Forum Talk:Competitors and Press/Archive 1

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Larry Sanger interview

Citizendium founder Larry Sanger was interviewed via YouTube for Collegefeed a few months ago. He briefly discusses CZ and its origins in this part. He attributes CZ's situation to being "too similar to Wikipedia" and that a lot of early users left because "Wikipedia was happening and Citizendium wasn't yet". In other parts of the video, he talks about the origins of Wikipedia and InfoBitt. John Stephenson 19:47, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Another interview is here (about Wikipedia, experts and InfoBitt; interview in English with Greek subtitles). John Stephenson (talk) 13:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Article on perceived credibility of on-line encyclopedias (inc. CZ)

Research by Andrew J. Flanagin and Miriam J. Metzger published in the Information, Communication & Society journal in 2011 used Citizendium alongside Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica to investigate the perceived credibility of on-line information among children and adults. The abstract states that children rated Wikipedia as less believable than either Encyclopædia Britannica or Citizendium, but did so regardless of the content (because they did the same when Wikipedia information was presented as though it came from Encyclopædia Britannica). Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall and I can't access it. John Stephenson 16:52, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

We must be networked into it: I had no difficulty accessing it. The authors haven't done their homework properly: "entries are in turn confirmed by experts prior to being posted on the site". The research is based on two sample topics, global warming and homeopathy. Our article on the latter was approved, but not by the usual procedure; instead the Editorial Council approved it on the recommendation of a single Editor, who had contributed to it. The former article here isn't approved. It looks from this as if their conclusions shouldn't be taken too seriously as far as CZ is concerned. Peter Jackson 11:36, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

That does raise a practical issue, though: if even educated people who're actually using the site think that, do we need a clearer and/or more prominent disclaimer template?

I don't suppose we'd get very far suggesting to the expert community that if they're going to get the blame for CZ content they'd better do something about it. Peter Jackson 17:55, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Alternative download linkPradyumna Singh 05:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

And another thing

while we're on this forum. A group of senior WP editors have got together to go on strike every Monday (How many peopel will notice?) in protest against the way WMF and JW are running the site. I haven't managed to get a very specific idea of what they're protesting against, but the general idea seems to be that the PTB side with admins and readers against the people who actually write the encyclopaedia. Peter Jackson 09:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

"PTB" ? The war over there revolves around the Manchester mafia, Eric Corbett, Simon Tushingham @"Sitush", 3 or 4 admins etc. who've been regularly accused of paid editing but have now fallen out with JW / WMF over the introduction of the new editing software platforms for which Lila Tretikov was inducted. These platforms will expose MM's business, so their bitter opposition now to JW.Pradyumna Singh 13:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Powers That Be. Peter Jackson 11:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Peter, I was trying to work out how Pass the buck would fit into that round hole.Pradyumna Singh 01:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Some folks here would be interested in this Sock puppetry by an admin (and WMF's first employee) which sets the scene for the strikers.Pradyumna Singh 02:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The Case is over on Wikipedia, with a highly controversial decision Wikipedia is amazing. But it’s become a rancorous, sexist, elitist, stupidly bureaucratic mess - slate.com Pradyumna Singh (talk) 09:40, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

And note that Eric only just escaped a ban, on a tied vote. Peter Jackson (talk) 10:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Newsweek: Manipulating Wikipedia

Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School

So this isn't just a question of obscure Wikipedian politics. It's a tale that demonstrates how Wikipedia can be cynically manipulated by companies, and how the credibility of the website is, especially in the developing world, a powerful and potentially dangerous tool. Pradyumna Singh (talk) 17:59, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Not peculiar to business. All sorts of political and religious factions have been manipulating it all along. WP's system and culture aren't all that good at dealing with it. Peter Jackson (talk) 09:24, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I see some editors discussing this on WP say there are two large "chains" of such establishments in India and each has been paying people to manipulate WP in their favour and against their rival. Peter Jackson (talk) 10:38, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Google's 'truth rankings'

Google appear to be moving away from search results based mainly on link popularity, in favour of sites that contain information that is verified via their 'Knowledge Vault', i.e. an automatically-generated database. John Stephenson (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

The explanation there isn't very clear, but it looks like they're replacing number of sites linking to something with number of sites agreeing with something as their criterion. I wonder how many sites simply take their "information" from WP. If most do the change wouldn't make much difference. Peter Jackson (talk) 08:50, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Article on the "impossible trinity of information" and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This article on Quartz.com compares various different ways of providing knowledge and argues that only the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been able to present authoritative, comprehensive and up-to-date information (the "impossible trinity"). It compares the expert-run SEP to Wikipedia and Quora, among others (and argues that Quora tops Wikipedia, interestingly enough). However, the article also points out that similar projects for fields that move faster than philosophy have failed, and that the SEP is financially backed by Stanford (although they only pay three people). Experts are interviewed and explain why they contribute. John Stephenson (talk) 11:51, 22 September 2015 (UTC)