articles which are very popular, but not for long. > > > I think that is the wrong metric. Lots of people look at the sex > articles, but that isn't an indication that our sex articles are > considered more useful than, say, our articles on rockets or > gemstones. Sex just happens to have near-universal appeal— Joe might > be interested in rocks, John might be interested in rockets, but they > both have some interest in sex. As a result, "sex" a very popular > subject everwhere on the internet. The same kind of comparison can be > made for celebrity subjects. > > That a WP article gets a lot of traffic isn't always an indication > that the content is useful. Most of the people hitting the article > could be instantly hitting back because the article wasn't what they > wanted. > > There are probably a hundred ways that we could try to measure > something here, but I doubt we would agree on any one of them as > measuring the right thing. It's not a perfect metric, but it is probably the best one we can actually measure. A metric we can't measure is completely useless. When choosing a metric you always have to compromise between ease of measurement and strength of correlation to the quantity you are interested in. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 18 April 2010 19:54, Philip Sandifer wrote: >> >> On Apr 17, 2010, at 8:26 AM, David Gerard wrote: >>> >>> Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many >>> ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find >>> useful. >> >> I'm not entirely sure of this. It is accurate to say that Wikipedia is found >> useful by people - but I'm not sure the current community and bureaucratic >> structures have anything to do with why. I suspect the useful parts are >> unevenly distributed towards articles older than five years. > > Interesting hypothesis. It is testable, too - we just need a bot to > sample a few thousand articles and compare their hits over the last > month, say, with their creation dates. I suspect you are wrong, > though, since you haven't accounted for current affairs articles and > pop culture articles which are very popular, but not for long. I think that is the wrong metric. Lots of people look at the sex articles, but that isn't an indication that our sex articles are considered more useful than, say, our articles on rockets or gemstones. Sex just happens to have near-universal appeal— Joe might be interested in rocks, John might be interested in rockets, but they both have some interest in sex. As a result, "sex" a very popular subject everwhere on the internet. The same kind of comparison can be made for celebrity subjects. That a WP article gets a lot of traffic isn't always an indication that the content is useful. Most of the people hitting the article could be instantly hitting back because the article wasn't what they wanted. There are probably a hundred ways that we could try to measure something here, but I doubt we would agree on any one of them as measuring the right thing. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 19:54, Philip Sandifer wrote: > On Apr 17, 2010, at 8:26 AM, David Gerard wrote: >> Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many >> ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find >> useful. > I'm not entirely sure of this. It is accurate to say that Wikipedia is found > useful by people - but I'm not sure the current community and bureaucratic > structures have anything to do with why. I suspect the useful parts are > unevenly distributed towards articles older than five years. I'm not sure they are either. OTOH, there's at least 250 ways to do it. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 18 April 2010 19:54, Philip Sandifer wrote: > > On Apr 17, 2010, at 8:26 AM, David Gerard wrote: >> >> Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many >> ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find >> useful. > > I'm not entirely sure of this. It is accurate to say that Wikipedia is found > useful by people - but I'm not sure the current community and bureaucratic > structures have anything to do with why. I suspect the useful parts are > unevenly distributed towards articles older than five years. Interesting hypothesis. It is testable, too - we just need a bot to sample a few thousand articles and compare their hits over the last month, say, with their creation dates. I suspect you are wrong, though, since you haven't accounted for current affairs articles and pop culture articles which are very popular, but not for long. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Apr 17, 2010, at 8:26 AM, David Gerard wrote: > > Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many > ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find > useful. I'm not entirely sure of this. It is accurate to say that Wikipedia is found useful by people - but I'm not sure the current community and bureaucratic structures have anything to do with why. I suspect the useful parts are unevenly distributed towards articles older than five years. Best, Phil Sandifer ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
I like to say that Wikipedia, with its own community bureaucracy, keeps going because of flexibility. The bureaucracy (if I may call our structure that if only for sake or argument) and rule structure is intentionally not made strict and in general is not strictly followed. This allows for common sense and 'rule leniency' (especially true when it regards sanctions such as blocks or bans) to prevail. That flexibility gives editors the freedom to engage in rational discussion relevant to the encyclopedia as well as the freedom to make editorial decisions on articles. It's that lack of flexibility that I believe has sunk Citizendium (and other online encyclopedias like Brittanica and Google Knol) long ago. -MuZemike On 4/17/2010 7:26 AM, David Gerard wrote: > On 17 April 2010 12:44, Eugene van der Pijll wrote: > > >> Using >> the CZ mailing list is discouraged (the blog post at >> http://weblog.terrellrussell.com/2006/10/citizendium-a-study-in-momentum-killing >> is interesting; rereading the mailing list articles from September 2006 >> show so much promise for the project). >> > > Yes, Larry's reaction was jawdropping. How dare people use the mailing > list as a mailing list! > > It's hard to get a project started. It's easy to kill momentum. The > long tail of open source projects is mostly tiny projects with the > founding developer and a number of users. > > Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy: > > http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php > > Larry Sanger's reply is defensive and sees commentary as an attack (a > pattern anyone who's tried to comment on CZ will have experienced): > > http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/20/larry_sanger_on_me_on_citizendium.php > > Read that and think whether you'd want to work in that person's project. > > Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many > ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find > useful. > > > - d. > > ___ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
I can't speak about larger issues, I can only speak for myself. I arrived at CZ with a lot of experience on Wikipedia, within a few months of the launch of the project. I wrote a little, and quickly lost interest. Why? - CZ was a lonely place. Wikipedia has a vibrancy. You can always stop by AN/I and watch people yell at each other or something. And if you want opinions (should I do it this way, or that way?) there are always people around you can ask. - Anything I wrote would have to be approved by someone who was (a) less experienced writing encyclopaedia articles (at least our kind) than I was, (b) knew less about the subject than I did, and (c) was a less good writer than I was. (Yeah, despite the evidence here, I'm a decent writer). - There were too many hurdles to jump through. Yes, I have a relevant PhD. But, quite frankly, that wasn't (IMO) the most important skill I brought. I brought experience in a similar medium. - Not only was it overly hierarchical, but the top of the hierarchy was full. Not that I wanted to be in charge, but if I had to have my writing approved by someone, it should be someone who had earned that position. Not someone who got the position simply because Larry approached them and they said yes. An effort like that needs cheerleaders, not bosses. (Now granted, there were people who were more cheerleader than boss, but not, in my experience, the people in top positions). But the thing that really put me off was the response to criticism. Someone had written a review of the group's first approved article. I thought it was fair criticism, but the response was remarkably thin-skinned. I tried a few more times, but I just couldn't get into it. On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 17 April 2010 14:42, David Gerard wrote: > > On 17 April 2010 13:52, Eugene van der Pijll > wrote: > >> David Gerard schreef: > > > >>> Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own > bureaucracy: > >>> > http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php > > > >> Clay Shirky was wrong. He focussed on one part of the CZ hierarchy: the > >> experts, and the amount of overhead that trying to recognize expertise > would > >> cause. But there was no overhead, because experts never came to CZ. > > > > > > He was right, I think, in noting that the bureaucracy was the problem. > > The expert procedure was symptomatic of the dysfunctional attitude. > > I disagree, I don't think bureaucracy was the problem. Citizendium > never got beyond a very small size and bureaucracy is only a problem > on a large scale - even if there is lots of bureaucracy in a small > group it is easy to navigate. It never took off because there was > never a reason for it to do so: Wikipedia was good enough. > > ___ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 17 April 2010 14:42, David Gerard wrote: > On 17 April 2010 13:52, Eugene van der Pijll wrote: >> David Gerard schreef: > >>> Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy: >>> http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php > >> Clay Shirky was wrong. He focussed on one part of the CZ hierarchy: the >> experts, and the amount of overhead that trying to recognize expertise would >> cause. But there was no overhead, because experts never came to CZ. > > > He was right, I think, in noting that the bureaucracy was the problem. > The expert procedure was symptomatic of the dysfunctional attitude. I disagree, I don't think bureaucracy was the problem. Citizendium never got beyond a very small size and bureaucracy is only a problem on a large scale - even if there is lots of bureaucracy in a small group it is easy to navigate. It never took off because there was never a reason for it to do so: Wikipedia was good enough. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 17 April 2010 13:52, Eugene van der Pijll wrote: > David Gerard schreef: >> Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy: >> http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php > Clay Shirky was wrong. He focussed on one part of the CZ hierarchy: the > experts, and the amount of overhead that trying to recognize expertise would > cause. But there was no overhead, because experts never came to CZ. He was right, I think, in noting that the bureaucracy was the problem. The expert procedure was symptomatic of the dysfunctional attitude. Surely Wikipedia should have taught us that you can't cure bureacracy with more bureacracy. >> Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many >> ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find >> useful. > Let's not forget that CZ also has produced content. And the single best > decision Larry made was to put a CC license on that content, so that > that content is still useful. As long as there are people writing for > CZ, WP (and therefore humankind :-) profits. This is, of course, true. The CZ community needs to say "OK, we failed. What now?" - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
David Gerard schreef: > Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy: > > http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php Clay Shirky was wrong. He focussed on one part of the CZ hierarchy: the experts, and the amount of overhead that trying to recognize expertise would cause. But there was no overhead, because experts never came to CZ. CZ created a special role for experts: Editors. The main task of Editors is to guide articles in their area of expertise towards Approved status. As you can see from the number of Approved articles (about 20 in the last 12 months), there are almost no active Editors on CZ. > Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many > ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find > useful. Let's not forget that CZ also has produced content. And the single best decision Larry made was to put a CC license on that content, so that that content is still useful. As long as there are people writing for CZ, WP (and therefore humankind :-) profits. Eugene ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 17 April 2010 12:44, Eugene van der Pijll wrote: > Using > the CZ mailing list is discouraged (the blog post at > http://weblog.terrellrussell.com/2006/10/citizendium-a-study-in-momentum-killing > is interesting; rereading the mailing list articles from September 2006 > show so much promise for the project). Yes, Larry's reaction was jawdropping. How dare people use the mailing list as a mailing list! It's hard to get a project started. It's easy to kill momentum. The long tail of open source projects is mostly tiny projects with the founding developer and a number of users. Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy: http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php Larry Sanger's reply is defensive and sees commentary as an attack (a pattern anyone who's tried to comment on CZ will have experienced): http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/20/larry_sanger_on_me_on_citizendium.php Read that and think whether you'd want to work in that person's project. Wikipedia, and its community and bureaucracy, sucks in oh so many ways. But it does in fact work and produce something people find useful. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
Thomas Dalton schreef: > One very interesting Citizendium statistic is the median article > length in words. It has been reducing by about 6 words a month for > years. I think that means most of the new articles being created are > stubs, or not much more than stubs, and nobody is working on expanding > existing articles. Citizendium started by copying the entire Wikipedia database. After some months, they deleted all articles that had not changed, and strted writing their own. The declining median article length reflects that the "almost finished" wikipedia articles are a declining percentage of their articles. The decision to delete most WP articles is one of the main reasons for their failure, in my opinion. A competitor to WP has to offer their readers at least what WP has, e.g. by displaying the WP article if their is no native article on a subject. If they don't, 90% of the searches will fail, and nobody will use CZ as their first source of information. Another reason: The CZ project is very closed. There is no way to comment on an article. The CZ forum is only open for CZ members. Using the CZ mailing list is discouraged (the blog post at http://weblog.terrellrussell.com/2006/10/citizendium-a-study-in-momentum-killing is interesting; rereading the mailing list articles from September 2006 show so much promise for the project). CZ contributors are dismissive about outsiders, especially those with most encyclopedia writing experience: Wikipedians. See for example the discussion at the bottom of [[Talk:Citizendium#editorializing.3F]]. Also, CZ is much more bureaucratic than WP. Larry Sanger just loves rules, and it shows. CZ simply does not have the momentum to become a serious competitor now. It has been growing linearly in size, and not been growing at all in number of active editors, for some years now. Eugene ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 17 April 2010 12:02, Stephen Bain wrote: > On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:24 PM, Thomas Dalton > wrote: >> >> One very interesting Citizendium statistic is the median article >> length in words. It has been reducing by about 6 words a month for >> years. I think that means most of the new articles being created are >> stubs, or not much more than stubs, and nobody is working on expanding >> existing articles. I feign no hypotheses for why this might be. I >> don't have comparable statistics for Wikipedia, so for all I know we >> are doing the same thing (although that seems unlikely now that >> article creation has reduced). > > At Eric Zachte's stats page there are a number of relevant stats measured. The stats are up-to-date! When did that happen? They were still only up to 2006 for many last time I looked. I know we finally got a full dump, but I didn't know it had been run through the stats analyser thing. Now I have to spend hours looking at all the statistics! :) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:24 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > > One very interesting Citizendium statistic is the median article > length in words. It has been reducing by about 6 words a month for > years. I think that means most of the new articles being created are > stubs, or not much more than stubs, and nobody is working on expanding > existing articles. I feign no hypotheses for why this might be. I > don't have comparable statistics for Wikipedia, so for all I know we > are doing the same thing (although that seems unlikely now that > article creation has reduced). At Eric Zachte's stats page there are a number of relevant stats measured. Firstly there is average bytes per article. For most projects, this is increasing steadily over time: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesBytesPerArticle.htm Then there are a couple indicative of the number of stubs and short-to-medium-length articles, percentage over 500 bytes of readable text (ie not markup) and percentage over 2000 bytes of readable text (although the URL would suggest 1500 bytes?). Most projects seem to hit and maintain a stable level in the 500 byte chart, and build steadily on their level in the 2000 byte chart: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesGt500Bytes.