From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Citizendium ("a
citizens'
compendium of everything") is a proposed online
encyclopedia first intended to begin as a "progressive or
gradual
fork" of the
English Wikipedia.[1]
The Citizendium project is spearheaded by
Larry Sanger, co-creator and editor in chief of Wikipedia
from its inception to March 2002, and will be carried out under
the auspices of the Citizendium Foundation.[2]
Sanger said in an
October 17,
2006
press release that Citizendium "will soon attempt to unseat
Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information
online".[3]
The project began its pilot phase in November 2006; as of
January 2007, no public launch date has been specified.
On
January 18,
2007
a change of plans was announced. Sanger announced on the CZ
mailing list that only articles marked "CZ live" (which have
been or will soon be worked on by Citizendium contributors)
would remain on the site, and all other articles forked from
Wikipedia would be deleted. Not all Citizendium contributors
were supportive of this change, but Sanger emphasized that this
deletion was "an experiment" and a new set of Wikipedia articles
could be uploaded if the experiment were deemed unsuccessful.[4]
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Contents
-
1
Nature of the project
-
1.1
Fork of Wikipedia
-
1.2
Project goal
-
1.3
Proposed policies and
structure
-
2
History
-
2.1
Initial proposal
-
2.2
Pilot project
-
3
References
-
4
External links
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Nature of the project
Fork of Wikipedia
According to statements and essays on
Citizendium.org, the project was intended to begin as a
fork
of Wikipedia, carrying a copy of each article under the rules
of the
GNU Free Documentation License as it existed on Wikipedia
at the time of Citizendium's launch.[5]
However, after initiating the idea of not forking, and then
soliciting comments on the matter from Citizendium
mailing list and
web forum members, Sanger said that a complete fork at
launch was not a "foregone conclusion".[6]
On January 18, 2007 Sanger announced that the pilot will, as an
experiment, only carry articles that have been or will soon be
worked on by Citizendium contributors, instead of a complete set
of Wikipedia articles. He stated that the experiment "represents
a reconception of our project's basic aim."[4]
No announcement has yet been made on Citizendium in languages
other than English, but Sanger has stated in his essays that
they may be forthcoming after the English language version is
established and working successfully.
Project goal
The stated aim of the project is to create a "new compendium
of knowledge" based on the contributions of "intellectuals",
defined as "educated, thinking people who read about science or
ideas regularly."[7]
Citizendium hopes to foster an
expert culture and a community that encourages subject
specialists (presently named as "editors") to contribute, and
"citizens" (to be called "authors") to "respect" the expert
contributions (by a so-called "gentle process of guidance").
An appeals process for disagreements between editors and
authors, and between different editors, will be in place,
according to a provisional "Citizendium Policy Outline"
published by Sanger.[8]
Experts will be required to verify their
qualifications openly, for transparency and publicly
accepted authority.[8]
This contrasts with the open and largely
anonymous nature of Wikipedia, where subject specialists
have no agreed special status. Sanger has stated that editors
will not have pre-approval rights over edits by ordinary
authors, though editors will have somewhat undefined authority
over articles that fall within their specific area of expertise.
Proposed policies and structure
Citizendium will only in rare instance allow anonymous
editing, including possible proof reading by trusted
copy editors, who have low-level authority to amend the
texts for
typographical,
syntactical and
grammatical errors etc. People will be asked to register
under their real names with a working e-mail address, in order
to participate. (Details of this process are still to be worked
out. Problems with online safety and
privacy are currently being addressed).
Many of the changes are attempts to correct perceived flaws
in the original design and present public image of Wikipedia,
that have led to problems with Wikipedia's acceptance as a valid
and trustworthy resource. Regarding
Wikipedia's oft cited problems, Sanger wrote that "this
arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to
academics" and as such appears "committed to amateurism."[7]
Sanger has stated that Citizendium administrators, or
sysops, will be called "constables", and will need a
bachelor's degree to qualify. Sanger has also suggested a
minimum "maturity" requirement 25 years of age for
constables.[8]
The "head" constable will be the Chief Constable (Ruth
Ifcher), and the head editor will be the Managing Editor.[2]
Recent comments by Sanger envision an Editor-in-Chief
(Sanger himself) who will be the "main individual in charge",
and who will be part of and answerable to a Board of
Directors. There will also be Chief Subject Editors
selected for each discipline treated in the encyclopedia. Sanger
states that final decisions about management structure will not
be made "until more of the (future) primary stakeholders are on
the scene".[9]
In a Citizendium blog entry of November 10, constable Sarah
Tuttle announced the formation of an "executive committee"
consisting of herself, Sanger and eleven others, which will work
on issues of "long term governance" of the project.[10]
Sanger has indicated that Citizendium articles will be
subject to an "approval" process after they have achieved
reasonable quality. A subject expert "editor" will select a
version of the article to be identified in some way as
"approved". However, further editing of the article would be
allowed, at least to some extent. If those further edits were
judged by the editor to be improvements, a newer version of the
article would be chosen as the approved version. This approval
process appears to be a response by Sanger to criticisms from
some members of the Citizendium mailing list and web forum that
the new project would not be sufficiently controlled by experts.
