CZ Talk:We aren't Wikipedia

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Challenge

Larry, do you think that number four might be regarded as a challenge? I'd say ignore them. Chris Day (Talk) 23:38, 20 March 2007 (CDT)

Of course we won't be able to say this forever. When we have our first vandalism outside of that self-registration period, we can change this to read, "We have had virtually no vandalism." Vandalism isn't much of a challenge, first of all; and it's not a challenge for us to shut down. But it's really important that we include this in a list of differences--it's one of the biggest (and most positive) differences between the projects. --Larry Sanger 00:27, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Certainly from the perspective of a serious editor, low levels of vandalism is a huge attraction to edit here rather than wikipedia. In my mind that, along with the protected, approved pages, are the two most important distinctions. Chris Day (Talk) 00:41, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Hey Steve, I noticed that you made several formatting changes, which I reverted. So I thought I should explain why. The headings seemed redundant. The document itself is short, and does not need headings that repeat headings that are in bold. We could simply put == around the now-bold headings, such as "How is the Citizendium similar to Wikipedia?" But this would have the body of the text, such as "In quite a few ways," responding to the heading, which seems like poor style. Theoretically, an article should make sense without having to read a heading title (surrounded by ==).

The introductory lines you added were also redundant with the evident structure of the page, and so unnecessary; give the reader a little credit for being able to figure it out. "Wikipedia style" has a very annoying tendency to spell out absolutely everything in its help pages, even when it becomes more tiresome and confusing to have the exhaustive explanation. Let's not do that.

In long bulleted lists, putting spaces between items increases readability, so I would agree to that, except that the text is also structured by the bold headings after the numbers. So it's easy to keep your place as you read.

You also had de-spirited some of my punchier formulations, which I have reverted. :-) I appreciated the other clean-ups though. --Larry Sanger 09:08, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

My goal in creating the headers was to be able to link to them, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why the Wiki software sometimes does not create a menu. Stephen Ewen 12:59, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

Citizendium: My Opinion

I want to say this because I felt like I should. I was introduced to Wikipedia when I was searching for information and noticed how their could be errors and you don't know who wrote them.

I don't believe Citizendium will get a mass of people like Wikipedia as fast is because of the stringent guidelines, BUT Citizendium will have more quality authors and editors. In this case, it's quality over Quantitiy. Who cares if you got 30,000 members when the 3,000 here write better?

Jonathan Snyder 19:37, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

I think many of us could be quite surprised at just how many people will be interested in working here. Personally, I think that, once we really get rolling, we could have more people wanting to work with us than on Wikipedia. I say this only because I think our system will be more productive of high-quality content, and it will be a more pleasant place to do work. --Larry Sanger 14:19, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

Could anybody explain how vandalism is not possible in Citizendium? Couldn't you make a new account just to commit vandalism? Using public library computers, i.e. (Chunbum Park 20:46, 27 January 2008 (CST))

Vandalism is possible, but the small effort needed to register is a huge deterrent to the common internet troll.--Richard Pettitt 20:54, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Plus, I'm pre-emptively paranoid. --Robert W King 20:59, 27 January 2008 (CST)

CZ's remedy for vandalism is pretty simple, too, unlike at Wikipedia where you get numerous chances. Do it once here and you are permanently banned. Stephen Ewen 21:24, 27 January 2008 (CST)

I can't remember even one case of deliberate vandalism on this site, and I've been here since July. Denis Cavanagh 05:06, 28 January 2008 (CST)

There have been some instances of deliberate vandalism (mostly before July), and all of them but one were caused by people who joined CZ during the "open enrollment" period, when we didn't check IDs at the door. There has been zero vandalism of any sort in a long time (I'm happy to say), probably not since July, and virtually none to speak of outside a three week period in Jan-Feb 2007.

