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User:JFPerry/Citizendium

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The Citizendium ("a citizens' compendium of everything") is a proposed online encyclopedia which is spearheaded by Larry Sanger (co-creator and editor in chief of Wikipedia from its inception to March 2002) and which is being carried out under the auspices of the Citizendium Foundation (recently formed for that purpose).

The stated aim of the project is to create a "new compendium of knowledge" based on the contributions of "intellectuals", defined as "educated, thinking people who read about science or ideas regularly." [1] Citizendium hopes to foster an expert culture and a community that encourages subject specialists (presently named as "editors") to contribute, and "citizens" (to be called "authors") to "respect" the expert contributions (by a so-called "gentle process of guidance").

First announced in September of 2006 at the Wizards of OS 4 conference in Berlin, Sanger said in an October 17, 2006 press release that Citizendium "will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online".[2] The project began a test or pilot phase in October 2006, during which access to the wiki was restricted. As of January 2007, no public launch date has been specified, though since January 22 it has accepted automatic user registration.


Background

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Over the past several years, a number of criticisms, emanating from sources both external and internal, have been levelled against Wikipedia. In an article entitled The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir, Citizendium founder Sanger outlined a number of criticisms of Wikipedia together with an assessmet of factors which, in his view, contributed to these problems. The launch of the Citizendium project and many of its policies and structural elements are designed to correct or aleviate these alleged problems, two of the principal of which include:

  1. the open and anonymous editing process adopted by Wikipedia; and
  2. the lack of any special status accorded recognized experts in a field.

It is asserted by Sanger and others that the above aspects of Wikipedia have resulted in excessive vandalism and disputes generally along with poor quality articles and a poor public image and general lack of acceptance of Wikipedia as a valid and trustworthy resource.

Proposed policies and structure

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The policies and administrative structure of the Citizendium project, in many instances, are designed to correct the above mentioned perceived flaws of Wikipedia and thereby create a new, more reliable and accurate on-line Encyclopedia. Although almost all of the policies of Citizendium are subject to change and in many instances details are in the process of being worked out, certain main features have emerged which will most likely remain.

A Citizendium Charter whose function is to provide overall purpose and guidance for the project will be drafted and approved by an Executive Committee and all registrants will be required to accede to its terms.

One of the primary features of the Citizendium is the real names policy whereby anonymous editing will not be allowed. By requiring registration using real names and working email addresses, the Citizendium organizers hope to curtail much of the abuse which they see as too endemic on Wikipedia.

Another key feature of Citizendium is the division of registrants into categories of Editors and Authors. The former term should not be confused with the same term as used on Wikipedia. While all registrants can edit articles, an Editor on Citizendium is supposed to be an individual who has demonstrated, by education or experience, a recognized expertise in his or her subject field and who will have certain special rights within his or her area of expertise not accorded to Authors.

Citizendium Editors will be divided into various Workgroups organized by discipline. So far, according to the main page of Citizendium, Workgroup homepages have been established in 38 subject area disciplines divided into broad topics of Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts, Applied Arts, and Recreation. Actual subject area disciplines, such as Physics, or Sports, are part of these larger groupings. Each individual article is supposed to be assigned to one or possibly more Workgroups.

Through the establishment of an Editorial collegium of qualified experts having general oversight authority with respect to articles within their disciplines, the Citizendium organizers hope thereby to ensure the accuracy and reliability of articles and to gain the confidence of the public in such content.

At present, Citizendium Editors are self-selected in that they declare themselves as such and are then supposed to post either a verifiable resume or other material on their user pages supporting their claims. It is also anticipated that there will be a challenge process whereby those claiming such expertise may be removed as Editors.

The actual approval process for articles would designate a particular version of an article as "approved" and this version would be the default version shown to browsers who call up the article. This approved version would not be editable and this is another anti-vandalism feature. In addition, there will be a dynamic version which is editable. This dynamic version can subsequently be submitted for approval and, if so approved, would become the new approved or default version of the article.

Finally, the Citizendium will establish a group of Constables whose function is overall site maintenance and rules enforcement with authority to ban users, delete pages, and handle the technical aspects of such things as permissions (for Editors, for example). The Constables will have available to them a range of special technical tools for carrying out their duties. At the same time an appeals process is to be established whereby decisions by Constables can be reviewed. Qualification and selection procedures for Constables are, as with much on Citizendium, still in the process of being formalized.

Pilot project

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In mid-October of 2006, Sanger announced the impending launch, by the Citizendium Foundation, of a restricted access pilot project as a test of the concept as well as to provide a means to work out any technical issues involved and also to recruit editors and other administrative personnel. The pilot project began operations on October 23.

The Citizendium was initially intended to begin as a "progressive or gradual fork" of the English Wikipedia, carrying a copy of each article — under the rules of the GNU Free Documentation License — as it existed on Wikipedia at the time of Citizendium's launch. In January of 2007, however, in an effort to spur greater participation in the project, Sanger, after some discussion on the Citizendium Forums, decided to experimentally delete all articles besides those marked "CZ live" (which have been or will soon be worked on by Citizendium contributors) from the pilot project with all other articles forked from Wikipedia being deleted. Also in that same month, Citizendium began experimenting with a new self-registration procedure: read/write access was granted automatically after creation of the account.


References

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  1. ^ Larry Sanger. "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)", Citizendium.
  2. ^ Larry Sanger. "Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version of Wikipedia: Pilot Project for the Citizendium to Launch This Week", Citizendium.org, October 17, 2006


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