As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles that are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go ahead and make the deletion...This experiment represents a reconception of our project's basic aim. If the experiment goes well, no longer will we be calling ourselves a "fork of Wikipedia." We will have, exclusively, our own identity and our own articles. We will still, to be sure, follow much of the Wikipedia process--the aspects that work. But no longer will we have as our central aim the cleaning up and approval of Wikipedia articles. I think it might prove easier and more pleasant to build fresh new stables than to clean out the Augean Stables of Wikipedia."
On the CZ forums, he writes,
"One thing that I think I didn't realize sufficiently, when writing about this question a few months ago (at embarrassing length, before the pilot project was well under way), is that the very presence of fair-to-middling articles from WP is actually a strong disincentive for people to get to work. It's like this: when you get down to brass tacks, it's no fun to clean up the mediocre work of Wikipedians. It might be a hell of a lot more fun to start over from scratch." (http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,431.0.html)
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
___________________________________________________________ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of unwanted email come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
On 1/18/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles that are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go ahead and make the deletion...This experiment represents a reconception of our project's basic aim. If the experiment goes well, no longer will we be calling ourselves a "fork of Wikipedia." We will have, exclusively, our own identity and our own articles. We will still, to be sure, follow much of the Wikipedia process--the aspects that work. But no longer will we have as our central aim the cleaning up and approval of Wikipedia articles. I think it might prove easier and more pleasant to build fresh new stables than to clean out the Augean Stables of Wikipedia."
On the CZ forums, he writes,
"One thing that I think I didn't realize sufficiently, when writing about this question a few months ago (at embarrassing length, before the pilot project was well under way), is that the very presence of fair-to-middling articles from WP is actually a strong disincentive for people to get to work. It's like this: when you get down to brass tacks, it's no fun to clean up the mediocre work of Wikipedians. It might be a hell of a lot more fun to start over from scratch." (http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,431.0.html)
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
Well I am just so...he is...well...this just makes me so...hmph, pfft.
Nina Stratton wrote:
On 1/18/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
Larry Sanger writes, If the experiment goes well, no longer will we be calling ourselves a "fork of Wikipedia." We will have, exclusively, our own identity and our own articles. We will still, to be sure, follow much of the Wikipedia process--the aspects that work. But no longer will we have as our central aim the cleaning up and approval of Wikipedia articles. I think it might prove easier and more pleasant to build fresh new stables than to clean out the Augean Stables of Wikipedia."
Well I am just so...he is...well...this just makes me so...hmph, pfft.
:-) Yes. I can understand how far some go in accepting that the only horses that don't require you to clean up after them are the ones on the merry-go-round.
Ec
On 1/18/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
"One thing that I think I didn't realize sufficiently, when writing about this question a few months ago (at embarrassing length, before the pilot project was well under way), is that the very presence of fair-to-middling articles from WP is actually a strong disincentive for people to get to work. It's like this: when you get down to brass tacks, it's no fun to clean up the mediocre work of Wikipedians. It might be a hell of a lot more fun to start over from scratch."
All ego and cat calls aside, the man's got a point -- people go where they're interested, and writing brand new articles "in your own image" is often more interesting than cleanup work. Whatever works for them; it's their project, after all.
I wouldn't be surprised if they "check in" on Wikipedia, now and then, just as we're apparently checking in on them. It's useful to see where similar but distinct projects have strong and weak points, and to see how that knowledge can help us to improve our own project.
Additionally, I rather doubt it, but this couldn't be the start of some licensing change on their part? The primary reason they went with GFDL, assuming I understand their decision correctly, was for the purpose of forking Wikipedia. By deleting the forked pages, a lot of that need is gone... although they've put a fair amount of work into it, already, which would still be GFDL licensed, along with the whole can of worms that such a decision (and discussion) would open up. Switching licenses would probably be disruptive, for them, but again, it's their project.
Just a few rambling thoughts. -Luna
--- Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if they "check in" on Wikipedia, now and then, just as we're apparently checking in on them. It's useful to see where similar but distinct projects have strong and weak points, and to see how that knowledge can help us to improve our own project.
