CZ:FAQ: Difference between revisions

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===What exactly is the point of the project, when Wikipedia is so huge and of at least reasonably good quality?===
===What exactly is the point of the project, when Wikipedia is so huge and of at least reasonably good quality?===
: If we can do better than Wikipedia--or more positively, if we can pioneer a truly effective way to gather knowledge--then shouldn't we?  See "[[CZ:Why Citizendium?|Why Citizendium?]]" where this valid question is discussed at length.
:Like Wikipedia, this is an open/free content wiki.  We do not see The Citizendium as competing with Wikipedia, although this project was intended (many years ago) to do so.  We use Wikipedia too, and we recognize it for the things it has done very well--for example, in keeping a complete record of the latest versions of an operating system, just for example.  This "complete cataloging" function is valuable and there is little reason for us to duplicate that effort here.  The Citizendium's strength lies elsewhere.  There are thing Wikipedia does not generally do well, because of the nature of its system of massive, anonymized crowd-sourcing.  Some Wikipedia articles are written for average persons but rather for those who are subject matter experts.  Some articles are tightly controlled by unknown editors who suppress the expression of concerns they do not agree with.  Software, for example, cannot be evaluated in terms of its advantages or disadvantages in Wikipedia.  Many times, people want an overview of what is most important to know about a thing.  Not everyone will agree on what that is, but here we use our real names, and so you can try to evaluate the quality of an article here in terms of who has participated in its creation.  Wikipedia articles show bias in a variety of ways, and it is impossible to understand that bias, given that it is impossible to know the identities of the individuals who are controlling the content of an article.
 
===How can you possibly succeed?  Wikipedia is an enormous community.  How can you go head-to-head with Wikipedia, now a veritable goliath?===
:We do not see ourselves as competing with Wikipedia, although this project was intended (many years ago) to do so.  We use Wikipedia and recognize it for the things it has done very well--for example, in keeping a complete record of the latest versions of an operating system, just for example.  This "complete cataloging" function is valuable and there is little reason for us to duplicate that effort here.  But there are thing Wikipedia does not generally do well, because of the nature of its system of massive, anonymized crowd-sourcing.  Some Wikipedia articles are written for average persons but rather for those who are subject matter experts.  Some articles are tightly controlled by unknown editors who suppress the expression of concerns they do not agree with.  Software, for example, cannot be evaluated in terms of its advantages or disadvantages in Wikipedia.  Many times, people want an overview of what is most important to know about a thing.  Not everyone will agree on what that is, but here we use our real names, and so you can try to evaluate the quality of an article here in terms of who has participated in its creation.  Wikipedia articles show bias in a variety of ways, and it is impossible to understand that bias, given that it is impossible to know the identities of the individuals who are controlling the content of an article.


===Are you going to run out of money and have to close this site?===
===Are you going to run out of money and have to close this site?===
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===People tell me that this project has failed. Has it?===
===People tell me that this project has failed. Has it?===
:Citizendium has been around since 2006 and has always had a pool of regular contributors and enough funds to keep going. It is a volunteer project where a lot of knowledgeable people give up their time to provide a free resource, so inevitably there are peaks and troughs in how [[Special:ActiveUsers|active]] the site is. While it is true that activity on the site has declined since its inception, it is also true that the number of articles, including expert-approved ones, slowly but surely keeps going up. We also think that we should be encouraging quality as well as quantity, such as by including a [[CZ:The Editor Role|role for experts]]. It is very tempting for commentators to write Citizendium off, especially when its name isn't well-known; however, it is still here, growing, and host to [[CZ:Why I contribute to CZ|people who enjoy writing for it]] and would like to [[Special:RequestAccount|welcome you]], too.
:Citizendium has been around since 2006 and has always had a pool of regular contributors and enough funds to keep going. In over a decade, it has gone through at least two major different management teams. While it is true that activity on the site has declined since its inception, it is also true that the number of articles, including expert-approved ones, slowly but surely keeps going up, and we believe some of it is very high value. Our management team is committed to keeping the project alive, both for its congenial online community and for the high points of its best output.


