wikipedia gets forked

September 16, 2006 2:31 PM

Wikipedia gets forked.
posted by bingo (104 comments total)

I, for one, welcome our new Citizen overlords.
posted by BeerFilter at 2:35 PM on September 16, 2006

All they're really doing is asking for money so far.
posted by aubilenon at 2:47 PM on September 16, 2006

So it's Wikipedia for qualified snobs, jerks, and geeks?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:48 PM on September 16, 2006

I was thinking about posting this. I like the idea- it seems pretty obvious to me wikipedia needs better editing of its existing content much more than it needs new content about ever-more obscure topics. But there's just no way this will succeed. Wikipedia has way too much community momentum, and without the hosting support of Google and Yahoo, there's no way that Citizendium will be able to afford the hardware costs. Plus, network effects... contributors aren't going to want to contribute to a site no one is using, and users won't want to read a site no one's contributing too. Sanger's vision of happy coexistence is a delusion, though a well-principled one. This won't get off the ground.
posted by gsteff at 2:51 PM on September 16, 2006

Plus they picked a stupid name.
posted by delmoi at 2:57 PM on September 16, 2006

Plus they picked a stupid name.

Amen brother.

Citizendium? Lemme parse that: Ci-ti-zen-dee-um. Doesn't exactly roll off the tounge, now does it?

They should have gone with something like Polinomicon. Pol-ee-nom-ih-con. There, doesn't that sound nicer? They should pay me for this shit.
posted by quin at 3:05 PM on September 16, 2006

We believe a fork is necessary, and justified, both to allow regular people a place to work under the direction of experts, and in which personal accountability--including the use of real names--is expected.

Yeah, it sounds like loads of fun. I'm sure this will be a hit with all the young men that make Wikipedia so successful.
posted by nixerman at 3:18 PM on September 16, 2006

I don't think there's any way that a fork of Wikipedia is ever going to do well. If Wikipedia decided to fork itself for a similar aim, however, it would probably work out.

For this particular project, I don't think it stands a chance -- the name alone shows that it's just not very well thought through. It's nothing but pie-in-the-sky "we don't know shit about wikis or putting up websites, but please give us money" stuff.
posted by reklaw at 3:18 PM on September 16, 2006

Most people will be unable to pronounce its name. As a marketing choice, Sanger failed so horribly that he's set up what will likely be an insurmountable obstacle in front of its success.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:26 PM on September 16, 2006

Experts in comic book characters? Qualified experts?
posted by NinjaTadpole at 3:31 PM on September 16, 2006

To my mind, Wikipedia has been somewhat of a disappointment, and has not fulfilled its expectations. This doesn't mean that it's a complete failure or that the Wiki approach is a bad one - it only means that improvements are necessary. Perhaps Sanger's project will introduce these needed improvements. I feel that the idea of a user-contributed encyclopedia is strong enough that eventually someone will hit upon the right formula.

And yes, Citizendium is a terrible name.
posted by Afroblanco at 3:32 PM on September 16, 2006

This essay on the site is extremely nasty in the way it believes that 'intellectuals', 'educated people' and 'academics' are somehow the most valuable contributors, with so much more to offer than the stupid proles (an opinion that Sanger has, apparently, long held). This theory is the very antithesis of Wikipedia's "everyone can contribute" philosophy -- hell, it's even the antithesis of the basic philosophy of the Internet.

To be quite honest, I hope he fails, absolutely miserably, with no hope of redemption. Organised vandalism, anyone?
posted by reklaw at 3:33 PM on September 16, 2006

Organized vandalism would be an incoherent and inconsistent thing to do. If the basic philosophy of the Internet is that everyone can contribute, then those who believe in the primacy of intellectuals and academics can contribute, too. It's not like they're founding this astoundingly-poorly-named website in order to suppress Wikipedia. They just have a different idea of excellence.

That being said, I'll give it 3 months before it's entirely forgotten.
posted by facetious at 3:42 PM on September 16, 2006

Er, reklaw, what?

Are you going to make the argument that educated people are less valuable contributors than uneducated people?

I wasn't aware The Internet had a philosophy, other than, "lets link military and university computers together".

And if it's really as bad as you fear, it'll die under its own weight. In fact, it will likely die even without being anywhere close to as bad as you fear.
posted by Richard Daly at 3:42 PM on September 16, 2006

To be quite honest, I hope he fails, absolutely miserably, with no hope of redemption. Organised vandalism, anyone?

By calling for organized vandalism, you implicitly concede that the stupid proles can't hack it on their own. If the proles' effort was superior to that of the intellectuals, then no such vandalism would be needed.
posted by b1tr0t at 3:45 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

well, he's going to fail reklaw, but not for the reasons you outlined. The major contributors to wikipedia probably are experts (like ikkyu2, who apparently posts a lot there).

This guy will fail because he's not offering anything to the standard contributor, and why would 'experts' want to work on his site rather then the wiki? Wikipedia attracts experts for the same reason it attracts regular people. You go to this site, you get a manifesto. Boring.

But really, 'experts' should be given more heed then non-experts. Why would you want to read what J. Random Dumbass thinks about a topic?
posted by delmoi at 3:45 PM on September 16, 2006

This essay on the site is extremely nasty in the way it believes that 'intellectuals', 'educated people' and 'academics' are somehow the most valuable contributors, with so much more to offer than the stupid proles

I'm not a wikipedia insider at all, so I'd actually appreciate an explanation of this view. It seems perfectly obvious to me that in a reference work, its better for contributions to be made by people that are familiar with the subject than by people unfamiliar with it. Its also pretty obvious that you want to make it as easy for people to contribute as possible. These goals, of course, conflict, and some people now think that Wikipedia errs too far on the side of making it as easy as possible to contribute, at the cost of content quality. I can understand how people could think that Sanger's approach gets the balance wrong, and Wikipedia gets it right, but I totally don't understand why they get so defensive about it. Its pretty clear that there's a tradeoff here, and that there are some negative consequences to having low/no barriers to contribution, right? What makes Sanger's position so repellant?
posted by gsteff at 3:55 PM on September 16, 2006

Wow. What a self-important gasbag. He's done nothing so far but take other peoples' work (while expressing contempt for those same people) and is already overflowing with self-congratulation.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:56 PM on September 16, 2006

What makes Sanger's position so repellant?

