[WikiEN-l] Announcing "Epistemia", a new wiki encyclopedia

[Alvaro García]

That sounds great.

Even though I made myself an account, I'm gonna put an alarm on my  
iPod for 1 month more. If a considerable amount of articles have been  
created, I will start contributing. Let's hope it makes itself popular.


--
Alvaro

On 15-01-2009, at 21:16, Thomas Larsen <larsen.thomas.h at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I, with Richard Austin, would like to announce the public launch of
> "Epistemia", a new Internet-wiki-based encyclopedia project which may
> be found on the Web at http://epistemia.org/. Some of the project's
> distinguishing features include:
>
> - users are required to log in before being permitted to edit;
> - civil and polite conduct is required, and no tolerance is shown for
> those people whose intention is to cause disruption or damage;
> - people with administrative privileges are required to use their real
> names as their account names, with few exceptions;
> - the project places a high emphasis on developing and maintaining
> content according to established scholarly standards; and
> - policy (content, community, and project standards), which is still
> in development, is outlined clearly and simply on a single page.
>
> Wikipedia has undoubtedly proved the value of the wiki content
> production model, but it suffers from a number of damning flaws. Most
> serious is the negativity of the participatory culture that has
> developed on Wikipedia—incivility is rampant in discussions, logical,
> reasoned arguments are commonly ignored, and people acting maliciously
> or disruptively are tolerated far in excess of common sense.
> Governance is another issue, with the project led, not by the most
> knowledgeable people, but by the people with the most spare time and
> the loudest voices. Also of much concern, especially to academia, is
> the lack of consistent adherence to the conventional quality
> expectations associated with professional scholarship—indeed, many
> contributors reject established scholarly standards in favour of their
> own conception of what an encyclopedia should be like. These problems
> can be traced to two primary causes: firstly, an unprofessional
> culture, and, secondly, overly complex and inconsistently enforced
> rules. Epistemia aims to correct both these issues, without
> implementing the overly-restrictive mechanisms that Citizendium has.
>
> Raymond Arritt once summed it all up neatly—"[Citizendium] ... would
> be great if it were more similar to Wikipedia (easier to contribute,
> less bureaucratic) and ... [Wikipedia] ... would be great if it were
> more similar to Citizendium (less hostile to competence, more willing
> to act against troublemakers and those with an agenda)." Epistemia
> aims to be easy to contribute to, unbureaucratic, welcoming of
> competence, and intolerant of disruptive and malicious people.
>
> Well, Richard Austin and I would like to invite you to check it out
> yourself and formulate your own opinions—see http://epistemia.org/.
>
> Best and friendly regards,
>
> —Thomas Larsen
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l