== The project's people and culture ==
== The project's people and culture ==
===How similar is this project to open source hacker culture, and how similar to the culture of academia?===
:This is a part of our experiment: we are trying to marry the two cultures.  So far, it seems to be working pretty well.  On the one hand, we want to teach academics and other professionals to work in a strongly collaborative way and adopt the principles and ethics articulated in, for example, Eric Raymond's essays "[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ The Cathedral and the Bazaar]" and "[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ Homesteading the Noosphere]" (essays we recommend you read, if you have not yet done so).  So this ''is'' a bottom-up, collaborative, distributed wiki project.  It ''is not'' the command-and-control, bureaucratic sort of project with which many academics are familiar.  On the other hand, we want to make a special place for experts to get involved as senior members of the community.  Really, this is not ''that'' different from open source software projects, because those projects have senior participants who decide what's goes into and what stays out of the code.  This only means that the hacker notion of a meritocracy on the basis of visible work must be qualified--not entirely jettisoned, of course--so that people with real-world, hard-won credentials are given an appropriate sort of authority in the project.  (That's visible work too.)  See "[[CZ:FAQ#The_Role_of_Editors|The Role of Editors]]" below.


===Who is joining this community?===
===Who is joining this community?===
:Generally, people who support the basic project design--and there's a lot of them from various walks of life.  It's not just "experts," and it's not just "the usual online mob."  Think of it as a highly potent blend--something really unusual, new, different--because it really is.  Many academics and other highly knowledgeable people have gone out of their way to try to edit Wikipedia, only essentially to be beaten back by the community.  Not only are they welcome, they are asked to form part of the editorial leadership of the ''Citizendium.''  Many disaffected Wikipedians have gotten involved.  There are also a lot of students, and young professionals, who simply appreciate a more mature, sensible community.  There are even some people who are being seriously introduced to wikis for the very first time by the ''Citizendium.''
:Generally, people who support the basic project design--and there's a lot of them from various walks of life.  It's not just "experts," and it's not just "the usual online mob."  Think of it as a highly potent blend--something really unusual, new, different--because it really is.  Many academics and other highly knowledgeable people have gone out of their way to try to edit Wikipedia, only essentially to be beaten back by the community.  Not only are they welcome, they are asked to form part of the editorial leadership of the ''Citizendium.''  Many disaffected Wikipedians have gotten involved.  There are also students, and young professionals, who appreciate a more mature, sensible community.  There are even some people who are being seriously introduced to wikis for the very first time by the ''Citizendium.''


===How can I find out more about your contributors?===
===How can I find out more about your contributors?===
:All of our authors and editors use their real names. No cute aliases or menacing pseudonyms are allowed! You can find out about most authors on their User Pages. You can also find lists of Authors and Editors via the subject [[CZ:Workgroups|workgroups]].
:All of our authors and editors use their real names. No cute aliases or menacing pseudonyms are allowed! You can find out about most authors on their User Pages. You can also find lists of Authors via the subject [[CZ:Workgroups|workgroups]].


===Who is behind the project?===
===Who is behind the project?===
:If you want to understand the ''Citizendium'' properly, you have to understand that it is part of a relatively new and largely misunderstood phenomenon: it is a self-selecting online community.  For that reason, the most important members, the bedrock of the project, are not some editorial board, but instead the rank-and-file volunteer authors and editors who work on the project regularly.  In this way, it is more like a place or a community than a publishing project.  That said, we do have some formal apparatus, including  [[CZ:Personnel|personnel]] with various responsibilities.
:If you want to understand the ''Citizendium'' properly, you have to understand that it is part of a relatively new and largely misunderstood phenomenon: it is a self-selecting online community.  For that reason, the most important members, the bedrock of the project, are not some editorial board, but instead the rank-and-file volunteer authors who work on the project regularly.  In this way, it is more like a place or a community than a publishing project.  That said, we do have a management team shown at [[CZ:Personnel|personnel]] with various responsibilities.


