[WikiEN-l] Citizendium

[Kim van der Linde]

David Alexander Russell wrote:

> (especially since any decent stuff that it produces will be re-merged
> into Wikipedia, perhaps even by a bot)

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


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