[WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?

[Guettarda]

I can't speak about larger issues, I can only speak for myself. I arrived at
CZ with a lot of experience on Wikipedia, within a few months of the launch
of the project. I wrote a little, and quickly lost interest. Why?

- CZ was a lonely place. Wikipedia has a vibrancy. You can always stop by
AN/I and watch people yell at each other or something. And if you want
opinions (should I do it this way, or that way?) there are always people
around you can ask.

- Anything I wrote would have to be approved by someone who was (a) less
experienced writing encyclopaedia articles (at least our kind) than I was,
(b) knew less about the subject than I did, and (c) was a less good writer
than I was. (Yeah, despite the evidence here, I'm a decent writer).

- There were too many hurdles to jump through. Yes, I have a relevant PhD.
But, quite frankly, that wasn't (IMO) the most important skill I brought. I
brought experience in a similar medium.

- Not only was it overly hierarchical, but the top of the hierarchy was
full. Not that I wanted to be in charge, but if I had to have my writing
approved by someone, it should be someone who had earned that position. Not
someone who got the position simply because Larry approached them and they
said yes. An effort like that needs cheerleaders, not bosses. (Now granted,
there were people who were more cheerleader than boss, but not, in my
experience, the people in top positions).

But the thing that really put me off was the response to criticism. Someone
had written a review of the group's first approved article. I thought it was
fair criticism, but the response was remarkably thin-skinned.

I tried a few more times, but I just couldn't get into it.


On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 17 April 2010 14:42, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 17 April 2010 13:52, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl>
> wrote:
> >> David Gerard schreef:
> >
> >>> Clay Shirky was right: CZ collapsed under the weight of its own
> bureaucracy:
> >>>
> http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php
> >
> >> Clay Shirky was wrong. He focussed on one part of the CZ hierarchy: the
> >> experts, and the amount of overhead that trying to recognize expertise
> would
> >> cause. But there was no overhead, because experts never came to CZ.
> >
> >
> > He was right, I think, in noting that the bureaucracy was the problem.
> > The expert procedure was symptomatic of the dysfunctional attitude.
>
> I disagree, I don't think bureaucracy was the problem. Citizendium
> never got beyond a very small size and bureaucracy is only a problem
> on a large scale - even if there is lots of bureaucracy in a small
> group it is easy to navigate. It never took off because there was
> never a reason for it to do so: Wikipedia was good enough.
>
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