[WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

[Sage Ross]

Last week a Citizendium participant sent out this message on h-afro-am:

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-afro-am&month=0701&week=b&msg=JIarw4S/UalprGLZ2cp5NA&user=&pw=

The whole thing is worth reading, but the gist of it is this paragraph:

"I am withdrawing from Citizendium because of the racist and sexist
policy put in place by Larry Sanger, who claims that the disciplines
of Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies do not belong in the list of top
level categories in Citizendium, or as individual categories at all.
Sanger has unilaterally decided that all race and gender topics
should be split up under traditional disciplinary headings, so that
there will be, for example, a sub-group of "African American
Literature," and "African American History," but no category -- at
any level -- in African American studies, and he embraces the same
tactic of fragmenting other Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies.  The
fact that his broad strokes of exclusion primarily effect women and
minority scholars does not seem to matter to him."

I'm interested to know the reactions of the Wikipedians on this list
who've been participating in Citizendium.  This persistence of this
kind of thing, especially entrenched at the policy level, would
probably spell the doom of Citizendium's long-term prospects (which
would be unfortunate in my view).

-Sage