Citizendium
Encyclopedia
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
-based free
Free content
Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work...
encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
project launched by Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
, who co-founded Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
in 2001.
It was first announced in September 2006 as a fork
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of the English Wikipedia
English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next...
, but that idea was abandoned prior to its March 2007 public launch in favor of emphasizing original articles. The project aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by providing increased reliability. It hopes to achieve this by requiring all contributors to use their real names, by strictly moderating the project for unprofessional behavior, by providing what it calls "gentle expert oversight" of everyday contributors, and also through its "approved articles", which have undergone a form of peer-review by credentialed topic experts and are closed to real-time editing.
, it had 15,920 articles, of which 155 had achieved editorial approval, and around 45 contributors making at least 20 edits a month, by 27 October 2011, the site had fewer than 100 active members. The managing editor is Daniel Mietchen.
Founder viewpoints
Sanger said in a 17 October 2006 press release that Citizendium "will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online". In August 2007, he captioned its pages "The world needs a more credible free encyclopedia." The project began its pilot phase in October and November 2006.On 18 January 2007, a change of plans was announced. Sanger announced on the CZ mailing list that only articles marked "CZ Live", those which have been or will soon be worked on by Citizendium contributors, would remain on the site, and all other articles forked from Wikipedia would be deleted. Not all Citizendium contributors were supportive of this change, but Sanger emphasized that this deletion was "an experiment" and a new set of Wikipedia articles could be uploaded if the experiment were deemed unsuccessful.
Planning for succession of Editor-in-Chief
In May 2009, Sanger reduced his direct activity at Citizendium, and in a message on 30 July 2009, he reminded those on the Citizendium-l mailing list of his previously declared intention not to serve as Editor-in-Chief for more than two or three years after the start of the project. Sanger has reiterated his call for the Citizendium community to prepare an orderly process for choosing a new Editor-in-Chief. Sanger said that he was spending more time on his WatchKnow project, partly because he needs to earn an income—he said the "Citizendium project doesn't earn me a dime"—and partly because the Citizendium community had demonstrated that it could function effectively without his close, daily involvement, and because "there are squeakier wheels in my life just now." He added that stepping aside may "precipitate something of a constitutional crisis, considering that we [Citizendium] never adopted a proper charter." Citizendium finally ratified its charter in September 2010. On 22 September 2010, Sanger stepped down as editor-in-chief and subsequently gave up editorial powers and rights to the project. Sanger did not appoint a successor or interim Editor-in-Chief, and the project's financial position did not become clear until after his departure.Fork of Wikipedia
According to statements and essays on Citizendium.org, the project was initially intended to begin as a forkFork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of Wikipedia, carrying a copy of each article—under the rules of the GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
—as it existed on Wikipedia at the time of Citizendium's launch. However, after initiating the idea of not forking, and then soliciting comments on the matter from Citizendium mailing list
Electronic mailing list
An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...
and web forum members, Sanger said that a complete fork at launch was not a "foregone conclusion." On 18 January 2007, Sanger announced that the pilot would, as an experiment, only carry articles that had been, or would soon be, worked on by Citizendium contributors, instead of a complete set of Wikipedia articles. He stated that the experiment "represents a reconception of our project's basic aim."
No announcement has yet been made on Citizendium editions 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. In a review of Andrew Keen's
Andrew Keen
Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and author. He is particularly known for his view that the current Internet culture and the Web 2.0 trend may be debasing culture, an opinion he shares with Jaron Lanier and Nicholas G. Carr among others...
book The Cult of the Amateur
The Cult of the Amateur
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture is a 2007 book written by entrepreneur and Internet critic Andrew Keen...
, Sanger comments ironically on Keen's favorable treatment of Citizendium: "The first example of a 'solution' he offers is the Citizendium, or the Citizens' Compendium, which I like to describe briefly as Wikipedia with editors and real names. But how can Citizendium be a solution to the problems he raises, if it has experts working without pay, and the result is free? If it succeeds, won't it contribute to the decline of reference publishing?"
Project goal
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 aimed to foster an expert culture and a community that encourages participants (to be called "authors") to "respect" the expert contributions (by what he referred to as a "gentle process of guidance").An appeals process for disagreements between editors and authors, and between different editors, was planned, according to a provisional "Citizendium Policy Outline" published by Sanger.