:For a further introduction to the community and how it operates, see [[CZ:Community Overview|Community Overview]].
:For a further introduction to the community and how it operates, see [[CZ:Community Overview|Community Overview]].
===In many open source communities, there are "benevolent dictators for life."  Is that Larry Sanger's role here?===
:No.  We believe that a collaborative online community, to be healthy, must resemble a law-governed, constitutional republic--just like offline communities.  So, when the [[CZ:Charter|Citizendium Charter]] was adopted in 2010, Larry lost his role as Editor-in-Chief in order to set up a community that is healthy, vibrant, responsible, and ''self-managing.''  His current title, ''Founding Editor-in-Chief'', carries no formal powers or responsibilities. In fact, from the beginning of the project, Larry was committed to ''stepping down'' from the leadership of the ''Citizendium'' in 2009 or 2010 at the latest, to set the healthy precedent of allowing others--members of the volunteer community--to take over his role according to a rule-governed, regular transfer of leadership.


===Are you part of a larger project? Do you have any links with other sites?===
===Are you part of a larger project? Do you have any links with other sites?===
:No. ''Citizendium'' is an independent community. Its founder, Larry Sanger, has founded or co-founded several other sites, but we have no links with any of them and operate separately. Of course, many Citizendium members contribute to other projects, but they do so independently and not as representatives of this site.
:No. ''Citizendium'' is an independent community. Its founder, Larry Sanger, has not played an active role in managing the project for many years, and in 2020, he ceded ownership of the domain name to [[User:Pat Palmer]].


== Funding and related issues ==
== Funding and related issues ==
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===Will the ''Citizendium'' accept advertisements?===
===Will the ''Citizendium'' accept advertisements?===
:No. Advertising is prohibited by the Citizendium Charter.   
:No. Advertising was prohibited by the Citizendium's founding charter and we have seen on reason to change that.   


===Will I be paid for my contributions?===
===Will I be paid for my contributions?===
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:We make our content available for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute (provided they properly credit us as the source of the information) and hope that this opens the door for others to benefit from the project.
:We make our content available for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute (provided they properly credit us as the source of the information) and hope that this opens the door for others to benefit from the project.
== The role of Editors ==
===What is the difference between Authors and Editors?===
:An [[CZ:The_Author_Role|author]] is anyone who contributes to the project, while [[CZ:Editor|editors]] are people that gently guide the process in areas where they have subject matter expertise. All Editors are also Authors.
===What do your expert "Editors" do here?===
:Editors work shoulder-to-shoulder with non-experts in this project.  Editors have two functions in the system.  First, they can approve articles as 'citable'.  Second, when content disputes arise, Editors are empowered to articulate a resolution--if the article falls in their areas of specialization.
===I don't see myself as an expert. Can I still participate?===
:Most of our contributors are "Authors," not Editors, and the majority ''do not'' have terminal academic degrees.  We're a public project ''guided'' by experts.  But there are many levels of expertise, and even more levels of knowledgeable participation. To get involved, [[Special:RequestAccount|register as an author]]. You can also contribute your thoughts to the [[Forum:Home|project forum]] and receive important announcements by joining [https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l Citizendium-L].  Editor applicants additionally provide a CV and proof of ''bona fides'', although many get involved as authors right away. For more information on editor applications, again, see [[Special:RequestAccount|our registration page]].
===Who can become an Editor, and how?===
:As a rule of thumb, Editors in traditionally "academic" fields will require the qualifications typically needed for a tenure-track academic position in the field.  Editors in "professional" fields require the usual terminal degree in their field and at least three years responsible professional experience, and, in most cases, several publications as well.  Editors in non-academic, non-professional fields require varying other kinds of qualifications or experience, depending on the subject.  For more information, see [[CZ:The Editor Role|The Editor Role]].
===Can you really expect Wikipedians to work under the guidance of expert types in this way?===
:It depends on the Wikipedian.  The ''Citizendium'' will not be Wikipedia.  We ''do'' expect people who have respect for expertise, for knowledge hard gained, to love the opportunity to work alongside editors.  Imagine yourself as a college student who had the opportunity to work alongside, and under the loose and gentle direction of, your professors. This isn't going to be a top-down, command-and-control system.  It is merely a sensible community: one where the people who have made it their life's work to study certain areas are given a certain appropriate authority--''without'' thereby converting the community into a traditional top-down academic editorial scheme.  For more, see [[CZ:Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians|Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians]].
===How can you possibly ensure ''on a wiki'' that Editors will have the carefully ''limited'' authority you want to give them?===
:Two ways.  First, as anyone with much experience in thriving Internet communities knows, the community itself places significant peer pressures on people to follow the rules.  This works for most people, and is one key reason that wikis are able to work.  Second, for those not susceptible to peer pressure, there is a [[CZ:Dispute Resolution|Dispute Resolution]] system (still under some development) for content-based problems, and "[[CZ:Moderator Group|Moderators]]" (people empowered to ban troublemaking users) for behavior-based problems.
===As Editors are unpaid, what can motivate them to get involved?  ===
:The idea is that this is a free resource for ''the entire world'' to use.  Editors will have a desire to teach.  Some people also feel a professional ''obligation'' to teach, something that is reflected by the fact that so many professional organizations have educational and outreach committees.  Also, scholars and students alike are rightly concerned that widely-disseminated information about their interests be correct.  For more, see [[CZ:Why Citizendium?|Why Citizendium?]]


