[WikiEN-l] Citizendium dead?

[Charles Matthews]

Fred Bauder wrote:
> A lot of this sort of trouble results when an expert edits without citing
> good sources. Students often can edit more successfully because they have
> appropriate references at hand.
>   
Interesting. This all sounded like absolutely standard "blog comment" 
complaint: the kind of beefs you get whenever someone blogs about WP, 
and contributions to the debate are largely anecdotes "I edited 
Wikipedia once and ...".

So I thought I'd try a Google on "wikipedia is"+blog. And the _very 
first hit_ contained two gems:

- someone complaining in 2010 about a one-line unreferenced BLP speedied 
CSD A7 in 2006 (which is the kind of thing I meant);

but also

- the WMF's current CTO writing this: "I've heard horror stories from 
many of my friends around the FOSS world who have tried to edit in areas 
where they are domain experts, only to give up because its too hard to 
get edits to "stick"."

So which is it: Wikipedians are phobic about academics _and_ "Free and 
open source software" experts? Its own traditional demographic. Or there 
is the issue of "user unfriendliness" being read as "hostility"? The 
latter is an issue identified by the usability initiative, broadly 
speaking. It is perfectly reasonable to identify the "edits sticking" 
issue as troublesome. As with the first example, you would have to know 
more about the circumstances. Is this is the system working as it is 
intended to, or on the other hand some self-styled Linux wizard 
reverting from the hip?

Charles