Well, to me at least, the great thing about Wikipedia is that absolutely anyone can contribute (you don't even have to register a username to do so!). This fact has allowed thousands upon thousands of people to make edits to Wikipedia, no matter how large or small, and what has been produced is, by and large, very good. Wikipedia is proof that a large community of people, working together, can produce something good, without needing to be qualified or experts or whatever.

What repells me about Sanger's position is that it basically says that Wikipedia has a problem -- the fact that it puts off 'experts'. Experts and academics are, supposedly, people who know far more than the rest of us on a given topic (as opposed to people who write incoherent essays with titles like "post-structralist feminist blah on the blah blah"). His idea is that these people should be put in control over the normal people's contributions, because their contributions are inherently better. I absolutely reject this.

Basically, it goes back to the philosophy of the open source movement (something that Wikipedia is a product of, with its GDFL license). Imagine if open source projects started vetting contributors based on whether they had degrees in computer science or not. Some of the best software out there is being produced by 17-year-olds sitting in their bedrooms. So it is with Wikipedia.
posted by reklaw at 4:03 PM on September 16, 2006

In order to succeed, a fork would need four things:

• A reasonable management/editorial control structure.
• A good name.
• Sufficient hardware and bandwidth resources.
• A period of about 60-90 days in which Wikipedia becomes virtually unusable.

So they're doing okay on the first step, anyway. The last step is the tricky one, but completely essential if there's any hope of generating interest.
posted by Galvatron at 4:04 PM on September 16, 2006

Just spotted this stealth quote in the article reklaw linked:

When on January 2, 2001 I first had the idea for Wikipedia, and then got to work defining policies and leading the community that built it,

This is a contentious assertion to say the least, one that Jimmy Wales always vehemently denies. That's not to say it's not true --not very interested in these internet dramas-- but it does seem that he's using this in part as an opportunity to assert himself as the originator of the idea.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:06 PM on September 16, 2006

Citizendium is an awful name, but then Wikipedia looked and sounded pretty stupid to me when I first came across it.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 4:08 PM on September 16, 2006

The major contributors to wikipedia probably are experts

Resarch shows they are. But I don't think they're they same kind of "experts" Sanger has in mind. They're experts on very specific topics. They're experts who don't write very well (so a bunch of non-experts go through and clean up their submissions). They're experts who are willing (and maybe even eager) to contribute anonymously. Sanger seems to have it all backwards, imagining experts on broad topics who are good at organizing ideas and really want name recognition. These people exist, but they're all working for Britanica.
posted by scottreynen at 4:14 PM on September 16, 2006

The cadence of the prescribed pronunciation of "Citizendium" matches that of "Wikipedia" perfectly. Cold comfort, perhaps, but that's interesting.
posted by cortex at 4:17 PM on September 16, 2006

I like that the third edit to the Wikipedia page about Citizendium - posted within 10 minutes of its creation - is a proposal to delete the article entirely without further discussion. The edit summary eloquently states, "Huh?"

That's what Wikipedia is - people "contributing" who know nothing.

LMS' new project couldn't be any worse. I think I'll try to sign up.
posted by ikkyu2 at 4:20 PM on September 16, 2006

Um, that article shows that the majority of the content is written by wikipedia "outsiders".

It does not say whether they are experts or not.

For the record, I hope Citizendium makes it.
The net is to large to only have one community encyclopedia editing policy.
posted by spazzm at 4:28 PM on September 16, 2006

Maybe I'm just being cynical, but what I see is an effort to mirror Jimbo Wales's enormous ego as well as his content. I think I'll pass at volunteering for this psuedo-intellectual flamewar.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 4:30 PM on September 16, 2006

Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue ... almost sounds like a new addition to the periodic table, and a radioactive one at that.
posted by krinklyfig at 4:32 PM on September 16, 2006

The beauty of Wikipedia is that it's contibutions are generally made by people with enough expertise and passion about very specific topics to care enough to write an article for it, and then further edits are made by people with equal passion and expertise. I like the Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment, but I'm not going to edit an article about it. However, if I see misinformation about a show that I've worked on, I might edit then, because I know what I'm talking about and feel some sense of vested interest.

The problems of Wikipedia are the occasional misinformation, occasionally bad writing style, and edit wars, but all of these things are cleaned up, either quickly or eventually, by the nature of it's structure. The problem isn't a lack of oversight by experts, and Sanger's proposal won't do aything to solve them.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:34 PM on September 16, 2006

I still say that an audit is a necessary step before deciding on whether a fork or internal changes are needed.
posted by Gyan at 4:40 PM on September 16, 2006

While I completely agree that Sanger is a self-important gasbag, it's ridiculous to claim that he's "done nothing so far but take other [people's] work." He was a vitally important contributor to Wikipedia's launch and to its early successes. When I started working on Wikipedia in 2003, Sanger was solely responsible for much of the material (especially in academic fields) that made it look like at least the beginnings of an encyclopedia, rather than a joke.

In my view, he might even have made a better "god-king" than Jimbo Wales, if only because of his recognition of the community's problems attracting and retaining expert editors. Of course, he compensates for this virtue by being very opinionated in his editing, and he would probably have been unwilling to adopt Wales's healthily hands-off attitude toward specific content disputes.

I get the impression from his essay "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge" that Sanger thinks, or at least hopes, that a lot of expert editors will immediately rally to his flag when the Citizendium goes live. I seriously doubt this will happen without a strong external stimulus (like the previously mentioned Wikipedia outage). Perhaps Citizendium will ultimately succeed in creating a community of editors with greater respect for knowledge than Wikipedia, and less respect for trolls; if so, I'll surely jump ship for there eventually. But for now I see little evidence that it's a community rather than Sanger's own hobbyhorse.
posted by RogerB at 4:46 PM on September 16, 2006

I think I'll stick with Wikipedia. It's a good starting point for whenI'm being introduced to a topic, but I'd never use it as my fountain of knowledge, either.
posted by liquorice at 4:51 PM on September 16, 2006

Um, that article shows that the majority of the content is written by wikipedia "outsiders".

It does not say whether they are experts or not.

It doesn't use the word "expert," but I don't know what else you'd call someone who knows a lot about a specific topic, which is what the article describes. Isn't that the definition of "expert"?

The beauty of Wikipedia is that it's contibutions are generally made by people with enough expertise and passion about very specific topics to care enough to write an article for it, and then further edits are made by people with equal passion and expertise.

