CZ:We aren't Wikipedia

How is the Citizendium similar to Wikipedia? In quite a few ways. In enough ways that you might make you wonder why we've started another project. Consider:

1. We aim to create a giant free general encyclopedia.
2. We're managed by a nonprofit (the Citizendium Foundation, a project of the Tides Center).
3. We use MediaWiki software.
4. We use wiki methods of strong collaboration. We don't sign articles or even have lead authors; we strongly encourage everybody to "be bold" and mix it up.
5. No credentials are needed to participate (as an author).
6. We still rely on "soft security" to a great extent. We mostly trust people and solve what few behavioral problems we've seen as they arise.
7. We are committed to a neutral, unbiased presentation of information.
8. We have similar naming conventions, and some other similar conventions.
9. Quite a few of our articles originally came from Wikipedia.
10. The community and project has been organized by the same person who organized Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.

Quite similar, it seems. But...

How do we differ? Let us count the ways.

1. We've got editors. They are experts in their fields. They work shoulder-to-shoulder with everybody else on the wiki, but have a few extra responsibilities that do not make the project any less of a "bazaar."
2. And we respect them for their expertise. We do not dismiss their expertise as the mere accumulation of meaningless "credentials." We do not dismiss ordinary notions of expertise as only so much "credentialism" or "elitism." In an encyclopedia project, respect for expertise is just good sense.
3. We have a method for approving articles. While Wikipedia has a "featured article" system, we have expert-approved articles. Our approval system actually depends on the judgment of real-life experts—the very sort of people that Nature might consult to judge the accuracy of Wikipedia articles.
4. Our community and contributors are different. (If you haven't yet discovered this for yourself, we encourage you to get a contributor account).
   • We have no vandalism. Excluding accounts created during the short period in which we permitted self-registration, we have had zero vandalism—none.
   • We use our own names and identities. Not only do we require people to sign in, we require them to use names that they attest are their own real names and to fill out a publicly readable biography. We also go to some lengths (without making absolute guarantees) to verify identities—and to greater lengths for editors.
   • We expect professional behavior and have very low tolerance for disruption. Our Constabulary has some pretty firm rules that require professionalism. This means that not only do we have rules against personal attacks, blatant violations of the neutrality policy, and so forth, we actually enforce them. We enforce our rules by warnings (in most cases) followed by permanent bans, which can be rescinded only through appeal or application for reinstatement. We do not have "24 hour bans", which do nothing but annoy and antagonize.
   • Our Citizens are bound by a social contract. Wikipedia is open to people who make great sport of flouting its basic principles. By contrast, we are a community defined by shared principles: we require new recruits to agree to our Statement of Fundamental Policies.
   • Our user pages are biographies, not vanity pages. Accordingly, we don't use "userboxes".
   • We don't use zillions of acronyms. The Chief Constable has made this a bannable offense. We're not sure whether she's kidding or not. Using a lot of acronyms for every small point of policy creates a sort of in-group that makes the community insular and unintelligible.
5. Our community managers (called "constables" not "administrators") are different.
   • Our constables are not high school students. They are required to have a bachelor's degree and to be at least 25 years old.
   • Unlike Wikipedia administrators, constables do not make editorial decisions. We have a "separation of powers." Constables oversee behavior and adherence to basic policies; editors oversee content.
   • Unlike Wikipedia administrators, constables are held to a strict conflict of interest policy. If they have engaged in a dispute or are otherwise at work on an article, they may not exercise their constable authority with respect to that article. Period.
6. We are more than just an encyclopedia project. Soon you will find attached to every article a set of "subpages," or pages of supplementary reference information. These will include not only lists of related articles, bibliographies, and external articles, but also galleries, tables, timelines, tutorials, and even signed introductory articles by experts.
7. Policy decisions are increasingly made by representatives and plebiscites, not "consensus." The notion of consensus as a way to settle policy became impractical even in Wikipedia's first year. The Citizendium community will settle policies by discussion and (where necessary) vote of the Editorial Council, the Constabulary, and many editor-led workgroups.
8. The Citizendium editor-in-chief is a limited-term position; he is not "dictator for life." Larry Sanger declared, when he first announced the Citizendium in September 2006, that he would leave his position as editor-in-chief within two to three years, in order to set a positive precedent.
9. Our license for our own work will probably differ. This is still under discussion, but will be either the GFDL, CC-by-sa, or CC-by-nc-sa.
10. Contributors share their copyright with us. Contributors give to the Citizendium Foundation a non-exclusive right to relicense their work. This allows the Citizendium Foundation to be the sole entity that licenses the entire Citizendium corpus.
11. Our article policies differ.
    • Our aim is to craft compelling introductory narratives, not mere collections of data. We are encouraging our contributors to create coherent, readable, extended narratives that actually do the job of introducing a topic to people who need an introduction to the topic. We are actively discouraging articles that take the form of mere disconnected summaries of subtopics, or other "modular" collections of data that could easily be reshuffled and reorganized. Such "articles" are dull and not likely to be read all the way through.
    • We use an older version of the neutrality policy. Wikipedia has added all sorts of bells and whistles to its original neutrality policy. We've gone back to one of the original versions. And we don't use the neologisms "NPOV" and "POV"; we use the old-fashioned English words "neutral" and "biased." And we actually take the neutrality policy seriously; for many Wikipedia articles, the policy seems to be on hold.
    • We take defamation seriously. We believe defamation is a horrible thing, and we have zero tolerance for people playing fast and loose with people's reputations in their biography articles. This is why we have a Policy on Topic Informants and a Topic Informant Workgroup.
    • We take a more sensible approach to citing sources. The editors we have on board actually create the sort of sources that Wikipedia cites. We do cite sources, of course, but we have a sensible approach to doing so. We cite sources because doing so helps the reader. We do not cite sources in order to settle internal disputes, or to "prove" a point to contributors. As seasoned researchers, we know that people can find sources for all sorts of ridiculous claims.
    • We talk about maintainability (or feasibility), not notability. We have replaced Wikipedia's conceptually problematic "notability" policy with a Maintainability policy.
    • We aren't going to use categories, probably. There is an excellent chance that we will replace subject categories with an in-line system of "Subtopics" and "Related topics"; see this Forums post. (So, authors, please do not create new categories.)
    • We don't overuse templates. We place templates helpful to contributors on talk pages, not on the articles themselves.
    • We will never have nearly as many articles about porn stars and sexual fetishes. We aim to be family-friendly.
12. We don't have as many articles. Yet. Give us a little time.

See also our Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians as well as How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles.