"Oh, I thought Citizen-dum was part of the Wikimedia group."

[reddragdiva]

Yay for press calls. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only English Wikipedia press contact outside the US who answers their phone.

Citizendium is the latest announcementware from Larry Sanger, famed cofounder of Wikipedia. The idea is to start a new expert-friendly Wikipedia fork. We'll see what goes live on September 30th.

ciphergoth thinks this is an idea there is a need for — he has no wish to dive into the Wikipedia editing brawl. Lots of people don't have the patience or stomach to be required to work productively with complete idiots, which is a non-optional skill on Wikipedia, and I wouldn't expect them to. Politics starts at two people; when you have a few thousand in one place, you're going to get your skills at working with others tested to the utmost.

He is also convinced this is why Wikipedia has its much-alleged but seldom substantiated anti-expert bias. I'm not at all convinced this is a problem for experts as much as it is a problem for people. It fails to explain how Wikipedia has lots of academic experts — you and I know them personally. Unless expert-neutral (which I think is more the case) is the same as "anti-expert."

I've also copy-edited way too much Wikipedia writing from experts who know a thousand times more than me about the topic but can't write for shit, or who consider themselves above listing references. And scream when I touch their golden prose.

A volunteer enterprise (Citizendium isn't paying either) needs more than experts. Wikipedia gets people willing to do the ridiculously boring jobs because they believe in the project and doing the shitwork is a way they can help it. Puffing Billy has volunteers warming up the engine every morning at 3am! Reliably! People volunteer to do stuff that inspired socialist revolution when it was a paid job! What's the volunteer payoff doing the shitwork for a project whose mission statement is that you suck?

I predict Citizendium — if it ever gets past vapourware — will primarily attract those experts who don't like playing well with others. I'm sure it'll be most interesting to watch.

(What I'd like to see is somewhere encouraging this variety of expert to put up quality text under a GFDL-compatible licence which Wikipedia could then use, or not. I'm not sure what would work, or how it would somehow attract less dickheads than Wikipedia presently attracts, or why qualified expert dickheads would somehow be better to volunteer to work with than regular dickheads.)