Equal passion and expertise, but not generally for the topic of the article, but rather for Wikipedia in general. The vast majority of the edits in Wikipedia are made by a small group of about a thousand people who contribute little other than cleaning up and organizing what others have written.
posted by scottreynen at 4:55 PM on September 16, 2006

Although definitely falling on Wales side of the line, this article from The Atlantic is a pretty good study of the personal philosophies behind Wikipedia's development and, inadvertently, Citizendium's birth.

The impression I get is that even though Sanger's vision may in theory be better than the current iteration of Wikipedia, no one (aside from the administrators) wants it to happen. Experts are repulsed and/or threatened by the masses, and the masses don't want to be governed by "so-called" experts. Sanger's ideas have been thrown into the agar before and they've been rejected by the culture (in nupedia, in the developmental wikipedia)... You can try it a million times, but at some point you've got to realize it just doesn't work in practice.

At least as an independent venture... If Sanger created a cabal of "experts" to police Wikipedia quietly and forcefully, I think he might achieve his utopia since open conflict wouldn't exist between the contributing arms. I mean, it's worked for the United States so far, right?

Although arguably, as scottreynen points out just above, that may already exist.
posted by pokermonk at 5:06 PM on September 16, 2006

When I saw "progressive fork" my first reaction was, oh, great, they're going to Chomskyize all the history and politics entries.

Then I saw that they meant "progressive", not "Progressive" (i.e. Marxist/Socialist).
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:09 PM on September 16, 2006

scottreynen gets it right. You need two classes of specialists to successfully pull of a Wikipedia of your own. You need content providers, probably experts (at least relatively speaking) in some field or other — the people Aaron Swartz's research found, who provide most of the content as judged by word count but a relatively small proportion of edits. And you need editors, who, like professional editors in the real world, add structure and context to, and verify attribution and sourcing in, the content created by others.

Wikipedia's flaws seem to my eye to derive from that fact that it's created a culture in which neither of these groups respect one another. Wikipedia's policy wonks and "professional" editors are too quick to casually alter the substance of articles they're not really competent to understand, and "experts" are too quick to howl and whine about the sanctity of their deathless prose when someone cleans up their writing or organizes an article in a clearer way.

But I don't think this is really avoidable. Anyone who's ever worked in a newsroom or any other setting with a separation between writers and editors (or, indeed, any setting in which there is a dichotomy between producers and administrators — ) has seen this dynamic at work. People are always more able to see the value of their own work than that of others.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 5:10 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

What's the point in arguing? A fork is a great way to find out how important the free for all model of Wikipedia actually is to it's success.
posted by a. at 5:11 PM on September 16, 2006

I like that the third edit to the Wikipedia page about Citizendium - posted within 10 minutes of its creation - is a proposal to delete the article entirely without further discussion. The edit summary eloquently states, "Huh?"

That's what Wikipedia is - people "contributing" who know nothing.

Well in theory, since there's no established "Citizendium" expert, Citizendium wouldn't have the post to begin with. So, even if Wikipedia deleted the page, it'd still be no worse than Cit.
posted by pokermonk at 5:13 PM on September 16, 2006

cortex : The cadence of the prescribed pronunciation of "Citizendium" matches that of "Wikipedia" perfectly. Cold comfort, perhaps, but that's interesting.

For the record Polinomicon has the same cadence as well.

Yeah, I'm that good. ;)
posted by quin at 5:14 PM on September 16, 2006

scottreynen, I'm not sure that that research is as definitive as you claim, as it's based primarily on a study of only one article (Alan Alda, which is not necessarily a representative choice) and secondarily on the author's review of "several more randomly-selected articles" (neither the number nor the articles are given, aside from a reference to the article on anacondas). This isn't exactly iron-clad methodology. The strong claims the article makes (and you echo) about anonymous outsiders writing the bulk of material on Wikipedia do not square with my own impression as a long-time Wikipedia editor. It is probably true that Jimbo Wales overstates the importance of the top edit-count editors, but it must be said that many of those editors make voluminous substantive contributions.
posted by RogerB at 5:16 PM on September 16, 2006

I look forward to the rants of people denied recognition of their expert status.
posted by srboisvert at 5:21 PM on September 16, 2006

Anything that kills Wikipedia and makes the most asshole-ish of admins cry and beg for thenextcoolthing is just fine and dandy by me. I spent quite a lot of time and effort working to make WP better only to see that Jimmy Wales and other heads of the project didn't give a rat's ass about anything but their own self promotion.
posted by Kickstart70 at 5:29 PM on September 16, 2006

I totally agree with reklaw. This priviledging of "learning" and "knowledge" and "hard work to obtain credentials" is disgusting. It's even worse in the real world. Why do we need people who know what happened in 1648 to teach history? Or engineers to build bridges? Next thing you're going to tell me that my doctor actually knows more about anatomy than I do. It's all so elitist it makes me sick.
posted by jb at 5:34 PM on September 16, 2006 [2 favorites]

Larry Sanger could have done this a long time ago. Why now?

The full and frank story is very complex, and not ready to be told.

Well, that's forthcoming.

Regardless of hidden agendas, I don't think this is going anywhere. And yeah, terrible name.
posted by languagehat at 5:40 PM on September 16, 2006

I think maybe there's a confusion here between "credentials" and "knowledge". In software engineering my own experience has been that there's no important correlation between the degrees a person has earned and how good a software engineer they are. One of the best engineers I ever worked with had his degree in cartography.

Is there no place for the autodidact in the grand scheme of things?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:42 PM on September 16, 2006

This isn't exactly iron-clad methodology.

You're right, and Aaron says as much in his follow-up, in which he also mentions another study someone pointed out finding the same thing. I hope we'll see more complete research in this area, but because Wikipedia is such a huge data source, I don't expect we'll get anything with a truly representative sample size any time soon. Meanwhile, these findings make sense to me.
posted by scottreynen at 5:45 PM on September 16, 2006

reklaw writes "This essay on the site is extremely nasty in the way it believes that 'intellectuals', 'educated people' and 'academics' are somehow the most valuable contributors, with so much more to offer than the stupid proles "


Honestly, I expect that sometime in the next 100 years we'll see a purge of intellectuals and educated people and academics in America, not unlike China's Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot's mass murder of everyone wearing glasses, prosecuted by people thinking like reklaw and blaming the '"scientists" for global warming or drug-resistant plague or environmental collapse.

Afterward, I expect these saintly salt of the Earth Common Folk will be cold and hungry and short-lived, but blissfully illiterate and not doubt ecstatic as they dance in rags around the cheerful bonfires of university libraries, gnawing the bones of experimental animals looted from smashed research labs.

