[WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/21 Chet Hoover <chet.hoover at yahoo.com>:
> Here's why Citizendium is far better:
>
> * It's more open... everyone's identities are known, there are no sockpuppets, there is none of the absurd overhead that anonymity entails.

The identities aren't generally verified, the only requirement is that
you use a name which is plausibly a real one. It doesn't have to be
your real name.

> * It's more serious... vital articles come first... Pokemon comes last. Only in many years from now will we begin to see trivial articles surface: obscure films, unknown actors & etc.

Um... http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Pokemon

> *This seriousness attracts Academics. Citizendium's slow growth is actually an incentive to serious-minded writers. It means the place is clear of the nutters and fans that Wikipedia has.

It's an incentive to writers, maybe, but not to readers. Nobody reads
Citizendium articles because there aren't enough of them to be worth
the trip. The articles may, in some cases, be better than the
corresponding Wikipedia articles, but Wikipedia is good enough and you
know before you start that the article will exist. With Citizendium,
chances are it doesn't. That's not really Citizendium's fault, any
competitor to Wikipedia is going to face the same problem - Wikipedia
got there first.

> *The place is in the hands of "writers" and not an army of "1600 administrators". Can you imagine writing for Wikipedia as an expert and knowing that your bosses are in high school, maybe university, and only occasionally over 35 years old?

That statement just shows a misunderstanding about what Wikipedia
admins do - the are janitors, not bosses.

> *Because real identities are used, less rules and guideline creep exists. It's more about the material.

The premise is false (see first response) and the conclusion doesn't
even follow from it.

> *All the computer guys are at Wikipedia because they like the technical aspects of Wikipedia where you have to master a lingo and comply with MOS (don't ask!). These guys see everything in terms of percents anyhow, and don't have the kind of discerning mind that understands concepts and themes & etc. With them out of the way, you get a healthier bunch of writers who show up at Citizendium.

That may be true, but Wikipedia is so much bigger than Citizendium
that we still have far more good writers, even if the proportion of
good writers is less.

> *Citizendium's difficult entrance exam is not really all that difficult. It's a sure-fire way of keeping out those who are not prepared to edit an encyclopedia  and frankly, I love that!

Wikipedia finds users that just want to make a couple of minor
copyedits useful, if Citizendium feels they aren't worth the trouble,
that's just a matter of opinion. I can certainly see Citizendium's
point of view, but I don't agree with it.

> Citizendium can just hang on, and stick around, because it's far less about its success over Wikipedia than it is about an environment in which serious-minded people with the werewithal can write about important subjects.

So it's all about the writing? I would have though the important thing
was the reading. Wikipedia is all about spreading free knowledge - if
no-one reads what you write, there is no point writing it. If you
don't reach a comparable size to Wikipedia (you don't have to be
bigger, just within an order of magnitude or so) you won't attract
many readers. Without readers, you won't attract more writers (pretty
much all Wikipedians started out as readers, if Citizendium wants to
attract a significant number of writers it needs to use the same
source). Without more writers, the current writers will eventually get
bored and move on and the project will cease to exist.

I think competition is fantastic and fully encourage people to start
competitors to Wikipedia, but in my view Citizendium has failed. It
wasn't sufficiently better than Wikipedia to attract enough writers
and readers to kick off exponential growth, which is required to reach
a useful size.