Vandals don't use their real names... --Larry Sanger 08:37, 28 January 2008 (CST)

How can you permanently ban someone when s/he switches over different computers and different IP addresses? (Chunbum Park 15:52, 28 January 2008 (CST))

The better question is how many people will be able to develop a farm of real named accounts from which they can sustain any significant vandalism. See why its so difficult? Stephen Ewen 17:05, 28 January 2008 (CST)

Well, vandalism spills over neutrality, sock puppetry, etc. Thanks for clearing up the impossibility - which I now know as very hard to do. What about sock puppetry, or organized, forum-based farm of collaborative accounts? (I think that Citizendium should develop a crack police to hack in other computers (not literally, just spyware that sends back ip address, etc).... or is that illegal.) The problem w/ neutrality at Wikipedia was that yes you can kick out sock puppets but it was really voluntary (unless someone points them out they get by) - & it was really hard for me to attack all sock puppets w/ my time limit & there were forum-based attacks (of multiple forum members--> not sock puppetry) on article talk pages & polls. I think that Citizendium should make it so that it's not just consensus (i.e. mob rule) but also fact/professionalism/accuracy (that comes from all the Ph.D. ppl here) that matters. (Chunbum Park 19:06, 28 January 2008 (CST))

Now you've got the idea. That is exactly what we are trying to do, and I think you do understand why. Expert editors hold the top spot, unlike wikipedia where they are equals at best and banned at worst. Here they are asked to make the content decisions. Certainly there will be some problems, but the end result will surely be different than what wikipedia produces. After all, that is what this is all about; producing a product that is reliable and verifiable, because it is written and overseen by those who are trained in their fields. All we have to do is keep working to produce quality and google will figure out a way to make sure the world gets a path to our door. :-) D. Matt Innis 19:31, 28 January 2008 (CST)

License update

I fixed the text about the license to indicate that works which originate on CZ are under CC-BY-SA. I also removed the following text, because my understanding of http://www.citizendium.org/czlicense.html is that this was rejected. But correct me if I'm wrong. Anthony 14:58, 22 December 2007 (CST)

1. Contributors share their copyright with us. Contributors give to the Citizendium Foundation a non-exclusive right to relicense their work. This allows the Citizendium Foundation to be the sole entity that licenses the entire Citizendium corpus.

First paragraph

The first paragraph reads:

How is the Citizendium similar to Wikipedia? In quite a few ways. In enough ways that might make you wonder why we've started another project. Consider:

The second and third sentences are sentence fragments. Sometimes sentence fragments are good, but IMHO this isn't one of them. Any ideas how to fix this? --Warren Schudy 20:26, 1 January 2008 (CST)

I don't see anything wrong with them in this case: the whole thing is mean to convey a casual tone/attitude...but change it if you want! In general, I encourage everyone to make edits and updates to all community pages. Dramatic and substantive changes (not copyediting changes, like the one discussed here) need discussion in advance, and I'd like to be in the loop, but if I'm not, that's OK too. More generally, I am trying (have long been trying) to let people know that they're empowered to clean up and improve all our community pages (help, policy, instructions). This is a high priority for us, I think. --Larry Sanger 08:41, 28 January 2008 (CST)

Perspective? Shouldn't we write for the readers, not contributors?

One thing I notice about this page (and many others, like the FAQ, etc) is that it seems to be written from, and for, the perspective of contributors. I think we should focus on the perspective of our users - who are, after all, the whole reason we're doing this. (Our contributors, although critical, are just a means to an end.) So I'd like to see the lists start with the similarities and differences from the users' perspective - and there, the key thing is focus on reliability and quality.

I hesitate to make any changes to the page myself, since I'm new to Citizendium (although I'm a longtime contributor on Wikipedia, and contributed to the startup discussions about Citizendium), but if people would like me to, I'd be happy to try organizing the page to have that focus. J. Noel Chiappa 08:46, 25 February 2008 (CST)

Some comments in 2023

This is really well done. I just ran across it and enjoyed reading these principles.

i have a lot of experience with number 8 at Wikipedia, Citizendium discourages the use of excessive acronyms on grounds that they can render a topic unintelligible to non-experts.

Acronyms and policies of the platform also are used as a weapon and WP has a power structure that instead of really focusing on the quality of the article and on being balanced, apparently focuses on controlling everybody. The editors there too frequently are more interested in legalistic patrolling of the platform... so I'd suggest keeping acronym-referenced policies to a minimum here :-

Also, really cool here to see this whole discussion that includes Larry Sanger. I have such respect for him and his work here and on other platforms. He's a great editor and a visionary. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 10:10, 6 March 2023 (CST)