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesGt1500Bytes.htm There are charts available too as well as tables. There's also this tool of mine which shows a graph of the distribution of article sizes (caches results, but can be a bit slow if it hasn't been run on a particular project in a while): http://toolserver.org/~thebainer/articlesizes/ -- Stephen Bain stephen.b...@gmail.com ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 17 April 2010 03:15, David Gerard wrote: > In March 2010, about 90 people made even a single edit to Citizendium: > > http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Statistics#Number_of_authors > > Compare Conservapedia, which has 76 at the time I write this. The > difference is, the latter is pretty much a personal website run by a > gibbering fundie lunatic which gets pretty much all its traffic from > sceptics making fun of it; the former was a serious project. > > This is terribly sad. What went wrong? Citizendium was not sufficiently better than Wikipedia (one can argue over whether or not it was better at all, but whatever difference there was it was small) and was obviously much smaller, so it didn't attract readers or editors: Wikipedia was "good enough" and people rarely switch from something that is good enough. In order for a project like Wikipedia or Citizendium to be successful you need exponential growth (initially) caused by readers becoming editors and writing articles that attract new readers. Citizendium has shown almost perfect linear growth since its creation because that cycle never happened. Its editors are, from what I can tell, mostly disgruntled Wikipedians and it doesn't have any readers. We shouldn't conclude from this that the idea behind Wikipedia is better than the idea behind Citizendium. The main factor is that Wikipedia came first. Whether Citizendium would have succeeded if it had come first, we'll never know. The only way a new project will ever rival Wikipedia (assuming Wikipedia survives, anyway, and it is so big now that it is hard to imagine it completely failing, although it could change considerable) is if it is very much better than Wikipedia in some respect (it can be worse in others). Such a project could then start to attract readers who would kick off exponential growth. It is readers that are important to attract - once you have those, they will become the editors you need. You will note that I talk about Citizendium in the past tense. That is because I concluded it was a failed project a year or so ago. I suspect Larry Sanger has made the same conclusion, although he (understandably) won't say so outright, since his involvement has been steadily reducing and he has been working on new projects. One very interesting Citizendium statistic is the median article length in words. It has been reducing by about 6 words a month for years. I think that means most of the new articles being created are stubs, or not much more than stubs, and nobody is working on expanding existing articles. I feign no hypotheses for why this might be. I don't have comparable statistics for Wikipedia, so for all I know we are doing the same thing (although that seems unlikely now that article creation has reduced). ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
David Gerard wrote: > "But, what of it?" they then ask. That it has let itself become a > project of no effective import. If it's not dead, it's moribund. > > Shrug. Sanger is no Wozniak. He did great things in the early days of WP. Subsequently he has seemed determined to prove that he has totally misunderstood the greatness of his pioneer work. Nupedia didn't need re-inventing, and experts have clay feet. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
On 17 April 2010 03:57, Nathan wrote: > According to that stats page, the project added 7.7k words per day > during March 2010 - the most since September 2009. Unless I miss the > meaning of the "words per day" column, that seems to show that the > project is at least no worse off this year than last. There seems to > be a winter dip in editing, and a pickup in the spring - and March 10 > comes in considerably ahead of March 09. The long tail is gone: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Image:New_users.png - it's now a playground for a small closed circle of contributors. Someone on [[Talk:Citizendium]] says as much. "But, what of it?" they then ask. That it has let itself become a project of no effective import. If it's not dead, it's moribund. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
According to that stats page, the project added 7.7k words per day during March 2010 - the most since September 2009. Unless I miss the meaning of the "words per day" column, that seems to show that the project is at least no worse off this year than last. There seems to be a winter dip in editing, and a pickup in the spring - and March 10 comes in considerably ahead of March 09. Nathan ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?
In March 2010, about 90 people made even a single edit to Citizendium: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Statistics#Number_of_authors Compare Conservapedia, which has 76 at the time I write this. The difference is, the latter is pretty much a personal website run by a gibbering fundie lunatic which gets pretty much all its traffic from sceptics making fun of it; the former was a serious project. This is terribly sad. What went wrong? - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