When I was younger, I wanted to live forever. Increasingly, I'd gladdened by the knowledge I'll die before the New Dark Age is fully established.
posted by orthogonality at 5:47 PM on September 16, 2006 [2 favorites]

Experts and academics are, supposedly, people who know far more than the rest of us on a given topic (as opposed to people who write incoherent essays with titles like "post-structralist feminist blah on the blah blah").

Experts do know more than you or I on a given topic (that we are not expert in). That's why they are experts. It's in the definition of the word.

To be an academic, you have to, by necessity, be an expert in something. Otherwise, you just don't get hired anywhere. Now, academics will write on things they are not experts in - I find this most common amongst academics who secretly wish they were pundits (Niall Ferguson being exhibit A).

Some academics are experts in post structuralism or feminism, or even post-structuralism and feminism. You don't understand their papers because you clearly have not bothered to study either of these areas of theory. It's like expecting to just instantly understand a chemistry paper with no prior study. No one expects scientists to make sense to the layman in their journal articles, why do you expect it of literary/humanities experts? Now, if you do go and study these areas of theory until you understand the articles, and then you disagree with their conclusions, feel free to write your own article arguing so. Or start another school of literature analysis - maybe call it "new historicism" or something.

Or maybe we should just all follow your example and dismiss any area of study we don't understand. I don't have any maths beyond high school, so clearly all university level maths is bunk. Half the time, they don't even write numbers - just nonsense letters all over the place!
posted by jb at 5:51 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

Is there no place for the autodidact in the grand scheme of things?

Increasingly in scientific fields there isn't. Because of the large amount of knowledge and training needed to get to the research edge in at least most physical and health sciences, few people have the determination or the money to completely devote themselves to slogwork for the ten to fifteen years required. University and gradschool cut that in half and you get (minimally) paid for the last four to six years. So no, there are almost no self-taught working scientists today.
posted by bonehead at 6:07 PM on September 16, 2006

"Progressive" (i.e. Marxist/Socialist).
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:09 AM JST on September 17

That's possibly the first time those words have been used like that. I bet you think Islamofascism is a useful term too.
posted by Jenga at 6:08 PM on September 16, 2006

I think there is a great place for the autodidact. I know a very important epidemiologist who began as a chemist. But that doesn't make the people who aren't autodidacts incompetent. (Which you didn't suggest at all, but recklaw insinuated).
posted by jb at 6:09 PM on September 16, 2006

The moon is made of green cheese, or "The Astronomer and the Amateur meet on Wikipedia". I guess it explains in layman's terms why many folks who happen to actually possess knowledge (rather than just a good memory for trivia and a lot of free time) won't bother with Wikipedia as it is now.

Still, it doesn't explain why there's a 17-page article on the Star Wars Holiday Special and a stub about Resnais's Night and Fog. But I guess that a proper article about Night and fog won't be written until it's remade into a TV show with a game tie-in. Then the Nacht und Nebel article itself may get the attention of some arrogant know-it-all expert it apparently requires. If Sanger's project provides some minimal editorial control, I'm all for it.
posted by elgilito at 6:10 PM on September 16, 2006 [2 favorites]

Until you've tried to correct or clean a Wikipedia article, only to see a self-important wiki-fiddler revert your changes, citing sources anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject can see to be deeply flawed and sprinkling it with WP:RFID:MWORH insider jargon when all you want to do is correct an embarrassing error, it's very easy to be idealistic about Wikipedia.

Or, what elgilito said.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 6:30 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

But I guess that a proper article about Night and fog won't be written until it's remade into a TV show with a game tie-in.

It'll be written as soon as someone grows the gonads to write it.
posted by pokermonk at 6:30 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

Resarch shows they are

Well, it's the research we need to pay attention to.
posted by delmoi at 6:52 PM on September 16, 2006

I yammer about Wikipedia all the time. Wrote an essay about it or two, even. (Just mentioning my bias).

Forks arise because a person or group of people go "I don't like some aspect of the main tree, I'd like to try something different."

Sometimes the forks arise because the main tree won't support a platform, or a standard, or an idea. So they change up the way it works and off they go. Other times there's personality conflicts, and a group arises who says "we want the show without that guy in charge". Maybe they poach the best folks away, maybe they don't.

Forks either flourish, die, or sometimes force change in the main tree that wouldn't have happened without someone on the outside going "try it this way".

I wish Mr. Sanger well, it's certainly worth a shot.

And for what it's worth, I think Citizendium is a great name.
posted by jscott at 6:58 PM on September 16, 2006

Then I saw that they meant "progressive", not "Progressive" (i.e. Marxist/Socialist).

Oh, Steven. You've been reading too much Instapedia.

Wikipedia has been responding to some of the pushback it's been getting of late. The Siegenthaler episode led to a draconian Biographies of Living Persons policy. Concerns about vandalized articles have brought about a solution under testing by the German Wikipedia, where most users see a vetted version rather than the "live" and potentially vandalized or degraded version of an article. There is explicitly a change in focus being bruited from quantity (1.3 million articles!) to quality (1300 featured articles!) ... and the Featured Article process has become simply brutal.

Recently some departures including a few MetaFilter-related folks has brought about the Expert Retnetion proposal, and another to deal with the problem of Tendentious Editors. Both of these attempt to rebalance the tilt toward non-experts and the inevitable result that sometimes the loudest and most persistent voices win even when "wrong".

The main problem Sanger has, then, is that Wikipedia has the capability to react and change, probably faster than his site can get off the ground. As pokermonk notes, his approach didn't work before, either.

I've been there, though, probably twice a week on average. I once told a friend who added a small citation to an article that if she thought she coudl handle getting her edits reverted by a complete maroon, she might be able to handle hanging around. (She took it the wrong way.) But it's really frustrating sometimes. There's one article I'm forever trying to keep conspiracy stuff out of, and it's a problem because there's a published book with half the stuff in it, so people think it's citable.

