User:Peter Damian (original account)/Sanger's call for contributions

To: PHILOS-L@liverpool.ac.uk Subject: An expert-led alternative to Wikipedia (call for participation)

Dear Philosophers,

We, a rapidly growing group of over 500 intellectuals and all-around smart folks, have started an expert-led alternative to Wikipedia called "Citizendium" (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), or the Citizens' Compendium:


 * Citizendium home page

We feel this project is badly needed. And we need your help!

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia. On the one hand, they love the free availability of huge amounts of information. On the other hand, they hate its amateurish quality. I suspect that most philosophers' sentiments fall heavily on the latter side. Personally, I think most of Wikipedia's philosophy articles are rubbish. If there must be a really dynamic, enormous, open encyclopedia of philosophy--and unless Wikipedia goes away, there will continue to be one that pretends to be just that--then the online community of philosophers can *certainly* do better than Wikipedia.

Over the past few years we've seen many calls by experts to descend upon Wikipedia and whip articles in a certain area into shape. When experts do that, though, they tend to get beaten back by an anarchical and somewhat insular Wikipedia community committed to amateurism.

Other groups have proposed, and started, competing expert-led wiki encyclopedias, with very limited success. It's quite hard to start a successful wiki. There is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves.

I don't wish to sound immodest, but I guess am in a unique situation because--as you might recall from announcements made on this list six years ago--I actually co-founded Wikipedia in early 2001. I left the project in 2002 and permanently distanced myself from it in 2003. I began publicly criticizing it in 2004, and now, as a more efficient corrective, I'm leading the construction of a newer, more mature, expert-led, but still dynamic wiki encyclopedia project, the Citizendium. It combines robust public participation with gentle expert guidance and more carefully enforced standards.

But will it achieve critical mass? There is already excellent evidence that it will. Some might say it already has. Our private pilot project, about three months old, is at work on over 1,000 articles. Over 160 Ph.D.-level editors in many fields from around the world have activated accounts on the pilot project wiki. There are also over 500 (rank-and-file) author accounts. We are averaging well over 500 edits per day on the wiki. There were also thousands of posts to project forums.

And that's all *before* formal recruitment, i.e., without reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. With these very posts to PHILOSOP and PHILOS-L, I am kicking off our formal recruitment efforts. Most academics haven't heard about the Citizendium project yet (although articles about it have appeared in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" and "Nature"). We think that when the word gets out, many academics and serious students will become supporters--and, I hope, participants.

If you'd like to join the pilot project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://www.citizendium.org/cfa.html

We are also in the process of organizing discipline-specific editorial groups devoted to overseeing--not directing top-down--the new project's work. We hope you will join us soon in our Philosophy Workgroup.

If you want to see some testimonials from editors who are involved, we've collected some here:

http://www.citizendium.org/editortestimonials.html

Let's show the world what is possible when a strong collaboration is led gently by real experts, while still engaging the general educated public. If there are large quantities of information about philosophy available online, let's make sure it's of high quality.