Comments on: Wikipedia today, Citizendium tomorrow

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger wants to create a scholarly wiki with a more credible pedigree.

[Len Bullard]

Study The Earlier Media for The Same Stages of Development

"..that work group is probably going to have to carefully manage certain marketing efforts.."

That is the tough nut to crack. Gaming the Web has become a full-court sport and the semiotics-trained marketing experts are very good at it. Radar guns spawn radar detectors. Perhaps Citizendium will be the first noteworthy project to focus on means to de-spin information. It may be useful to study the early years of broadcast journalism to find lessons-learned as each medium has dealt with this very old problem through policy management of sources, resources, fact checking, corroboration and writing style that deflates agenda-emphasis. It is quite hard to write but breathtakingly simple looking when published. Start with the term 'advocacy journalism' and its predecessor 'yellow journalism' and see how and why what was once considered anathema to a well-trained professional journalist became trendy in the zeitgeist of post-60s social reporting, then morphed in to the vicious and one-sided reporting that is typified by Fox.

Removing anonymity is a huge step in the right direction. It won't overcome the problem of star-power where building a personality for the sake of having a frontman for a cause is the exact analog of creating a pre-processor gain stage in an amplifier. Pure signal is seldom useful because of the raw power required. So your idea of using experts is right but networks of experts like any network becomes socially organized and over time drifts toward the oldest connections. How to get a reasonable and just refresh rate into that is challenging.

Also, for any significant presence in an information ecosystem, there should be a competitor to ensure the quality of the resource. As I daily see more reports of schools refusing the use of wikipedia for research and the rising tide of skilled manipulators of marketable press, I'm glad to see Citizendium taking on the task. Good luck!

[whizzkidwebmaster]

Will be signing up!

Ill definately be signing up - I used to use Wikipedia as a resource for most of my information - but since I got marked down because the information I used was wrong, I lost all credibility in Wikipedia. I hope the Citizens' Compendium can bring me and many other users proper legitimate information.

[volterwd]

You and others

that are dumb enough to actually site a non .edu or .gov (or other countries gov site) as a reference deserve to be marked down.

The problem is YOU.

Wikipedia is a source of information not the be all and end all. It is a STARTING point for information to get aquainted with a subject.

Anyone using these types of sites at all is a moron.

[jsargent]

Why?

This new thing won't be any better. How does accountability make it better? Besides you got marked down because Wiki is not a source. Wiki is hearsaypedia unless it quotes reliable references which in turn might be wrong. The best wiki is is "a quick summary".

[ReyBrujo]

400m registered users

We wish! We only have little over 4 million (check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics). The German one has around 380,000 (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Statistik). All other Wikipedias should be smaller.

[adlyb1]

Elitist BS

A person who does not a bunch of letters after his name can be as knowledgeable about a topic as someone who a fair portion of his in higher education.
Wikipedia is a working man's resource. It isn't perfect, but it has served me well.
So, go build your own fort and we'll keep this one.
8^)