[WikiEN-l] Citizendium on quality

[Sheldon Rampton]

joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu wrote:
> Quoting David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
>> http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/12/18/why-the-focus-on-creating-quality-content-in-case-you-didnt-know/
>>
>> Interesting thoughts on quality.
>>
> Larry raises very good points. I think he overestimates how much  
> people prefer
> quality to easy access but I might be cynical.

I don't think it's so much "cynical" as "inaccurate" to say that  
people prefer quality to easy access. People want both, but they're  
realistic (not cynical) enough to realize that perfect information  
isn't always available. What they want, more than "quality" or "easy,"  
is USEFUL -- meaning, usually accurate enough to answer their  
curiosity about whatever topic they're interested in, but also easy  
enough to use that they don't have to waste a lot of time finding  
finding the information.

Right now, Wikipedia satisfies those needs most of the time.  
Citizendium, because it only has a few thousand articles, almost never  
answers those needs. Moreover, the rate at which it is adding new  
articles suggests that it is a long time before it will come close to  
matching WIkipedia for usefulness.

For people to prefer Citizendium over Wikipedia, it has to massively  
increase the number of articles and topics it covers. If it can do  
that, while also providing higher-quality information, it will replace  
WIkipedia. However, it has a long way to go before it can meet that  
test.

If I were running Citizendium, I would relax the user registration  
rules a little bit while still requiring user registration. I would  
also adopt a copyright scheme that allows Citizendium to freely copy  
over content from Wikipedia. I would then launch a campaign aimed at  
copying over the 100,000 best articles from Wikipedia and editing them  
to meet Citizendium's quality standards. Once that was completed, I  
would go for the next 100,000 articles, and so on until Citizendium  
had enough content to rival WIkipedia for actual usefulness, while  
also providing higher quality.

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
|     The Best War Ever
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