[WikiEN-l] Citizendium hits 5000 articles

[Steven Walling]

I'd agree with charles comments above, but let me rephrase my observation.

Citizendium has, in my opinion, an infinitely larger potential for
maintaining its current systemic bias, unlike wikipedia, which is constantly
correcting this (see things such as User:llrwych's recent devotion to the
history of Ethiopia and the like). The very nature of the cz project and its
base of contributors demands a bias in the topics it gives substantial
coverage to.

Start with intellectual and personal elitism, and you're going to have that
bias show in your work, just like academia. Also just like academia, this
bias doesn't negate the value of the work they do focus on, but you still
have to acknowledge that there will always be holes in their coverage.

On Jan 23, 2008 1:08 PM, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> "Thomas Dalton" wrote
>
> > > It seems like they do have something of a systemic bias problem. Not
> that
> > > en:wiki doesn't, but I doubt it's as bad as citizendium's.
> >
> > I expect both projects have a similar systematic bias, but it's really
> > just a matter of priorities, rather than anything permanent.
>
> Cough ... exactly how many articles does Citizendium have in German?
> Wikipedia (the project) wins that match 600,000-nil. The _priority_ for
> Citizens of non-English articles is where?
>
> > We're
> > naturally going to prioritise articles relevant to the
> > English-speaking world. There are far more than 5000 articles relevant
> > to the English-speaking world, so Citizendium hasn't got around to
> > other articles yet, Wikipedia already has all the obviously important
> > articles that we consider high priority, so we've started on the lower
> > priority ones.
>
> I doubt that's really the position. CZ has _installed_ some extra bias by
> its requirements to edit. I think that's just a fair observation on defining
> "systemic bias", meaning bias in coverage that is an unintended consequence
> of the composition of the community.
>
> Anyway a brief surf around the place would suggest that its more
> "writerly" feel (as opposed to "editorly", which is what WP does quite well)
> has consequences, too.
>
> Charles
>
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