On the Citizendium blog, Sanger wrote this caveat about the provisional outline: "This is a work in progress. Therefore, I hope the Wikipedia article about the Citizendium will not say tomorrow that CZ will have features X, Y, and Z. These are in most cases negotiable policy ideas, a place for the invitees to the policy project to work from." Sanger also stated that future versions of the policy outline would be posted on the restricted-access pilot wiki: "The most current version will be available on the pilot project wiki. To see that, you'll have to be a member of the pilot project." Experts are required to verify their qualifications
Professional certification
Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task...
openly, for transparency and publicly accepted authority. This contrasts with the open and largely anonymous
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
nature of Wikipedia, where subject specialists have neither any verifiable special knowledge of their subject nor agreed special status. Sanger stated that editors would not have pre-approval rights over edits by ordinary authors, though editors would have somewhat undefined authority over articles that fall within their specific area of expertise.
Contrast to Wikipedia
Many of Citizendium's proposed policies are attempts to correct perceived flaws in the original design and the public image of Wikipedia that have led to problems with Wikipedia's acceptance as a valid and trustworthy resource. Some academics maintain that Wikipedia is a valuable starting point for inquiry, but (as its co-founder Jimmy WalesJimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
concurs) should not be used as a sole or principal source of information. Some schools and universities accept no references to Wikipedia in formal papers, while other educational institutions have limited its use to being merely a pointer to external sources.
Regarding Wikipedia, Sanger wrote that "this arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to...academics" and as such appears "committed to amateurism." In his December 2007 essay on Citizendium's content license
License
The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...
, Sanger said "we are not in business to put Wikipedia out of business, but we do hope to outdo them in value—that is, in quality, quantity (in the fullness of time), and in the maturity and responsibility of our community.[...] On balance, I remain a fan of the project I engineered. I merely think we can do better—and so we should try."
Policies and structure
Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium does not allow anonymous editing. Participants must register under their real names with a working email address.Sanger decided that Citizendium administrators, or sysops, would be called "constables", and need a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
to qualify. He also instituted a minimum "maturity" requirement—25 years of age—for constables. The "head" constable is the Chief Constable (D. Matt Innis), and the head editor is the Managing Editor.
Originally, Sanger operated as Editor-in-Chief, the "main individual in charge", part of and answerable to a Board of Directors. Sanger stated 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 10 November 2006, constable Sarah Tuttle announced the formation of an "executive committee" consisting of herself, Sanger and eleven others, which works on issues of "long term governance" of the project.
Citizendium articles are subject to an "approval" process after they have achieved reasonable quality. An "editor" can determine when an article is ready to be approved. If the article is approved it is then locked, and further editing takes place on a separate "draft" version which may eventually replace the current approved version. There is a dispute-resolution process for disagreements about which version should be selected as approved.
In a 26 October 2006 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:
The project is being carried out under the auspices of the Citizendium Foundation, and was initially phased under the Tides Center
Tides Center
Tides Center is a non-profit organization in the United States which provides fiscal sponsorship for progressive groups. Tides Center is classified a 501 tax-exempt organization by the IRS...
as an incubator project. In September 2010, the Tides Center officially withdrew direct financial support for the project.
Content
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
(cc-by-sa). "Articles that originated in part from Wikipedia are also available under [the] GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
[version] 1.2." The decision for a commercial-allowable license for its original articles comes on the heels of extended community debate, with about half of Citizendium contributors preferring a non-commercial license. The decision was announced on 21 December 2007, about a year after the launch of the pilot project, with Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
's essay on the reasoning behind the decision.
History
Pilot project
The project was announced by Sanger on 15 September 2006, at the Wizards of OSWizards of OS
Wizards of OS is a Berlin-based conference.Its topics are the cultural and political potentials of free software, software technology, digital networks and media, and more generally information freedom and open cooperation in the creation and proliferation of knowledge...
4 conference in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. He gave no deadline for the full launch of the wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
. However, on 2 October 2006, Sanger released a pilot project announcement that envisioned a fully functioning wiki within "one to two months."
In an apparent attempt to quicken the pace of the project, on 2 October 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.
No access to the pilot version of Citizendium, even read-only, was allowed to the general public. Sanger stated: "Only invited people will be able to view and edit the pilot project wiki." Sanger also said that constables for the pilot project will be chosen by the chief constable.