== Wikipedia and the ''Citizendium'' ==
== Wikipedia and the ''Citizendium'' ==
===How does the project differ from Wikipedia?===
:[[CZ:We aren't Wikipedia|In several significant ways]]: expert involvement, the requirement of logging-in and real names, and more.  What will not change is that the project will still be an open/free content wiki.
===I live outside the U.S. and my native language isn't English. Is there a role for me?===
:While we have launched only in the English language, this is a digital and international project, with active participants from all around the world.  There is no central office.  If the English language project appears to work well, we will launch in a number of other languages.
===Will you be attempting to start versions of the ''Citizendium'' in languages other than English?===
:Yes, if the English language ''Citizendium'' succeeds.
   
   
===If ''Citizendia'' in other languages are started, will the central management of the ''Citizendium'' be fully international?===
:The extent to which the project is centralized at all, or instead federated or "franchised," remains to be decided.  Participants must not assume that we will simply replicate the current, problematic Wikipedia model; we will be developing our relationships much more deliberately and carefully.
==Where can I find out more? ==
==Where can I find out more? ==
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Revision as of 07:18, 2 October 2020

Introductory topics

What is Citizendium?

Citizendium is a wiki project aiming to creating objective encyclopedic articles, that probably would not survive in coherent form in Wikipedia's crowdsourcing, about virtually any subject. Our contributors use their verified real names, in a congenial and supportive online community. We welcome experts as well as the general public who would like to share their knowledge. Topics range from the universal to the highly local, including parks and school sports teams.

How are you progressing?

Citizendium currently has 16,431 articles.

Is this an experts-only project?

No - anyone can join Citizendium. Our essential feature is not expertise, but responsibility. That said, we value expertise and ask our authors to declare a little about their experience, education and interests on this User page.
If you are looking for a peer-reviewed specialists' encyclopedia, you may wish to read Scholarpedia.

How do I join?

Fill out the application form--we ask for a name, e-mail address, short bio, and (private!) information about how to confirm your identity--then you'll be asked to confirm your e-mail address. When that's done, a community manager, called a Moderator, can approve you and then read about how to get started.

How do I contact Citizendium staff?

Please see Contact or go directly to the enquiry form.

