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Guettarda wrote:
On 9/18/06, David Alexander Russell
<webmaster(a)davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>
The idea that such an environment is meaningless
because the content can be
ported back to Wikipedia isn't true. For one, it provides a work
environment for people who don't want to deal with the stress of Wikipedia.
It also creates a "stable version" against which the Wikipedia version will
always be compared. Implemented properly, it can serve as a buffer against
articles becoming degraded.
The idea that expert-driven process will result in experts "telling people
what to do" seems like a rather pessimistic view of "experts". We have
lots
of experts on WP - some of them lack the ability to work with others, some
of them grow disenchanted and leave the project - but lots of others stay
and slog it out - and work quite well with others.
Ian
My problem with Citizendium is not any personality issues with experts,
but more that it explicitly states that 'experts' will be given more
control over the project than ordinary editors, therefore people are
given control based on their credentials rather than their ability to
write a good article.
Kim van der Linde wrote:
Interesting idea. Suppose that some evolutionary biology experts write
the citizendium entry on say evolution. I am pretty sure, it will be
substantially different from our version (which has substantial sections
just to deal with the continued stream of creationist POV-pushers). I
can see how a bot driven replacement of the content is just going to
result in either revert wars with the bot, or if that is blocked,
editors that are going to leave the article alone (open for anyone to
edit). But suppose, it gets accepted as a proper version. At wikipedia,
everybody can edit it, so it is free game again for regular editors as
well as POV-pushers. The latter have to be kept in check, either by
editors reverting, or by full protecting the article. The latter is more
likely, because as soon as citizendium updates their page, it gets
replaced at Wikipedia by the bot, taking away any incentive to improve
the content. So, as this is taking away the incentive for Wikipedia
editors to improve the article, I suspect that there will be never a bot
that is going to do this. Consequently, the articles at both sides will
remain different, and than quality differences start to play a role. As
soon as citizendium is perceived as qualitatively better and more
stable, people will start looking there and at wikipedia second.
Kim
Sorry, I didn't mean that the Citizendium article would automatically
overwrite the Wikipedia version, more that any improvements to the
Citizendium version could be incorporated into Wikipedia. You're right
though - it's probably not something a bot could do reliably, when I
think on it a bit more.
I don't know if people will prefer the Citizendium version though - if
people want there are plenty of academic websites already. The whole
reason people USE Wikipedia is its up-to-date coverage on a stupendous
range of topics - sure, Citizendium will have a complete 'fork copy' of
Wikipedia to begin with, but only the articles that its experts are
interested in will ever get updated - that is the essential problem with
a project that aims at giving control to a handful of experts to the
exclusion of everyone else. You might get a reasonably up-to-date
article on evolution or philosophy, but if you want to find out about
something less expert-attractive then you need Wikipedia.
That means that Wikipedia will still be people's first port of call -
even though some articles on Citizendium /might/ be better (not
guaranteed), there is a very good chance that you will find what you're
looking for.
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