[WikiEN-l] Citizendium vs. Wikipedia

[David Gerard]

2009/4/22 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:

> So it's all about the writing? I would have though the important thing
> was the reading. Wikipedia is all about spreading free knowledge - if
> no-one reads what you write, there is no point writing it. If you
> don't reach a comparable size to Wikipedia (you don't have to be
> bigger, just within an order of magnitude or so) you won't attract
> many readers. Without readers, you won't attract more writers (pretty
> much all Wikipedians started out as readers, if Citizendium wants to
> attract a significant number of writers it needs to use the same
> source). Without more writers, the current writers will eventually get
> bored and move on and the project will cease to exist.


Yes. This is a fallacy we see over and over: "Wikipedia would be so
much better if you did X for the writers." Whereas that doesn't serve
the readers, so is why we don't do it. So other projects come along
that will do X for the writers, and fail to gain traction. Knol is the
highest-profile failure so far - untrammeled freedom for the writers
has made it a spam repository.


> I think competition is fantastic and fully encourage people to start
> competitors to Wikipedia, but in my view Citizendium has failed. It
> wasn't sufficiently better than Wikipedia to attract enough writers
> and readers to kick off exponential growth, which is required to reach
> a useful size.


Citizendium's not dead yet!

But it'll get good in direct proportion to how much it forms its own
positive identity, rather than one based on comparing itself to
Wikipedia.


- d.