Citizendium

Template:Future Citizendium ("a citizens' compendium of everything") is a project proposed by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger on September 15, 2006, intended to begin as a "progressive or gradual fork" of the English Wikipedia. The Citizendium project will be carried out under the auspices of the Citizendium Foundation. In an October 17, 2006 press release, Sanger said that Citizendium "will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online".

Nature of the project

Fork of Wikipedia and project goal

According to statements and essays on Citizendium.org, the project will start as a fork of Wikipedia, carrying a copy of each article — under the rules of the GNU Free Documentation License — as it exists on Wikipedia at the time of Citizendium's launch. Although no final decision has been made, recent statements by Sanger indicate that he prefers to fork all English-language Wikipedia articles immediately at the launch of Citizendium, rather than only selected articles. However, in response to comments from other members of the Citizendium mailing list and web forum about the allegedly poor quality of most Wikipedia articles, Sanger has said that a complete fork at launch is not a "foregone conclusion". Periodically, all articles on Citizendium that have not been updated on the fork project will be automatically updated from the live version of the same article on Wikipedia. Any article on Citizendium that has been altered or edited will remain going forward with the forked Citizendium version.

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." 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"). An appeals process for diagreements between editors and authors, and between different editors, will be in place, according to a provisional "Citizendium Policy Outline" published by Sanger. Experts will be required to verify their qualifications openly, for transparency and publicly accepted authority. This contrasts with the open and largely anonymous nature of Wikipedia, where subject specialists have no agreed special status. Sanger has stated that editors will not have pre-approval rights over edits by ordinary authors, though editors will have somewhat undefined authority over articles that fall within their specific area of expertise:

Editors will be expected to work "shoulder-to-shoulder" with authors in the wiki. Among the things that editors will be empowered, singly or collectively, to do are (1) to make decisions about specific questions, or disputes, concerning particular articles in an editor's area of expertise, and (2) to approve high-quality articles. Editors will not have the right, except perhaps in very unusual cases, to "lock" articles and thereby prevent the collaborative process from continuing. Finally, editors will be expected to share authority with other editors who are expert on the same subjects.

In an apparent attempt to assure contributors that Citizendium would not be overly controlled by credentialed experts, Sanger posted on the Citizendium-l mailing list:

CZ is not for experts only. People who are not experts about a topic in fact *are* free to write about that topic. Not only do they have permission, they are very strongly encouraged to do so. There is a category of Authors and by golly, Authors should get to work."

In response, Citizendium contributor Sarah Tuttle pointed out a number of scenarios that might involve conflicts about the role of experts in the project:

You're an author. You put a ton of work into an article. An expert wanders over and, because we know all experts are *full* of tact, zaps it. Or says something rude. Or 'edits' it. Or, the flip side. An editor is authoring an article in an area they don't really have expertise in. Another author comes over and says 'Actually, let me lend you a hand, I know a lot about this' and tries to help. The editor gets cranky and pulls rank. Or, an author works on an article. A friendly neighborhood editor comes over and tries to engage in an academic conversation about an article. Makes some suggestions, gives some references. Author takes offense, picks a fight, storms off. Swears off CZ and the bitchy experts.

Tuttle went on to express confidence that Citizendium could overcome such conflicts by contributors "go[ing] into this like grownups and keep[ing] our eyes focused on why we're all here."

No announcement has yet been made on Citizendium in languages other than English, but Sanger has stated in his essays that they may be forthcoming after the English language version is established and working successfully.

Proposed policies and structure

Citizendium will not allow anonymous editing, with the possible exception of textual proof reading, that is, trusted copywriters, who have low-level authority to amend the texts for typographical, syntactical and grammatical errors etc. People will be asked to register under their real names with a working e-mail address, in order to participate (details of this process are still to be worked out. Problems with online safety and privacy are currently being addressed). Many of the changes are attempts to correct perceived flaws in the original design and present public image of Wikipedia, that have led to problems with Wikipedia's acceptance as a valid and trustworthy resource. Regarding Wikipedia's oft cited problems, Sanger wrote that "this arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to … academics" and as such appears "committed to amateurism."

