On 12/21/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I seem to recall Larry talking about how Citizendium after one year had more articles than Wikipedia did after one year. I'm not sure if I'm paraphrasing him right, and/or if his original statement was accurate, but I don't think one can write off Citizendium just yet.
Citizendium may well teach Wikipedia some humility on the way. But likely it will learn some of the same for itself. Citizendium definitely has Nupedia beat by now, quite easily. Both in terms of money spent, and in terms of results.
One thing Larry Sanger may be miscalculating is he thinks there will be a sudden surge of growth in Citizendiums activity level at some point, like a slashdotting. Let's face it, just on the coat-tails of Wikipedia, Citizendium has *been* slashdotted, and the surge hasn't yet materialized. There is no real reason to presume that it will. Academics aren't susceptible to the same volatile flash-mob sensibilities as nerds.
What may be in the future for Citizendium as a milestone, is the point where they have a single article or more that they feel compare favourably, or which outside evaluators compare to be better than wikipedias. That may well spur on a real race on the highest quality of both encyclopaedias articles, which could in the end either benefit both projects, or derail them into focusing only on a narrow apex of articles, and forget all about the long tail.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]