[WikiEN-l] Citizendium hits 5000 articles

[Thomas Dalton]

On 23/01/2008, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<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?

This is wiki*EN*-l, so I was talking about the English Wikipedia. I
imagine the German Wikipedia has a bias towards subjects relevant to
the German-speaking world (although, probably not to the same extent
enwiki did when it was the size of dewiki, since it had the advantage
of being able to learn from enwiki's mistakes).

> > 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.

That's probably also a source, and one Wikipedia doesn't have to
anywhere near the same extent. There can be multiple systemic biases
at the same time.