Sanger has stated that Citizendium administrators, or sysops, will be called "constables", and will need a bachelor's degree to qualify. Sanger has also suggested a minimum "maturity" requirement — twenty-five years of age — for constables. The "head" constable will be the Chief Constable (Ruth Ifcher), and the head editor will be the Managing Editor. Recent comments by Sanger envision an Editor-in-Chief (Sanger himself) who will be the "main individual in charge", and who will be part of and answerable to a Board of Directors. There will also be Chief Subject Editors selected for each discipline treated in the encyclopedia. Sanger states that final decisions about management structure will not be made "until more of the (future) primary stakeholders are on the scene". In a Citizendium blog entry of November 10, constable Sarah Tuttle announced the formation of an "executive committee" consisting of herself, Sanger and eleven others, which will work on issues of "long term governance" of the project.

Sanger has indicated that Citizendium articles will be subject to an "approval" process after they have achieved reasonable quality. A subject expert "editor" will select a version of the article to be identified in some way as "approved". However, further editing of the article would be allowed, at least to some extent. If those further edits were judged by the editor to be improvements, a newer version of the article would be chosen as the approved version. This approval process appears to be a response by Sanger to criticisms from some members of the Citizendium mailing list and web forum that the new project would not be sufficiently controlled by experts. There will be a dispute-resolution process for disagreements about which version should be selected as "approved".

In an October 26 post to the Citizendium web forum, then Managing Editor David Marshall indicated that the approved version of an article, if it exists, will be the default version displayed to a visitor to the site. If a contributor wishes to modify or add to the article, login will be necessary to work on the "dynamic wiki page" open to editing:

All reader searches will auto-forward to the most recently approved version of the page (assuming that a version has been approved). Once at an approved page, the reader will be given the option to register/log in as an author and move to the dynamic wiki page in current use for development purposes.

History

Initial proposal

The project was announced by Sanger on September 15, 2006, at the Wizards of OS 4 conference in Berlin. No hard deadline is currently given for the full launch of the wiki. However, on October 2, 2006 Sanger released a pilot project announcement that envisions a fully functioning wiki within "one to two months".

Pilot project announcement

In an apparent attempt to quicken the pace of the project, on October 2, 2006 Citizendium web forum moderator Peter Hitchmough suggested what he called an "alpha test" of the concept. Hitchmough proposed the forking of a limited number of Wikipedia articles to a site where Citizendium web forum and mailing list members could "rewrite a complete section" of Wikipedia content.

Larry Sanger reacted enthusiastically to the idea and at first suggested his already existing Textop wiki as the site for the alpha test. Sanger later posted that Textop would not be a good choice, but showed continued interest in the proposal. He envisioned a "restricted-access" wiki where the idea could be tried and requested further discussion.

Late on October 2 Sanger released a more detailed proposal for the alpha test. Sanger proposed a "password-protected MediaWiki … on a very small scale". He would give technical personnel permissions to "fiddle with various settings". The wiki would be opened to select members — readable and writable only by them — and a limited number of imported Wikipedia articles could then be edited. Sanger would gradually open the wiki to more and more members, including current subscribers to the Citizendium mailing list and web forum. Sanger characterizes the final step in the process in this manner:

Only after we have "privately" prepared everything for the deluge, we open the project to public contribution. Of course, we'll try to do that quite soon, within several weeks, and (I propose) one to two months.

Apparently the plan is to broaden the test into what will more or less amount to the final functioning version of Citizendium, complete with editors, authors, constables, the article approval process, and all the other features of the full-blown wiki envisioned by Sanger in various statements since the original announcement of the project.

In an October 3 follow-up to the detailed proposal, Sanger discussed various issues, including the optimal size of the technical team, which editors and authors should be invited to the pilot project and who should authorize admission to the pilot, how publicity about the pilot should be managed, the drafting of policy pages to govern the pilot and subsequently the fully functioning encyclopedia, and the eventual ("but presumably not in the first week or so of the pilot project") upload of all English-language Wikipedia articles to the wiki.