Absolutely. Competition, preferably friendly, is not at all a bad thing.
Additionally, I rather doubt it, but this couldn't be the start of some licensing change on their part?
Browsing the forum thread, this is apparently a possibility. There's even some suggesting the use of a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license, an option that's apparently acceptable to Larry Sanger. That would be a very unfortunate development from the perspective of free content :(
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
___________________________________________________________ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html
Matt R wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles that are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go ahead and make the deletion...
I'm a bit clueless, but does this mean they haven't used any Wikipedia content, or that they have but they're hiding it? I mean, all the articles that are marked "CZ Live", are they based on Wikipedia content? And if they are, doesn't that mean they *have* to license under GFDL? Which, unless I got confused in another thread, they aren't planning to do?
Steve block
On 1/18/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
ahead
and make the deletion...
I'm a bit clueless, but does this mean they haven't used any Wikipedia content, or that they have but they're hiding it? I mean, all the articles that are marked "CZ Live", are they based on Wikipedia content? And if they are, doesn't that mean they *have* to license under GFDL? Which, unless I got confused in another thread, they aren't planning to do?
Steve block
Steve - if you poke around the Citizendium forum (there's a link to it in Matt's email) a lot of your questions may be answered.
Apparently their first "approved" article, Biology, was a complete re-write - the Wikipedia article was blanked. Other people have modified existing articles. As I understand it, the CZ Live stuff is stuff that people are working on.
Obviously they can't release work based on WP articles under a more restrictive license. New material could be - it seems to me that there's a debate between people who want the whole project to by cc-by-nc and those who want it to stay GFDL. It's certainly understandable that people would want their work to be only available for non-commercial uses - it's hard to think that people are using your work to make money. Of course I believe that there are good arguments for GFDL, otherwise I wouldn't be contributing to Wikipedia, but NC appeals to me as well.
Ian
On 1/18/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/18/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
ahead
and make the deletion...
I'm a bit clueless, but does this mean they haven't used any Wikipedia content, or that they have but they're hiding it? I mean, all the articles that are marked "CZ Live", are they based on Wikipedia content? And if they are, doesn't that mean they *have* to license under GFDL? Which, unless I got confused in another thread, they aren't planning to do?
Steve block
Steve - if you poke around the Citizendium forum (there's a link to it in Matt's email) a lot of your questions may be answered.
Apparently their first "approved" article, Biology, was a complete re-write
- the Wikipedia article was blanked. Other people have modified existing
articles. As I understand it, the CZ Live stuff is stuff that people are working on.
Obviously they can't release work based on WP articles under a more restrictive license. New material could be - it seems to me that there's a debate between people who want the whole project to by cc-by-nc and those who want it to stay GFDL. It's certainly understandable that people would want their work to be only available for non-commercial uses - it's hard to think that people are using your work to make money. Of course I believe that there are good arguments for GFDL, otherwise I wouldn't be contributing to Wikipedia, but NC appeals to me as well.
Ian
Hopefully they will at least dual license with GFDL if they go the CC route and start all new content. It seems like cutting themselves off from Wikipedia (especially, the transfer of content from CZ to WP) is a good way to shoot themselves in the foot. I don't see what a more restrictive license gains them, aside from more freedom with fair use images. However, I think some of the Live content did start from Wikipedia articles (correct me if I'm wrong).
It seems like a stretch to describe the forum discussion about the possible non-forking as "indicating broad support" (as Sanger does in the Citizendium blog announcement of the non-forking experiment). Meh. Not my problem.
-Sage
On 1/18/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
ahead
and make the deletion...
So, if they are making new material, will this be free content or not?
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
cohesion wrote:
On 1/18/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
ahead
and make the deletion...
So, if they are making new material, will this be free content or not?
No. Non-commercial-only is a SEVERE limitation of freedoms. I'm sure the [[DFSG]] talks about it somewhere... ah, here we go:
6. No discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use
Guettarda wrote:
On 1/18/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
ahead
and make the deletion...