In a press release on 17 October 2006, Sanger announced: "the fledgling Citizendium Foundation will launch a six-week pilot project open to potential contributors by invitation". Several editors and other project leaders were named. It was also announced that the Citizendium Foundation had "started the process of applying for 501(c)(3) status [non-profit status]" and had "received a firm commitment for a significant seed grant from a foundation, as well as small personal donations." 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."
The pilot project began operations on 23 October 2006. On 8 November, 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 7 November.
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
.
On 16 February 2007, in response to rising site vandalism, automatic account creation was put on hold while increased protections were being put in place to counter vandalism. The next day, page moves were limited to constables as an additional measure against vandalism. In addition, Sanger continued the process of un-forking the Citizendium from Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
by inviting contributors to delete any Wikipedia content that had changed only superficially since it was imported.
Inauguration
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
article that ran widely, with a title in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
of "Citizendium aims to be better Wikipedia."
The day prior to launch, Sanger released an essay, "Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed" in which he stated that activity at Citizendium grew from 100 edits a day in the first month to over 500 prior to launch. After the launch, on 27 March 2007, a press release quotes Sanger as saying "You don't have to choose between content and accountability. We have shown that we can create open and credible content. We can, in fact, be open to all sorts of participants, but still hold people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community.""The modest success of our pilot project shows that there is hope that we can correct exactly the sort of abuses that people demonize Web 2.0 for," said the project's Editor-in-Chief, Wikipedia co-founder Dr. Larry Sanger. "You don't have to choose between content and accountability. We have shown that we can create open and credible content. We can, in fact, be open to all sorts of participants, but still hold people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community."
Sometime after the launch, it was noted that Citizendium's family-friendly policy would mean the project would likely tend to avoid articles on slang terms for sexual activity, and particularly explicit articles on sexual practices. The Citizendium has a "professionalism" policy for editors, which Sanger said is different from most online communities.
On 29 June 2007, Sanger announced an initiative via the project-wide mailing list that he dubbed "Citizendium 2.0". Characterizing his comments as a "project planning document", Sanger detailed a series of initiatives designed to launch Citizendium into its next phase of development. The document outlined plans for a judicial board, an advisory board, a personnel manager, a new chairman of the editorial council, wider participation in the project by volunteers, a system of subpages for articles, and an expanded article checklist.
Later developments
At the project's one-year anniversary in September 2007, Citizendium included 3000 articlesArticle (publishing)
An article is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating the news, research results, academic analysis or debate.-News articles:...
written and revised by 2000 people. A number of media reports appeared in late October and early November 2007 about the anniversary of Citizendium. A story in the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
quoted Larry Sanger predicting strong growth for the project: "At some point, possibly very soon, the Citizendium will grow explosively – say, quadruple the number of its active contributors, or even grow by an order of magnitude. And it will experience that growth over the course of a month or two, and its growth will continue to accelerate from that higher rate."
Citizendium was honored on 5 December 2007, as an award finalist of the Society for New Communications Research. The Society describes itself as a nonprofit global think-tank "dedicated to the advanced study of new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society". The Society chose Citizendium for an award because it considered it "a leading organization" in these respects.
Library writer Walt Crawford noted in April 2009 that Citizendium appeared to be in an "extended lull", with a constant rate of creation of new articles at around 13-14 per day and a decline in the number of active authors. In August 2009, Richard Waters wrote in the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
technology blog: "At best, Citizendium could be called a qualified success. Launched in March 2007, it currently lists 11,810 articles – 2,999,674 fewer than the English-language version of Wikipedia." Mathieu O'Neil, Principal Researcher at the Australian Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy, wrote in a March 2010 article on crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
that "new participants to Wikipedia know that their contributions will have a significant audience; becoming a Wikipedia editor is trivial and instantaneous; since it lacks this immediate quality, Citizendium failed to attract the crowd."
The project had a core of 25 contributors who made more than 100 edits a month, with 90 participants making at least one edit, during March 2010. Median
Median
In probability theory and statistics, a median is described as the numerical value separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to...
word count dropped from 468 words per article in October 2007 to 151 in May 2010. In June 2010, the number of users making 1, 20 or 100 edits per month all were at their lowest point since the project went public in March 2007. By October 2011, only about a dozen members made edits on a typical day. The number of approved articles remains at around 1% of the total.