But there's a clear difference between people who see an error and think "My God, Wikipedia is crap" and those who see an error and think, "I'd better fix that." But do read Ikkyu2's essay, and WCityMike's These are clearly written by people who fundamentally love Wikipedia -- or at least the Platonic ideal of Wikipedia.
posted by dhartung at 6:59 PM on September 16, 2006

Wikipedia is trying to be the junk food version of the big picture, delivered fast and easy. It only needs to seem accurate to be proud of itself. Naysayers are told to edit it, but not organize it. The game is played by pitting people against each other and removing any organization in hopes that something reliable will emerge quickly. However, in this jungle the knowledgeable are outnumbered, and the intellectually weak and stubborn win by default. The internal contradiction is that Wikipedia loves to quote educational elitism, but hates to please it. So, there is something self-serving about so many unqualified people writing their own encyclopedia.
posted by Brian B. at 7:02 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

The whole thing is just viral marketing for boomis.com.
posted by delmoi at 7:02 PM on September 16, 2006

I saw this and my first thought was "Ahh, Sanger's still raging against the machine, eh?"
posted by mrbill at 7:07 PM on September 16, 2006

One of things that gets so lost in these efforts and discussions, is, in my mind, the core value-add by Wikipedia to the culture, to wit:

"This might all be bullshit."

A couple of years ago, I was finishing up my undergrad degree, and was a member of a learning team tasked with writing project papers for several classes. A couple of the team members kept bringing Wikipedia citations in as academic references. I got it into it with them about the likelihood of Wikipedia standing up as a valid research reference to our professors, and it turned out they had not a clue as to how wikis work, how Wikipedia functioned, or what research and scholarship was all about. It was on the Web, and looked authoratative, and lots of their friends pointed them to Wikipedia for various explanations of how the world works, so, it must be as good or better than Encyclopedia Brittanica, because Wikipedia is way more current than EB, at least!

So, I explained the facts of academic provenance to them, and we dropped the Wikipedia references, reluctantly. But I've thought about it a lot since then, and maybe those kids were on to something. They were clueless, and took what the read on Wikipedia at face value, and yet...

What's wrong with a resource that is 87.9% reliable on an average Thursday, and which, by it's very nature, reminds you to be skeptical of it, and of all wizards and free lunches? 87.9% of the time, what you get from hitting the resource is worth getting, and you're always reminded not to be a sucker. With what you learn on Wikipedia, right or wrong, you should be able to Google, Ask, and A9 your way to real authorities, or determine within 3 or 4 clicks that Wikipedia is FUBAR on your topic interest, and go about your merry business elsewhere. Not much harm, not much foul.

Citizendium wants to be a vetted resource for the clueless or the gullible. More power to them, as 10th graders are easily led astray. The gullible will rejoice, along with the folks who love amassing letters after their names. The rest of us can continue with Wikipedia's messiness, and edit wars, satisfied with 87.9% reliability, or some such, and the constant reminder, which I wish was a masthead on every Wikipedia page that "This might be bullshit."

I give Larry and The Sour Grapes (his band of unMerry unPranksters) longer than the 3 months speculated upthread. Priggery hath funding sources heretofore known only to God and His Church, but they'll find a way. A dull, lifeless way, maybe, but one that has a builtin audience:

High school kids and undergrads looking for academically sound Web citations at the last minute. They'll pay, believe me, they'll pay.
posted by paulsc at 7:21 PM on September 16, 2006 [4 favorites]

it believes that 'intellectuals', 'educated people' and 'academics' are somehow the most valuable contributors, with so much more to offer than the stupid proles [...] Organised vandalism, anyone?

Thank you for perfectly summing up why this was necessary in the first place.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:29 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

Afterward, I expect these saintly salt of the Earth Common Folk will be cold and hungry...

Yeah, because what would farmers, tradespeople, and manual labourers know about growing their own food and protecting themselves from the elements? They've only been doing it for 10 000+ years.

See you at the wall! :D
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:30 PM on September 16, 2006

Citizendium: hipster newspeak for rabble.
posted by slatternus at 7:56 PM on September 16, 2006

Wikipedia is for amateur-experts. Sanger wants to bring in professional-experts to referee and mentor the amateurs. It's a noble move and looks a lot like the traditional education model, which has a few thousand years success story.

The dark side is that Sanger is allowing advertising. He is making a money grab. If Citizendium is successful it could be worth 100s of millions a year in revenue (based on estimates of what Wikipedia would generate if it allowed advertising).

Basically it comes down to will the business model work. Unlike Nupedia which could not attract advertisers (chicken and egg, they had no content) - Citizendium now has lots of content from Wikipedia, plus a super-star name behind it (Sanger), and paid and volunteer experts mentoring professional-level content. This could draw advertisers, which could snow-ball and make it a success where Nupedia couldn't get off the ground.
posted by stbalbach at 8:52 PM on September 16, 2006

Good summary, stbalbach. Given that a lot of experts would like to contribute to a free body of knowledge, and that wikipedia is basically anti-expert, something like this seems very likely to emerge, one way or another. The only question for me is: can Sanger pull it off?

The more I look at the wikipedia system, the more it's flaws seem insurmountable if it is to really improve. As useful and sucessful an experiment as it is, my guess is that better systems will soon come along, and that wikipedia is beyond repair. Not that wikipedia is particularly bad, just that the systems and approach have contrived a cultural momentum that cannot accomodate expert knowledge, or recognise and change in response to major systemic flaws.
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:22 PM on September 16, 2006

Cortex, Quin: The cadence of Citizenium is fine, the trouble is that it has a series of four coronal consonants in a row, (pronounced with the front of the tongue) which makes it a bit of a tongue-twister to say.

Wikipedia and Polinomicon have more variation on the location of the consonants within the mouth, which makes them come out easier.
posted by RobotHero at 11:42 PM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

Cinnamonicon.
posted by dirigibleman at 12:54 AM on September 17, 2006

Or maybe we should just all follow your example and dismiss any area of study we don't understand.

The trouble is that so much in academia is just stringing together buzzwords and long words that no-one really understands, in order to look good (see also).

A quick look at Larry Sanger's Wikipedia edits will reveal him for what he is -- a self-promoter. Worse, if you go back further and look at his actual article contributions, you'll see that they're all written in the same incredibly turgid, pseudo-intellectual style as the Citizendium site -- not exactly the style you want in a mass-consumption Wikipedia.

As far as I can see, Sanger's vision for Citizendium is to take Wikipedia, put all the long words and fake knowledge back in, and lock knowledge back in its ivory tower where it belongs. How could anyone support that?
posted by reklaw at 2:12 AM on September 17, 2006

A broader point that maybe I'm not getting across very well: real experts in a subject can write on it competently and well, for the masses, in a clear and understandable way. They want to explain things to people without over-complicating them, because they want to spread knowledge.

That's the exact opposite of the credential-focused, pseudo-intellectual philosophy of Sanger.
posted by reklaw at 2:15 AM on September 17, 2006

I think there is a great place for the autodidact. I know a very important epidemiologist who began as a chemist.

