Seth Finkelstein wrote:
One reason I think projects such as _Citizendium_ are
important is that they provide at least some practical
counter-argument to the monopolistic tendencies of Wikipedia-hype.
Which comes back to the original question about the success of
_Citizendium_, and that being bound up in some very subtle decisions
about Google's algorithm.
Certainly CZ is potentially important: if it manages a "proof of
concept" success for a somewhat different model of encyclopedia-wiki
writing, then the whole debate moves on a notch. And you could say the
same thing about Google knols: these things are field-tests of ideas
that differ in some significant ways from the WP model. CZ ducked the
issue of forking WP, which remains a major possibility that has not been
tried.
I'm not really following you, though, in that "counter-argument" I see
(plenty enough of it in the archives of this list), and "practical" as
in field-test I also see as just stated. If you think of Sanger as
producing a "practical counter-argument" over at Citizendium, then I
guess you buy his whole side of the story. In our (WP) terms we would
wonder: is there not a CZ community that has a mind of its own? Where
are the Citizens in this discussion? Do they see the Wales-Sanger
foundation spat as something fundamental (as you seem to)? Or would they
see it as something quite aside from the main reason CZ is there? In
this light, if I may quote from Wikipedia article [[founder syndrome]]:
"Without an effective decentralized decision making process there will
be growing conflict between the newcomers, who want a say in how the
organization develops and the founder who continues to dominate the
decision making process." Interesting to ponder where this hits home harder.
I wouldn't know about the more subtle aspects of PageRank, and I suppose
Google doesn't want me to. It might be coarse, of course. We learned at
Wikipedia to write as hypertext from early on (mav and summary style
comes to mind). We had many short articles instead of one big one one.
Wikipedia is shrubland rather than a grove of sequoias. I imagine this
all matters.
Charles