I'm a bit clueless, but does this mean they haven't used any Wikipedia content, or that they have but they're hiding it? I mean, all the articles that are marked "CZ Live", are they based on Wikipedia content? And if they are, doesn't that mean they *have* to license under GFDL? Which, unless I got confused in another thread, they aren't planning to do?
Steve block
Steve - if you poke around the Citizendium forum (there's a link to it in Matt's email) a lot of your questions may be answered.
I looked at Citizendium a while back but couldn't for the life of me work out how I was supposed to become a contributor so I gave up looking at it.
Apparently their first "approved" article, Biology, was a complete re-write
- the Wikipedia article was blanked. Other people have modified existing
articles. As I understand it, the CZ Live stuff is stuff that people are working on.
Obviously they can't release work based on WP articles under a more restrictive license. New material could be - it seems to me that there's a debate between people who want the whole project to by cc-by-nc and those who want it to stay GFDL.
I can't see how you can ringfence certain articles. If information is moved from one GFDL article to another, a cc by nc, then the new article must be both GFDL and cc by nc, no? And aren't they incompatible?
Still, not really a huge amount of sense discussing citizendium here.
On 19/01/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Still, not really a huge amount of sense discussing citizendium here.
It's a relevant and interesting related project, so is relevant to discuss insofar as it informs what Wikipedia does and how it does it.
- d.
On 1/19/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Still, not really a huge amount of sense discussing citizendium here.
It's a relevant and interesting related project, so is relevant to discuss insofar as it informs what Wikipedia does and how it does it.
- d.
The day Wikipedia requires you to put your resume on your userpage to
edit, is the day I am outta there.
Of course I looked into Citizendium - a lot of us have. It made me feel small and somewhat worthless as a potential contributor. I simply don't need that in my life, so I didn't apply. Until they invite me to participate (like they invited several "experts"), I see no need to be involved.
Nina
Luna lunasantin@gmail.com to English show details Jan 18 (1 day ago) On 1/18/07, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
"One thing that I think I didn't realize sufficiently, when writing about this question a few months ago (at embarrassing length, before the pilot project was well under way), is that the very presence of fair-to-middling articles from WP is actually a strong disincentive for people to get to work. It's like this: when you get down to brass tacks, it's no fun to clean up the mediocre work of Wikipedians. It might be a hell of a lot more fun to start over from scratch."
All ego and cat calls aside, the man's got a point -- people go where they're interested, and writing brand new articles "in your own image" is often more interesting than cleanup work. Whatever works for them; it's their project, after all. Also, if you just write your own article, you don't have to worry about other editors who jealously guard their crap. As far as I've seen most of the very best of Wikipedia is written by people who don't mind other editors contributing to the article, and the very worst is written by people who don't very much mind other editors contributing or fixing.
Two of the worst articles I've seen this month are one article that is so poorly written even its editors didn't bother to read it, but they ganged up efficiently to prevent it being fixed to readability level, and a small biography of a man whose editor and his 8 or 6 sock puppets (he swears one was never his sock, only the other 7 or 5 were) ganged up to fight every spelling, grammar, style, and format fix that improved the article, ferociously determined to guilt trip to death anyone who tried to enhance it. It eventually got fixed by the fourth editor to attempt to do so, in spite of being hassled and overwritten the entire time.
Still, Wikipedia needs to clean up some of their own articles. The start-up at Citizenpedia is so difficult to understand, the registering, the e-mail, no examples of their articles that you can look at without registering, that it has marked itself for failure. Why bother discuss them, when they've decided to design themselves in a way destined to make for failure?
Anyone can not only edit, anyone often does a good job, particularly when they're working well with a bunch of other anyones.
KP
On 1/19/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Still, not really a huge amount of sense discussing citizendium here.
It's a relevant and interesting related project, so is relevant to discuss insofar as it informs what Wikipedia does and how it does it.
Looking through the Citizendium forum is interesting http://forum.citizendium.org/
I took a good look at them this weekend and tried to figure out what they were about, and how they saw themselves from being different to us. There appear to be two key elements of CZ that distinguishes it from WP - approved versions (your edits don't show up until they are approved) and expert approval (that you need to be a subject-matter expert, a so-called "Editor" in order to approve a version).