How do I get started?

Again, it's pretty easy. Do you have some knowledge you'd like to express? About--well--almost anything? Then search for an article about it. If we don't have an article about it, then start one. Don't worry about getting all the formatting right: just use "the easy way" you'll see here, and start. Writing for Citizendium is about as easy as writing an e-mail. See Getting Started, and for a short page that contains all the basic getting-started info, read our Quick Start!

The justification and prospects of the project

Why real names?

There are at least three reasons. First, it improves the credibility of the output: people can see who contributed some content, and whether they appear to know anything about the subject. Second, by making people take real-world personal responsibility for their contributions, it becomes possible to enforce rules. When problem contributors can make up a new pseudonym as soon as they get out of line, this makes it in principle impossible to enforce rules effectively. But if you can enforce rules effectively, you can do the work of a project a lot more efficiently. Third, people do tend to behave themselves better when their identities are known and their behavior is out in the open, and good behavior is crucial to a smoothly running knowledge community.

Are you against pseudonymity or anonymity in general?

We take no official stance on the common practice of pseudonymity and anonymity online, as a rule. We assume that most of our contributors are in favor of it. But the Citizendium is a special sort of project: the arguments for real names in a serious "knowledge project" are much stronger than in other contexts.

Why make a special role for experts?

Experts are needed to play meaningful roles because they can be counted on to recognize when some content represents the latest expert knowledge. Others are often perfectly capable of creating excellent and reliable material on many subjects, especially if they're good writers and researchers. It seems obvious that the intelligent use of experts in a collaborative project can help to improve the quality of the output.

What are the project's policies?

Online communities are generally volunteer communities of equals. Please see our policies. The Citizendium has existed for well over ten years, and our management team is all too familiar with certain types of problematic characters and their patterns of bad behavior. We have revised our policies in ways which we hope will minimize interpersonal conflicts--such as, by allowing lead authors and (possibly) multiple articles about a given topic. And possibly because the size of this project is currently smaller, interpersonal conflict has been thankfully rare. We hope to keep it that way. One thing we'll be doing, going forwards, is trying to intervene privately if we see possible troubling behavior without needing to resort to public slap-downs. This is exactly the kind of behavior you'd like of management in a job situation.

Why enforce a policy of professionalism in behavior?

A bedrock principle of Citizendium is professional behavior: while you need not actually be a "professional" to participate, you are still expected to behave like one. Offline communities have effective social pressures to keep impolite, insulting, and inflammatory conversation to a minimum: frowns, uncomfortable silences, social ostracism. Online communities cannot use these same mechanisms, and so they need something different. Some of the longest-lasting, most interesting, and best-behaved Internet discussion groups feature "moderation"--that is, a referee can tap someone on the shoulder if he is getting out of line, and may eject him from the conversation if necessary. While articles or talk pages are wide open to edit, Citizendium Moderators are empowered to remove comments that are disrespectful. See Professionalism.

But don't the above points really mean the project is some sort of top-down, "fascistic" or at least old-fashioned sort of system?

No. One glance at our recent changes log makes it clear that the project operates as much as a "bazaar" as any other wiki or open source software project. People contribute as they want, when they want. And, like other open projects, out of this chaos, order emerges. Work does not proceed only after someone orders it. Work can begin as soon as a person signs up.

What exactly is the point of the project, when Wikipedia is so huge and of at least reasonably good quality?