There will be a dispute-resolution process for disagreements
about which version should be selected as "approved".[8]
In an October 26 post to the Citizendium web forum, then
Managing Editor David Marshall indicated that the approved
version of an article, if it exists, will be the default version
displayed to a visitor to the site. If a contributor wishes to
modify or add to the article, login will be necessary to work on
the "dynamic wiki page" open to editing:
|
|
All reader searches will auto-forward to the most
recently approved version of the page (assuming that a
version has been approved). Once at an approved page,
the reader will be given the option to register/log in
as an author and move to the dynamic wiki page in
current use for development purposes.[11] |
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History
Initial proposal
The project was announced by Sanger on
September 15,
2006,
at the
Wizards of OS 4 conference in
Berlin. He gave no deadline for the full launch of the
wiki.[12][13]
However, on
October 2,
2006
Sanger released a pilot project announcement that envisions a
fully functioning wiki within "one to two months".
Pilot project
 |
This article documents a
current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event
progresses. |
In an apparent attempt to quicken the pace of the project, on
October 2,
2006
Citizendium web forum moderator Peter Hitchmough suggested what
he called an "alpha
test" of the concept. Hitchmough proposed the forking of a
limited number of Wikipedia articles to a site where Citizendium
web forum and mailing list members could "rewrite a complete
section" of Wikipedia content.[14]
Larry Sanger reacted enthusiastically to the idea and at
first suggested his already existing Textop wiki as the site for
the alpha test. Sanger later posted that Textop would not be a
good choice, but showed continued interest in the proposal. He
envisioned a "restricted-access" wiki where the idea could be
tried and requested further discussion.[15]
No access to the pilot version of Citizendium, even
read-only, was allowed to the general public. Sanger stated:
"Only invited people will be able to view and edit the pilot
project wiki".[16]
Sanger also said that constables for the pilot project will be
chosen by the chief constable.[17]
In a press release on October 17, Sanger announced: "the
fledgling Citizendium Foundation will launch a six-week pilot
project open to potential contributors by invitation". Several
editors and other project leaders were named. It was also
announced that the Citizendium Foundation had "started the
process of applying for
501(c)(3) status" and had "received a firm commitment for a
significant seed grant from a foundation, as well as small
personal donations".
[3] In a follow-up
post to the press release, Sanger said that the initial group
allowed access to the pilot would consist of "ten editors, three
constables, six authors, and me".[18]
The pilot project began operations on October 23.[19]
On November 8 Larry Sanger reported that 263 user names had
access to the pilot wiki, 183 articles on the wiki were "live"
(meaning "someone is or intends to be working on them") and
there were about 300 total edits to the wiki on November 7.[20]
In a January 17, 2007 post to the Citizendium forum, Larry
Sanger stated that "we have had only 10-20 (very) active people
out of 500 accounts created." As a result, Sanger decided to
delete all articles besides those marked "CZ live" from the
pilot project in an attempt to motivate greater participation.[21]
On January 22 Citizendium experimented with a new
self-registration procedure: read/write access was granted
automatically after creation of the account.[22]
There were a few instances of vandalism after this change,
though the vandalism was quickly reverted.[23]
On February 16, in response to rising vandalism after two
appearances on
Slashdot, automatic account creation[22]
was put on hold while increased protections were being put in
place to counter vandalism.[24]
The next day, page moves were limited to Constables as an
additional measure against vandalism.[25]
In addition, Sanger continued the process of un-forking
Citizendium from
Wikipedia by inviting contributors to nominate for speedy
deletion any Wikipedia content that had changed only
superficially since it was imported.