Neither of these ideas are new, of course. Anyone who has hung around this list long enough has heard the discussion of "approved versions" - the idea that an established Wikipedian would approve any article as "non-vandalised" before the edits actually show up. It's one of these perennial issues like single logins across projects. There are a lot of people here who want to see "stable versions" of articles showing up eventually.
The issue of expert approval has also been floated at various points. Of course I have never seen a clear definition of an expert around here (whether I agree with his definition or not, at least Larry came up with one). It has some value - it guarantees you that the version you are looking at has been fact-checked, etc. (Would approved CZ articles meet WP:RS? I'm guessing that they would.) It seems like a good idea...until you start thinking about the mechanisms of it all.
Expert approval doesn't scale. Getting an article up to the level where you want to put your name on it as "approved" takes a lot of work. Even if you aren't writing it, just fact-checking it, it's still a substantial investment. If you just shoot for 100,000 articles, it would still take a team of a few hundred people a year or more to do that. But writing is the easy part. Having a set of articles to babysit, and having to look over them regularly to approve changes, is a huge undertaking. How many could a person really shepherd? How do you convince experts, people with advanced degrees, to dedicate this much time to the project? On the other hand, how are you going to convince people to edit articles if their changes aren't going to show up for a couple months?
One of the fears I have seen in the CZ forum is the idea that WP could just "steal" content (one reason suggested for cc-by-nc-sa). Others people have said (with a contempt for WP that I have seen often) that even if we did copy their articles, they would rapidly be "degraded" the way Wikipedia articles are. The interesting thing is that having CZ articles on WP could have exactly the opposite effect. People aren't going to edit articles if their changes don't show up for months, which suggests that CZ articles will never get the number of edits - minor fixes, etc. - that WP articles get. They will also never be as up-to-date. It seems to me that it would be far smarter for them to try to get their versions of articles into WP, where they would be exposed to the sort of drive-by editing which both degrades articles and makes them great. As a CZ editor, all you'd need to do is drop by from time to time, look at the changes made by the hoi polloi, and determine which ones you want to keep and which ones you don't.
Not that it matters to me. I'd like to see some sort of approved, stable version of WP articles available (whether it's the first thing people see, or it's an obvious link near the top ofthe page), but the more we fence things off, the more we loose the free copy-editing by people who actually read articles.
Ian
On 1/22/07, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Looking through the Citizendium forum is interesting http://forum.citizendium.org/
I took a good look at them this weekend and tried to figure out what they were about, and how they saw themselves from being different to us. There appear to be two key elements of CZ that distinguishes it from WP - approved versions (your edits don't show up until they are approved) and expert approval (that you need to be a subject-matter expert, a so-called "Editor" in order to approve a version).
The other one that interests me is their hierarchical project setup -- the workgroups are far more rigidly defined, and each is given specific charge of a group of articles (as opposed to Wikipedia's more fluid and loose system).
CZ's strategy seems more regimented, as I understand users are even "ranked" based on their level of expertise on given subjects; on the upside, I anticipate that working things out that way will cut down on some of the nasty content disputes we've seen on en.wikipedia, and will encourage users to be cooperatively productive, once they get into things.
I imagine it'll be more difficult to integrate new or casual users into such an environment -- although I believe typo fixes and general cleanup are still encouraged in a "drive-by" style. Getting new people into using a wiki, especially when they're not the most tech-savvy people around, is difficult under the best of circumstances. It'll be interesting to see how workgroups change the newcomer's experience.
But I'm just rambling.
-Luna **
I looked at Citizendium a while back but couldn't for the life of me work out how I was supposed to become a contributor so I gave up looking at it.
It seems it's still a pilot, so you have to email and ask permission to join. That's too much bother for me, so I'm sticking to Wikipedia.
On 1/19/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Guettarda wrote:
On 1/18/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Matt R wrote:
As per the subject, excerpts from:
https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html
Larry Sanger writes,
"After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles
that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go
ahead
and make the deletion...