Like Wikipedia, this is an open/free content wiki. We do not see The Citizendium as competing with Wikipedia, although this project was intended (many years ago) to do so. We use Wikipedia too, and we recognize it for the things it has done very well--for example, in keeping a complete record of the latest versions of an operating system, just for example. This "complete cataloging" function is valuable and there is little reason for us to duplicate that effort here. The Citizendium's strength lies elsewhere. There are thing Wikipedia does not generally do well, because of the nature of its system of massive, anonymized crowd-sourcing. Some Wikipedia articles are written for average persons but rather for those who are subject matter experts. Some articles are tightly controlled by unknown editors who suppress the expression of concerns they do not agree with. Software, for example, cannot be evaluated in terms of its advantages or disadvantages in Wikipedia. Many times, people want an overview of what is most important to know about a thing. Not everyone will agree on what that is, but here we use our real names, and so you can try to evaluate the quality of an article here in terms of who has participated in its creation. Wikipedia articles show bias in a variety of ways, and it is impossible to understand that bias, given that it is impossible to know the identities of the individuals who are controlling the content of an article.

Are you going to run out of money and have to close this site?

So far, the project has benefited from a number of financial donations from various people, and we hope it will continue to until the project secures more stable funding. You can keep track of the situation via the monthly financial report.

People tell me that this project has failed. Has it?

Citizendium has been around since 2006 and has always had a pool of regular contributors and enough funds to keep going. In over a decade, it has gone through at least two major different management teams. While it is true that activity on the site has declined since its inception, it is also true that the number of articles, including expert-approved ones, slowly but surely keeps going up, and we believe some of it is very high value. Our management team is committed to keeping the project alive, both for its congenial online community and for the high points of its best output.

The project's people and culture

Who is joining this community?

Generally, people who support the basic project design--and there's a lot of them from various walks of life. It's not just "experts," and it's not just "the usual online mob." Think of it as a highly potent blend--something really unusual, new, different--because it really is. Many academics and other highly knowledgeable people have gone out of their way to try to edit Wikipedia, only essentially to be beaten back by the community. Not only are they welcome, they are asked to form part of the editorial leadership of the Citizendium. Many disaffected Wikipedians have gotten involved. There are also students, and young professionals, who appreciate a more mature, sensible community. There are even some people who are being seriously introduced to wikis for the very first time by the Citizendium.

How can I find out more about your contributors?

All of our authors and editors use their real names. No cute aliases or menacing pseudonyms are allowed! You can find out about most authors on their User Pages. You can also find lists of Authors via the subject workgroups.

Who is behind the project?

If you want to understand the Citizendium properly, you have to understand that it is part of a relatively new and largely misunderstood phenomenon: it is a self-selecting online community. For that reason, the most important members, the bedrock of the project, are not some editorial board, but instead the rank-and-file volunteer authors who work on the project regularly. In this way, it is more like a place or a community than a publishing project. That said, we do have a management team shown at personnel with various responsibilities.
For a further introduction to the community and how it operates, see Community Overview.

Are you part of a larger project? Do you have any links with other sites?

No. Citizendium is an independent community. Its founder, Larry Sanger, has not played an active role in managing the project for many years, and in 2020, he ceded ownership of the domain name to User:Pat Palmer.

Funding and related issues

Can I donate to the project, to help ensure it comes into existence?

Yes, please! Server rentals, bandwidth, and domain registrations are all ongoing costs. So we need your help to sustain this important work through donations. We accept major credit cards.

Will the Citizendium accept advertisements?

No. Advertising was prohibited by the Citizendium's founding charter and we have seen on reason to change that.

Will I be paid for my contributions?

No. All of our contributions are donated by the contributors. As a nonprofit, all volunteer project, all contributions are covered by the Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license

Will someone else profit from my contributions?

We are a nonprofit project, in order to ensure maximum participation and the independence of our information.
We make our content available for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute (provided they properly credit us as the source of the information) and hope that this opens the door for others to benefit from the project.

Wikipedia and the Citizendium

Where can I find out more?

Our help system
Questions and answers to help you find the information you need

From the HOME page you can get started, get technical help, see our policies, and explore our organization in detail.

Larry Sanger is the author of the writings listed below, unless otherwise noted. Others are welcome to submit essays in a similar vein.


Citizendium Organization
CZ:Home | Workgroups | Personnel | Governance | Proposals | Recruitment | Contact | Donate | FAQ | Sitemap

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