[WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Sage Ross [mailto:ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 11:48 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium
>
>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

Kali Tal's blog postings:

http://www.freshmonsters.com/kalital/archives/2006/11/racism_and_sexism_at_citizendi.shtml
http://www.freshmonsters.com/kalital/archives/2006/11/update_on_racism_and_sexism_at.shtml

I am not a participant, but have read her blog postings regarding this matter, and am well acquainted with Larry. Larry insisted  that rather than fall under Ethnic studies, African-American Literature would fall under American Literature. Tal claims that enough knowledge has been generated by Ethic and Gender Studies to justify a separate expert review system for subjects which could fall within their purview.

She is rather like Larry, does not suffer fools....

I don't think this incident is particularly significant. We would have trouble with her here if she was or is an active editor. Like Larry, she knows the answers, learned them as a sophomore.

Fred