I'm not sure that this example, or Steven C. Den Beste's cartographer turned software engineer actually counts as an autodidact. Once you've had the benefit of a decent education -- particularly one that involves significant post-graduate study, it isn't hard to take the techniques you've learned and apply them to other areas. The only disadvantage that such people have, it seems to me, is time.

A broader point that maybe I'm not getting across very well: real experts in a subject can write on it competently and well, for the masses, in a clear and understandable way.

I think that's a definition of an expert that only you are using, reklaw -- and one that's actually been previously addressed by IshmaelGraves' point about the need for different categories of specialist.

I have a writer friend who makes a very decent living turning the knowledge and ideas of such experts (generally in science and medicine) into books for the masses precisely because these experts lack that particular skill. However, that doesn't make them any less expert in their specialisms. It just means that, like the rest of us, they have strengths and weaknesses and as such, are able to achieve their fullest potential in some areas as part of a team rather than as lone individuals.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:26 AM on September 17, 2006

I think reklaw is living on another planet, where words just mean whatever he decides they mean. A few, rare, gifted academics can write both at the high expert level that is required, sine qua non, for academic employment, and also at the generalist level for the popular audience. If this were more common, people like Bob MacDonald and Carl Sagan wouldn't have careers (which they are damn good at).

About self-teaching: those are good points, PeterMcDermott, about how having previous research experience means that it is easier. There was learning on the job, but not from pure scratch.

That said, I have met autodidacts in my own field, history. Local history and family history is very popular, and their work (producing transcripts of registers, indexes of sources, narrative histories of certain places) has been invaluable to my research. But they have totally different questions from academic history, and are often not aware of the most recent research which has upset earlier ideas. Partly because they don't have access to journals or academic libraries, which I think they should have, but also because popular books written in an accessible style tend to not be at the cutting edge of research.
posted by jb at 4:18 AM on September 17, 2006

A few, rare, gifted academics can write both at the high expert level that is required, sine qua non, for academic employment, and also at the generalist level for the popular audience.

My basic argument is that the "high expert level" mostly consists of meaningless bullshit (try reading some of it, even in a field you're an expert in). Anyone who really knows what they're talking about will be able to explain it in general terms.
posted by reklaw at 4:32 AM on September 17, 2006

Can you come up with an example of this high expert level meaningless bullshit in a field other than post-structuralist philosophy, please? In genetics or structural engineering or Irish political history something like that. Your standard for what constitutes a real expert seems to be entirely based on what you personally can understand - if they say stuff you get, they're an expert; if you don't get it, they're a charlatan. Which is a pretty hefty assertion, as things go.
posted by flashboy at 4:54 AM on September 17, 2006

Well, in general, stuff in the hard sciences won't be that way -- it's either true or it's not, pretty much, and if you put in enough time you could figure it out. Fair enough, I accept that.

But when it comes to the soft/social sciences and the humanities, I just don't think there's any way this model is going to work. Now I don't know that much about Irish political history, but I would imagine that you'd have little trouble finding an amazing array of biased sources on such a controversial matter, all written by supposed experts. And the chances are that you'd find them trying to hide their biases by going into long-word-overdrive mode.

What I'm trying to put forward here is that if your writing consists of basically stringing buzzwords together (and you know very well the kind of writing I'm talking about), it's because you have something to hide. I don't buy that these people are just bad writers -- they're trying to hide that they don't know anything, or that their theories are controversial, or whatever.

As for real, concrete examples, well, go read a sociology textbook and get back to me.
posted by reklaw at 5:07 AM on September 17, 2006

High school kids and undergrads looking for academically sound Web citations at the last minute. They'll pay, believe me, they'll pay.

Citizendium is never going to be an "academically sound Web citation," if by that you mean acceptable in academic papers.

My basic argument is that the "high expert level" mostly consists of meaningless bullshit (try reading some of it, even in a field you're an expert in).

That's completely ridiculous.
posted by languagehat at 5:14 AM on September 17, 2006

Languagehat, have we ever even remotely agreed on anything? It's getting a bit odd.
posted by reklaw at 5:23 AM on September 17, 2006

Yes, I know what you mean - I like bashing PoMo as much as anybody, and I once spent an entire sociology of science lecture translating the lecturer's arguments into English, whereupon they became a tedious mish-mash of mundane truisms and purest nonsense.

But I think you're conflating two different meanings of the word expert. Derrida may or may not have written utter drivel that was contentless guff, and legions of philosophy grad students may or may not be able to wangle academic careers by stringing together quotes from him interspersed with buzzwords, but that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as being an expert on what Derrida wrote. One person can know far more than another about what Derrida said, what his influences were, who he in turn influenced, etc - and they can posess this knowledge without ever making a claim about the truth or usefulness of Derrida's work. And they can, and should, be able to correct from a position of knowledge anybody who comes in and decides to edit the Derrida article to say "Derrida just wrote meaningless guff about moon fairies and tiny golden unicorns".

Study and learning and specialisation are still good things, and necessary, however tempting it is to dismiss anything that can't be explained to you over a quick pint.

One thing I like about Wikipedia (and I do like it, think it's far, far better than most people would have predicted, and believe that many of its critics are suffering from a severe case of over-inflated expectations of perfection) is that it does a very good job of making uncertainty and doubt explicit. It's a common end result of many an edit war, that you get a reasonable description of any areas of controversy and unresolved questions. It lets you look under the hood in a way that many other knowledge bases never do.

Many of the criticisms of Wikipedia aren't unqiue to Wikipedia, although often the critics appear to think they are - they're common to pretty much all human attempts at the production and aggregation of knowledge.

While I sympathise with experts who feel driven away by Wikipedia's culture, what they complain about in Wikipedia often sounds extraordinarily similar to things they can (and do) complain about in academia... just that Wikipedia annoyances happen many magnitudes faster than academic annoyances, and have the added irritant of your tormentor being an anonymous git on the other side of the world. Which, understandably, makes it more offensive.