A subsection of the Citizendium web forum was opened to allow member comment on the proposed pilot. The general response was enthusiastic and occasionally humorous. Forum member Phil Wardle commented:

If we were to choose a doable number of articles in a fairly broad but none the less recognisably important range of subjects, we may well be able to show not only significant improvement in content, but also in style. In a sense though it is like taking candy from a baby, and we should be aware of that. I can think of any number of articles on the Wikipedia right now that we could easily improve out of sight by the people we have on board at present (probably including all of today's featured articles without even bothering to see what they are) any such group of like minded and educated people could do so. It's not just individual improvements to individual articles we have to demonstrate a capability for, but rather a systemic capability that clearly shows an improved process in place for all articles that flow through the Citizendium.

In an October 7 post on the Citizendium mailing list, Sanger announced that, due to difficulties in negotiating for a host for the pilot, Citizendium would pay for dedicated server space from donations already received. Sanger also said that he would personally select the editors ("a relatively small, high-quality group") who would participate in the pilot. On October 11 Sanger issued a formal "call for applications" to the pilot project. This document stated that the pilot would last at least one month "and possibly two or three". From among the applicants Sanger will select a "small (12-20) group of people" to begin preliminary work, which "will happen within the next 7-10 days". Afterwards, "we may eventually add people based on recommendations only. In any event, we hope to get a few hundred people signed up to work on this pilot project, before we go fully public with the project."

No access to the pilot version of Citizendium, even read-only, will be allowed to the general public. Sanger stated: "Only invited people will be able to view and edit the pilot project wiki". On the discussion page of the Wikipedia entry for Citizendium, Sanger said that this restriction was to avoid overloading the servers during the pilot project. However, it appears that, under the terms of the GFDL, anyone with access to the pilot project could publicly release any material on the site which is derived from Wikipedia content. Sanger also said that constables for the pilot project will be chosen by the chief constable.

Pilot project implementation

In a press release on October 17, Sanger announced: "the fledgling Citizendium Foundation will launch a six-week pilot project open to potential contributors by invitation". Sanger stated that Gareth Leng, professor of experimental physiology of the University of Edinburgh, has agreed to serve as one of Citizendium's expert "editors". Sanger also said that Jaime Nubiola, professor of philosophy at the University of Navarra (Spain) has applied to become an editor, among "dozens of well-qualified people" who have completed applications for the positions.

Sanger announced that the chief constable is Ruth Ifcher, and that Peter Hitchmough, Greg Sabino Mullane and Jason Potkanski will lead the project's technical team. Sanger said that the Citizendium Foundation "has started the process of applying for 501(c)(3) status", a type of non-profit organization in the US, and "has received a firm commitment for a significant seed grant from a foundation, as well as small personal donations". Sanger identified Steadfast Networks of Chicago as "providing a server and bandwidth free of charge" for the pilot project. In a follow-up post to the press release, Sanger said that the initial group allowed access to the pilot would consist of "ten editors, three constables, six authors, and me".

On October 20 then managing editor David Marshall invited would-be contributors to post articles to the Textop wiki. Marshall envisioned the eventual inclusion of this material, at least in some form, in Citizendium. His invitation was apparently meant to allow a wider range of contributors to write articles while the restricted-access pilot project was proceeding. Marshall stated that future authors for Citizendium could demonstrate their qualifications by contributing to the publicly available Textop wiki:

Asking you all to work in Textop assumes most of you will be accepted as authors in the long term. Those of you who have found your way to this forum and on to the mailing list are likely to be the most qualified to work when the project goes live. This is the chance for all of you to demonstrate your bona fides, and your commitment to the fundamental principles of the project. This is your chance to begin forging writing relationships with those who share your interests and expertise so that, when the project doors do open, we can all run through together with confidence.

