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Guettarda wrote:
On 9/18/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
The idea that such an environment is meaningless because the content can be ported back to Wikipedia isn't true. For one, it provides a work environment for people who don't want to deal with the stress of Wikipedia. It also creates a "stable version" against which the Wikipedia version will always be compared. Implemented properly, it can serve as a buffer against articles becoming degraded.
The idea that expert-driven process will result in experts "telling people what to do" seems like a rather pessimistic view of "experts". We have lots of experts on WP - some of them lack the ability to work with others, some of them grow disenchanted and leave the project - but lots of others stay and slog it out - and work quite well with others.
Ian
My problem with Citizendium is not any personality issues with experts, but more that it explicitly states that 'experts' will be given more control over the project than ordinary editors, therefore people are given control based on their credentials rather than their ability to write a good article.
Kim van der Linde wrote:
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
Sorry, I didn't mean that the Citizendium article would automatically overwrite the Wikipedia version, more that any improvements to the Citizendium version could be incorporated into Wikipedia. You're right though - it's probably not something a bot could do reliably, when I think on it a bit more.
I don't know if people will prefer the Citizendium version though - if people want there are plenty of academic websites already. The whole reason people USE Wikipedia is its up-to-date coverage on a stupendous range of topics - sure, Citizendium will have a complete 'fork copy' of Wikipedia to begin with, but only the articles that its experts are interested in will ever get updated - that is the essential problem with a project that aims at giving control to a handful of experts to the exclusion of everyone else. You might get a reasonably up-to-date article on evolution or philosophy, but if you want to find out about something less expert-attractive then you need Wikipedia.
That means that Wikipedia will still be people's first port of call - even though some articles on Citizendium /might/ be better (not guaranteed), there is a very good chance that you will find what you're looking for.