This is one of the reasons why I think Citizendium is currently quite ill-thought out, although I think it's an interesting idea and hope to see it succeed. Several of the critiques of Wikipedia that it identifies as crucial flaws are, in the general case, problems that have plagued all human discourse for all eternity, and I don't see any systematic methods for dealing with them - just a vague assertion of good intentions, and a slightly unpleasant willingness to ascribe their presence on Wikipedia to the personality flaws of key Wikipedians.
posted by flashboy at 5:45 AM on September 17, 2006 [1 favorite]

I'm just looking forward to seeing the same Wikipedia articles appear, in rehashed form, for all my search results, whether they be on Answers.com, the Free Dictionary or now Citizenopolopolis.
posted by Ljubljana at 6:02 AM on September 17, 2006

"Citizendium is never going to be an "academically sound Web citation," if by that you mean acceptable in academic papers. ..."
posted by languagehat at 8:14 AM EST on September 17 [+] [!]

Here's a professor complaining about Wikipedia content being a source for plagarism, who might think having such content called out as a reference would be preferable to how its often already used. Formats for Web citations are already standardized in APA style guides, and are pretty common at many institutions in both undergrad and grad level work.
posted by paulsc at 6:29 AM on September 17, 2006

Tough to read your link there paulsc as it is not a sound HTML format link.

However, even without the link (and unseen argument) I can still say "web citation" does not necessarily equal "academically sound Web citation."

I don't believe any "volkspedia" will ever hold up to the scrutiny that academia requires. You simply can't accredit every user.
posted by fuckwit at 6:48 AM on September 17, 2006

reklaw writes "What I'm trying to put forward here is that if your writing consists of basically stringing buzzwords together (and you know very well the kind of writing I'm talking about), it's because you have something to hide."

Yes. But the choice is not a binary choice between "easy to read" (real experts) and "string of buzzwords" (fake experts). There's an enormously huge third area, probably far bigger than those two: "complicated, but accurate" (real experts). Writing by these experts make no sense to people who know little about the subject they regard, but make perfect sense to other experts.
posted by Bugbread at 6:59 AM on September 17, 2006

paulsc: I don't mean that scholarly papers should never refer to Wikipedia, Citizendium, or the screeds handed out by your local schizophrenic; obviously anything can be cited, and there should be standardized formats to cite it in. When I say "academically sound Web citation," I mean something cited to back up facts rather than to illustrate a point. Sure, you can say "Misunderstandings are widespread on the internet; for an especially egregious example, see [Wiki citation]." But I don't think you'll ever see a scholarly article that says "The American Revolutionary War began in 1775 [footnote to Wiki reference]."
posted by languagehat at 7:09 AM on September 17, 2006

Corrected link for my comment above.

"... I don't believe any "volkspedia" will ever hold up to the scrutiny that academia requires. You simply can't accredit every user."
posted by fuckwit at 9:48 AM EST on September 17 [+] [!]

I take your point, but the APA style guides already include mechanisms for citing versions of Web "documents" by time and date, and a wiki's version history may be an acceptable further mechanism for tracking edit changes to "authorities." Which is kind of the whole point of Citizendium, I gather.
posted by paulsc at 7:10 AM on September 17, 2006

"... But I don't think you'll ever see a scholarly article that says "The American Revolutionary War began in 1775 [footnote to Wiki reference]."
posted by languagehat at 10:09 AM EST on September 17 [+] [!]

I take your point, languagehat, but the ready availability of Web resources, the continuing collapse of print material production and distribution, and the need for institutions of higher learning to serve students and faculty with greater access to resources at lower costs all argue for the eventual demise of the traditional library, as well as the traditional methods of scholarly publication, in favor of Web delivery models, and work flow backends. Use and citation of Web resources is increasing at every level in academia.

What Citizendium is trying to do is make a further stab at delivering some of the goals of traditional academic publishing and review in a Web format, if I understand their launch announcement correctly. If they can do this successfully, they may differentiate themselves acceptably for many.

Students want it badly. Professors and the institutions for which they teach want to police plagarism equally as much as students want to use electronic research. If Citizendium can solve problems of authority, citation ease and accuracy, and content protection/attribution for the converged interests of all, it may create a newly respectable niche, both academically and economically, for itself.

I tend to wish all new ventures well, as I do this one, always in hopes of more new things in this often tired world.
posted by paulsc at 7:25 AM on September 17, 2006

I have never known encyclopedia of any kind to be acceptable references in any research paper, even those dinky high school research papers.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:32 AM on September 17, 2006

I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"

"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"

Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"

Wiki is better off without the Vroomfondels and Majikthises of the world telling the rest of us how to think. But hey! If Citizendium thinks it can improve upon the Wiki, let them. Separately. Out of the way. Undisturbed by loonies who like to fight over whether or not certain genocides ever happened. Or perhaps fueled by them. I don't care. My opinion may change five years from now, but for the moment, when I want an answer to something (not THE definitive answer alright but AN answer) I type wikipedia.org in the Address field. Or I google. Or I do dozens of other things before I would even think about "citizendium."

Did they get a team of marketing suits together to power lunch that nome de plume? Cuz it sounds worse than most corporate brand names out there nowadays, and just a wee bit condescending in terms of meaningless manipulative propaganda. "We're a citizen compendium! Not like those other guys who are a compendium of wikizens!" WTF???

This sounds to me like a handful of dissidents from the wiki community who got fed up with fighting over others and are building their own sandbox. Big deal. Let them. Rather than pool their efforts to help make a better wiki they're inadvertently weakening both wiki's pool of interested parties and their own. But hey. It's a free world. No wait. I tell a lie. It is not.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:10 AM on September 17, 2006

I don't believe any "volkspedia" will ever hold up to the scrutiny that academia requires. You simply can't accredit every user.

You can, but it requires a massive investment of time and resources which neither Wikipedia nor Citizenipediowhatever — even with a for-profit business model — can provide. Accreditation does not scale well, having become reliant on (resource-intensive) specialization.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:35 AM on September 17, 2006

Well, in general, stuff in the hard sciences won't be that way -- it's either true or it's not, pretty much, and if you put in enough time you could figure it out. Fair enough, I accept that.

The hard sciences are just as bad, in different ways. You get competing fields studying similar topics with completely different languages, including different mathematical language. Analysing why those differences come about - utility, protect your job, whatever - I will leave as an exercise for the reader. However, the fact that objective measures are sometimes possible makes it more important to be obscure, because your position is more tenuous.
posted by Chuckles at 10:31 AM on September 17, 2006

reklaw: Imagine if open source projects started vetting contributors based on whether they had degrees in computer science or not.

Actually, many open source projects do vet contributors based on experience and quality of prior submissions. And some are downright closed shops of a handful of people.

