[WikiEN-l] Citizendium trying out not being a fork of Wikipedia for a while

[Matt R]

As per the subject, excerpts from:

   https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2007-January/000863.html

Larry Sanger writes, 

  "After seeing the widespread support for the suggestion
that we try *not* forking Wikipedia--i.e., that we delete all articles that
are not marked "CZ Live"--I am about to instruct our tech team to go ahead
and make the deletion...This experiment represents a reconception of our
project's basic aim.  If the experiment goes well, no longer will we be calling
ourselves a "fork of Wikipedia."  We will have, exclusively, our own identity
and our own articles.  We will still, to be sure, follow much of the Wikipedia
process--the aspects that work.  But no longer will we have as our central
aim the cleaning up and approval of Wikipedia articles.  I think it might
prove easier and more pleasant to build fresh new stables than to clean out
the Augean Stables of Wikipedia."

On the CZ forums, he writes, 

"One thing that I think I didn't realize sufficiently, when writing about this
question a few months ago (at embarrassing length, before the pilot project was
well under way), is that the very presence of fair-to-middling articles from WP
is actually a strong disincentive for people to get to work. It's like this:
when you get down to brass tacks, it's no fun to clean up the mediocre work of
Wikipedians.  It might be a hell of a lot more fun to start over from scratch."
 (http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,431.0.html)

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com


		
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