I'm a bit clueless, but does this mean they haven't used any Wikipedia content, or that they have but they're hiding it? I mean, all the articles that are marked "CZ Live", are they based on Wikipedia content? And if they are, doesn't that mean they *have* to license under GFDL? Which, unless I got confused in another thread, they aren't planning to do?
Steve block
Steve - if you poke around the Citizendium forum (there's a link to it in Matt's email) a lot of your questions may be answered.
I looked at Citizendium a while back but couldn't for the life of me work out how I was supposed to become a contributor so I gave up looking at it.
Apparently their first "approved" article, Biology, was a complete re-write
- the Wikipedia article was blanked. Other people have modified existing
articles. As I understand it, the CZ Live stuff is stuff that people are working on.
Obviously they can't release work based on WP articles under a more restrictive license. New material could be - it seems to me that there's a debate between people who want the whole project to by cc-by-nc and those who want it to stay GFDL.
I can't see how you can ringfence certain articles. If information is moved from one GFDL article to another, a cc by nc, then the new article must be both GFDL and cc by nc, no? And aren't they incompatible?
CC-by-NC isn't a copyleft license, so the compatibility would be really strange. A derivative of a GFDL article (which wasn't an aggregate) would have to be GFDL. But a derivative of a CC-by-NC article doesn't have to be CC-by-NC. However, the original work would still be under CC-by-NC, so unless the original authors gave [you] other permissions, you'd still have to follow CC-by-NC for any derivatives. As for a work entirely released under *both* GFDL *and* CC-by-NC, that'd be kind of cool. You could use the work under the GFDL, complete with all its obnoxious requirements, *or* you could use the work under CC-by-NC, without all the GFDL's obnoxious requirements, but only if you do so for noncommercial purposes.
Anyway, I think the idea was that different articles would have different licenses.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
CC-by-NC isn't a copyleft license, so the compatibility would be really strange. A derivative of a GFDL article (which wasn't an aggregate) would have to be GFDL. But a derivative of a CC-by-NC article doesn't have to be CC-by-NC. However, the original work would still be under CC-by-NC, so unless the original authors gave [you] other permissions, you'd still have to follow CC-by-NC for any derivatives. As for a work entirely released under *both* GFDL *and* CC-by-NC, that'd be kind of cool. You could use the work under the GFDL, complete with all its obnoxious requirements, *or* you could use the work under CC-by-NC, without all the GFDL's obnoxious requirements, but only if you do so for noncommercial purposes.
...or you could just go with CC-By-SA, which _is_ a copyleft license, but not nearly as obnoxious as the GFDL.
On 1/22/07, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
CC-by-NC isn't a copyleft license, so the compatibility would be really strange. A derivative of a GFDL article (which wasn't an aggregate) would have to be GFDL. But a derivative of a CC-by-NC article doesn't have to be CC-by-NC. However, the original work would still be under CC-by-NC, so unless the original authors gave [you] other permissions, you'd still have to follow CC-by-NC for any derivatives. As for a work entirely released under *both* GFDL *and* CC-by-NC, that'd be kind of cool. You could use the work under the GFDL, complete with all its obnoxious requirements, *or* you could use the work under CC-by-NC, without all the GFDL's obnoxious requirements, but only if you do so for noncommercial purposes.
...or you could just go with CC-By-SA, which _is_ a copyleft license, but not nearly as obnoxious as the GFDL.
Absolutely, and personally I much prefer CC-by-SA to the GFDL. But CC-by-NC does have one big advantage. An article licensed under CC-by-NC can be legally combined with other articles licensed under different licenses to create a derivative work. I don't think CC-by-NC is a good license to use *by itself*, but combining it with a free copyleft license makes for an interesting scenario.
Copyleft was a tremendous idea when the GPL was essentially the only copyleft license. Now that there are multiple competing copyleft licenses things get a lot more tricky. Hopefully someone will come up with a new innovation which fixes the problem of competing copylefts.
Anthony