Also, experts are generally least capable of communicating their ideas with non-experts because:
1: Much of their knowledge is ad hoc and tacit.
2: They tend to spend more time collaborating with other experts who share tacit and background knowledge and a technical jargon for talking about it.

paulsc: I take your point, but the APA style guides already include mechanisms for citing versions of Web "documents" by time and date, and a wiki's version history may be an acceptable further mechanism for tracking edit changes to "authorities." Which is kind of the whole point of Citizendium, I gather.

The problem with wikipedia for academic writing has less to do with "web" vs. "print" than with the distinction between primary and secondary sources. The basic point of an academic lit review is to make your sources of authority explicit so they can be interrogated and questioned. Wikipedia, the AP, Encyclopedia Britanica, and other sources that leave the author anonymous make this more difficult.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:18 AM on September 17, 2006

Also, you cite sources in academic writing not just to muster athoritative support for claims of fact, but also to muster support for a set of theories and methods. So even with something as prosaic as the start of the American Revolution an academic writer is going to cite historians with a specific theory and method of describing how that conflict developed or its relationship in history.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 11:42 AM on September 17, 2006

reklaw writes "My basic argument is that the 'high expert level' mostly consists of meaningless bullshit (try reading some of it, even in a field you're an expert in). Anyone who really knows what they're talking about will be able to explain it in general terms."

Explaining things in common terms is a skill/talent completely orthogonal to skill in any particular field, say physics. For every Feynman there are a hundred physicists who couldn't explain friction to a high school class; I've known, by an accident of association, many of them.

And that doesn't address the fact that in order to understand any explanation may require extensive study in percursers, you can't teach many mechanical engineering topics unless the student has an understanding of calculus for example.

KirkJobSluder writes "Wikipedia, the AP, Encyclopedia Britanica, and other sources that leave the author anonymous make this more difficult"

Wikipedia is especially infuriatingly on this point. Even when talking about web events, say an article on slashdot, they'll link to their page on slashdot instead of the original article. I think I know their reasons for this but it drives me crazy.
posted by Mitheral at 12:58 PM on September 17, 2006

Goodness, is it possible to rent out reklaw for parties?

I'll correct one of his contentions; the reason Larry Sanger's recent (last few years) editing history on Wikipedia centers around Wikipedia's History, his own entry, and these "self-promotional" aspects is because he left the project and chose to not muck up the waters by continuing to contribute edits while saying he didn't want to be a part of it. His changes to the Wikipedia articles he does (most of them, anyway), regard him having to defend allegations, correct misstatements, and basically "maintain" his history.

If you go to circa 2002, you can see Sanger editing/commenting on the usual goulash of subjects a "typical" editor involves themselves in.
posted by jscott at 6:29 PM on September 17, 2006

It might be vaguely amusing come a few months from now, once the vocal minority behind this thing has started 'improving' upon the wikiness they have so benevolently stolen, to see just what topics are left alone and which ones they deem requisite of an 'expert' touch.

How will CitiFauxWiki approach the many Controversial Issues which Wikipedia has been unable to resolve over the years? Will CFW avoid these like the plague, or is the real reason for CFW to determine once and for all an editorial voice?
posted by ZachsMind at 9:51 PM on September 17, 2006

Experts in comic book characters? Qualified experts?

Student gains PhD for Batman thesis.
posted by biffa at 2:08 AM on September 18, 2006

> You simply can't accredit every user.

You don't need to. You need to be sure that the expert editor in charge of each page knows right from wrong when he or she sees it. Then let the horde write, as long as the editors are numerous enough to read every page for which they are responsible and empowered enough to revert bad edits and cull bad writers.

> How will CitiFauxWiki approach the many Controversial Issues

I don't know, but giving control to some experts would have to help thin out the crazies (by frustrating their attempts to add stuff on perpetual motion) and balance the coverage.
posted by pracowity at 2:22 AM on September 18, 2006

You obviously have more faith in "experts" than most, PracoWity.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:25 AM on September 18, 2006

So, reklaw, ZachsMind, are you actually claiming that the Wikipedia system as it exists now can never be improved on?
posted by darukaru at 12:04 PM on September 18, 2006

No -- obviously it could be improved on. But imposing an old-world 'expert' structure on it isn't going to do so. You might as well just put the wealthy landowners in charge and have done with it if you're going to be that unegalitarian.
posted by reklaw at 12:18 PM on September 18, 2006

Right, because knowing things is exactly like having medieval seignoral rights. Harrison Bergeron, anyone?
posted by languagehat at 1:07 PM on September 18, 2006 [1 favorite]

I like the way Wikipedia functions, but would appreciate links from the page leading to essays by "authorities" who happen to disagree with the content. For matters of basic science and history it would be nice to have prioritized content by historians and scientists, just not on the main page, which is wonderfully democratic. I think Wikipedia can do this on its own though, and strongly doubt that Citizenzolopolis will be able to borrow or steal any of Wiki's momentum.
posted by my homunculus is drowning at 4:37 PM on September 18, 2006

Then I saw that they meant "progressive", not "Progressive" (i.e. Marxist/Socialist).
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:09 PM PST on September 16

Considering your inability to get "war crime" right, it is not shocking you get "progressive" wrong also.

Feel free to not respond with actual links to definitons that match your claim.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:44 AM on September 19, 2006

Studying for years to become knowledgable is like inheirting an estate, but making lots of money at a job you obtained through connections is just our meritocracy at work.
posted by jb at 3:21 AM on September 20, 2006

> You obviously have more faith in "experts" than most

No, most people have a great deal of faith in experts, no quotation marks required. You go to a doctor, not to a bus driver, when you have a problem with your body. You go to a specialist doctor when you have a particular problem with your body. You don't let the first person who comes along take a knife to you or fill you full of untested medicine, hoping that the next person who comes along will fix any mistakes the first person makes.

You buy a tea kettle expecting it to work efficiently and to not burn down your house or scald you. You assume that the people who designed and made it know something about kettles. You would never knowingly buy a kettle from someone who has never designed, made, and tested a kettle before. Most (all?) products and services you buy are the creations of experts, because experts are the best pilots, doctors, engineers, novelists, etc.

You do place an awful lot of faith in experts.

Wikipedia is a good way to gather raw materials and continuously review articles for recent changes, but articles should be frozen into releases (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, ...) that have been reviewed and corrected. Let people read the latest build (3.13 or whatever is current) or let them read a slightly older version (say, 3.0) that has been reviewed by relevant experts, edited by decent writers, and locked forever.
posted by pracowity at 8:01 AM on September 21, 2006 [1 favorite]