In response, a number of articles were posted to the Textop wiki. Larry Sanger attached a disclaimer to all articles, which may become standard for all Citizendium entries, whether forked from Wikipedia or not, that have not yet been approved by Citizendium's expert editors:

The article below may contain errors of fact, bias, grammar, etc. The Citizendium Foundation and the participants in the Citizendium project make no representations about the reliability of this article or, generally, its suitability for any purpose. We make this disclaimer of all Citizendium article versions that have not been specifically approved.

Acknowledgement of the source of the article, a link back to the source on Wikipedia, and a licensing statement for the article under the GFDL were also added. These too will become standard features for Citizendium entries derived from Wikipedia content. Sanger and Marshall made various remarks on the discussion pages of articles posted to Textop. They discussed the level of comprehension to which articles should be addressed, stylistic considerations for encyclopedia articles, licensing and disclaimer notices, neutrality of treatment, inclusion and exclusion of material, and other issues.

In an October 23 post on the Citizendium mailing list, lead technician Jason Potkanski announced that the pilot project was now functioning. Also on October 23 Peter Hitchmough reported at the forge.citizendium.org site:

The good news is that the '20' [users with access to the pilot project] are beginning to use the pilot wiki. The bad news is that they are finding bugs! If you find a bug or have a (well-considered) feature request, please use the Tracker tab here on Gforge to log it so it is captured, tracked and resolved.

An American system administrator for Citizendium announced the pilot project had been nicknamed "CaesarWiki" from the "CZ" abbreviation that has become common for Citizendium; Larry Sanger implied to the media that this name would not be permanent. Sanger, in an October 23 report on the Citizendium mailing list about the pilot project, expressed a hope that the pilot wiki would soon be opened to a wider range of applicants. According to an October 24 update from Peter Hitchmough on the Textop wiki, an importation of Wikipedia content to the pilot project was completed, though the exact extent of the imported content was not specified. On October 28 Larry Sanger announced that access to the pilot wiki would be granted to a wider range of invitees beginning on October 29. Sanger envisioned adding more invitees "either gradually, if it takes time to absorb a very active group, or all at once, if we want to start with more of a bang. We haven't decided yet." On October 31 Sanger reported on the Citizendium-l mailing list that "score of invitees" were now admitted to the pilot project. The Main Page of the pilot wiki is currently available for viewing by the general public.

On November 8 Larry Sanger reported that 263 user names had access to the pilot wiki, 183 articles on the wiki were "live" (meaning "someone is or intends to be working on them") and there were about 300 total edits to the wiki on November 7. In a November 16 post to the Citizendium mailing list, Sanger said that the daily volume of edits on the pilot wiki "bounces anywhere from 100 to 300 (I estimate)". In another update on November 20, Sanger stated that there were 300 user names, 341 "live articles" and over 600 edits in the latest 24-hour period on the pilot wiki. According to the "Call for applications" to the pilot wiki, a full set of articles from the English-language Wikipedia has now been downloaded to the pilot.

In a November 26 audio report on Wikipedia Weekly, Wikipedia editor Daveydweeb, who has access to the Citizendium pilot wiki, reported that "discipline workgroups" have been set up to improve articles and that the pilot wiki was growing rapidly in terms of users and edit count (Daveydweeb himself is a member of the games workgroup). He stated that he had seen no vandalism on the pilot wiki due to the real-name requirement, and that the rate of improvement was "much faster than Wikipedia when it first launched". However, he cautioned that "images are still broken" on the pilot wiki and that relatively little was "being done to actually improve articles", compared to "categorizing articles and adding tags to them".

On November 28 Citizendium contributor Kali Tal announced she was leaving the project in a disagreement with Larry Sanger over the structure of discipline workgroups. Tal stated:

Sanger has unilaterally decided that all race and gender topics should be split up under traditional disciplinary headings, so that there will be a sub-group of "African American Literature," and "African American History," but no category -- at any level -- in African American studies, and he embraces the same tactic of fragmenting Gender Studies.

Tal also stated that she was "embarrassed to have had anything to do with CZ", and urged a boycott of Citizendium by "all supporters of race and gender studies". There does not appear to have been any formal mediation in the dispute between Tal and Sanger beyond exchanges on the Citizendium web forum.