References
-
^ Andrew
Orlowski.
"Wikipedia founder forks Wikipedia, More experts, less
fiddling?",
The Register,
September 18,
2006.
- ^
a b
Larry Sanger.
"Constables, editors, and the Citizendium Foundation",
Citizendium-l mail list,
September 23,
2006.
- ^
a b
Larry Sanger.
"Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version of Wikipedia: Pilot
Project for the Citizendium to Launch This Week",
Citizendium.org,
October 17,
2006
- ^
a b
Larry Sanger.
"OK, let's delete the Wikipedia articles (an
experiment)", Citizendium-l mail list,
January 18,
2007.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Why we should fork all at once", Citizendium-l mail
list,
September 29,
2006.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Forking argument summary", Citizendium forum,
September 29,
2006.
- ^
a b
Larry Sanger.
"Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)",
Citizendium.
- ^
a b c d
Larry Sanger.
"Citizendium Policy Outline", Citizendium. On the
Citizendium blog, Sanger wrote this caveat about the
provisional outline: "This is a work in progress.
Therefore, I hope the Wikipedia article about the
Citizendium will not say tomorrow that CZ will have
features X, Y, and Z. These are in most cases negotiable
policy ideas, a place for the invitees to the policy
project to work from." Sanger also stated that future
versions of the policy outline would be posted on the
restricted-access pilot wiki: "The most current version
will be available on the pilot project wiki. To see
that, youll have to be a member of the pilot project."
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"How should we manage growth?", Citizendium forum,
October 2,
2006.
- ^
Sarah Tuttle.
"Your executive committee", Citizendium blog,
November 10,
2006.
- ^
David Marshall.
"My ideas on presenting consistently high quality
content", Citizendium forum,
October 26,
2006.
-
^ Larry
Sanger.
"Citizendium launch plan as of September 26",
Citizendium-l mail list,
September 27,
2006.
- ^
WOS video stream containing Sanger's announcement
- ^
Peter Hitchmough.
"Proposal: Fork Wikipedia and launch with some A1-class
model subjects", Citizendium forum,
October 2,
2006.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Administrivia: interesting pilot project proposal",
Citizendium-l mail list,
October 2,
2006.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Call for applications to participate in the Citizendium
Pilot Project", Citizendium.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Pilot Project Application Review Procedure",
Citizendium-l mail list,
November 13,
2006.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Ad hoc steering group kicked off", Citizendium-l
mail list,
October 18,
2006.
- ^
Jason Potkanski.
"Developers Wanted: forge.citizendium.org Open",
Citizendium-l mail list,
October 23,
2006.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Stats", Citizendium blog,
November 8,
2006.
- ^
Larry Sanger.
"Would you contribute more if the wiki were blank?",
Citizendium forum,
January 17,
2007.
- ^
a b
Larry Sanger.
"Self-registration begins!", Citizendium-l mail
list,
January 22,
2007. The first act of
vandalism was carried out via an account named
'Chris Nguyen', to vandalise three pages including the
main one and that of Larry Sanger, apparently before the
announcement was made. The account was indefinitely
blocked a little over half an hour after the first
improper edit.
- ^
Citizendium pilot wiki.
"Main page revision history",
January 23,
2007.
- ^
Vandal Assault at the Citizendium Blog
- ^
"Page moves now require constable help; and
semi-automated hand-approval of new accounts?",
Citizendium-l mail list, February 17 2007
External links
Wikinews has news related to:
Larry Sanger announces Wikipedia fork
-
Citizendium.org
-
Citizendium Pilot Project
-
Citizendium Blog
-
Citizendium unforks
-
Citizendium discussion list and archives
-
Citizendium forums
-
"Larry Sanger's essay: Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge"
(longer version)
-
"Larry Sanger abstract", Wizards of OS 4.
-
(German)
"WOS 4: Citizendium soll bessere Wikipedia werden",
Heise online,
September 15,
2006.
-
"Wikipedia rival calls in the experts",
Nature
October 5,
2006, via Citizendium-l mailing list
-
"Wikipedia co-founder plans 'expert' spinoff",
ZDNet News,
October 16,
2006
-
"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version
of Wikipedia, Pilot Project for the Citizendium to Launch
This Week. October 17, 2006
-
Citizendium: building a better Wikipedia
Ars Technica
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