Managing editor appointment

Sanger announced on 27 September 2006 that he had asked Bernard Haisch to be the project's acting managing editor. However, on October 7 Sanger wrote that Haisch had decided not to accept the position. Sanger commented: "To replace him, I am hoping to find a tenured (or emeritus) academic or a senior scientist who is well respected in his or her field, or a retired encyclopedia editor, and who fully supports the mission of the Citizendium." In an October 18 post to the Citizendium mailing list, Sanger announced that David Marshall, "a retired law professor, publisher, technologist, and author, from the U.K. but now living in Singapore", is the new acting managing editor. He is no relation to the David Saul Marshall with a Wikipedia article. In a blog launched on 30 October 2006, Sanger stated, "I’m sorry to report that David Marshall has resigned as Managing Editor, citing family issues. As I’ve told him, I’m grateful that he spent the large amounts of time that he did on the project. He did, of course, move the ball toward the goal, and I’ll always be grateful for that."

Comments

Brad Patrick, General Counsel and interim Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said "A great strength of the free culture movement is in the freedom to experiment. It is good to see Mr. Sanger continuing to push forward with freely licensed content in his new project." According to published reports, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales "noted that the content of Citizendium will also be available under the GFDL, so if the new site is successful, Wikipedia will be able to incorporate the changes back into its own site." Wales was quoted as saying that he and Sanger had a "difference of vision" but the two are "still friends".

Other published comments have emphasized the rivalry between Sanger and Wales. In The Independent Stephen Foley wrote: "The launch of Citizendium.org, which begins testing in the next few days, is the latest chapter in the bitter public feud between Mr Sanger and Jimmy Wales, with whom he conceived Wikipedia in 2001." On The Guardian website Charles Leadbetter also highlighted the personal competition:

There is more than a whiff of personal rivalry and pique about [Citizendium]. Sanger's explanation of his plans says quite baldly that he had the original idea for Wikipedia on January 2, 2001, presumably in a flash of inspiration. My experience is that new ideas rarely emerge in a eureka moment. They tend to be more collaborative and cumulative. But still it's not hard to see why Sanger might be a little fed up with all the attention Wales has got, including being flown by private jet to meet Bono in Mexico.

Leadbetter goes on to say that Wikipedia and Citizendium might both profit from the rivalry:

The best outcome would not be for one to win over the other but for the combination of Wikipedia and Citizendium to expand the possible range of ways people can collaborate together to generate new ideas. Between Wikipedia at the very open end of the spectrum and Encylopaedia Britannica at the closed end there are many different ways for people to collaborate to come up with new ideas. Citizendium should be welcomed for further opening up that space.

On the Citizendium.org web page, Larry Sanger rejected the idea of a personal rivalry between himself and Jimmy Wales:

Is this project just motivated by a personal animosity between Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales? Not at all. This project, and forces that led to it, are much, much bigger than two quibbling personalities.

A number of other media accounts of the project appeared in response to Sanger's October 17 press release. In the Financial Times Richard Waters advised patience before evaluating the success of Citizendium:

It is likely to take Citizendium some time to prove whether it can create a better online encyclopedia. It will begin by simply taking over all of the existing entries from Wikipedia, then start the laborious job of having them filtered by expert editors – a job Mr Sanger called 'a clean-out of the Augean stables'.

External links

• Citizendium.org
• Citizendium discussion list and archives
• Citizendium forums
• "Larry Sanger's essay: Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge" (longer version)
• "Larry Sanger abstract", Wizards of OS 4.
• Template:De icon "WOS 4: Citizendium soll bessere Wikipedia werden", Heise online, September 15 2006.
• "Wikipedia rival calls in the experts", Nature October 5, 2006, via Citizendium-l mailing list
• "Wikipedia co-founder plans 'expert' spinoff", ZDNet News, October 16, 2006
• "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version of Wikipedia, Pilot Project for the Citizendium to Launch This Week. October 17, 2006