Moving a discussion from the Larry Sanger user discussion page

[Hayford Peirce]

Larry has asked that the following thread be removed from his own talk page, as it is rapidly getting out of hand in terms of length. Below is the entire thread:
== Open letter to Larry Sanger ==

Hello, Larry. I considered e-mailing this to you, or posting it on my blog, but I settled instead on posting this open letter on your Citizendium discussion page. Let me begin by stating that I have enormous respect for you and your vision for Citizendium. I bear neither you nor this project any ill will; Citizendium's goals are noble indeed.

I have concerns, though, that Citizendium may not be succeeding, if at all, in the manner that you predicted early in the history of the project. One of the first statements that I read in [[CZ:Donate]], at the top of [[CZ:Donate#Why donate to the Citizendium?|''Why donate to the ''Citizendium''?'']], is

<blockquote>
The Citizendium is a project of Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. ('''It will become fully independent next year.''') [Emphasis mine.]
</blockquote>

To the best of my knowledge, Citizendium continues to be a project of Tides Center. The quote that I linked to was written in 2006 or 2007, and thus indicated that Citizendium would become a fully independent organisation in 2008. It's 2009 now, and Citizendium is not yet an independent organisation. What gives?

Next, [[CZ:Fundamentals]] states, in [[CZ:Fundamentals#V. The adoption of a Citizendium Charter.|section V, ''The adoption of a Citizendium Charter'']] that

<blockquote>
Within '''six months to a year after the launch of the Citizendium''', its Advisory Board will adopt a binding community charter that states, in a clear but general way, the fundamental goals and policies of the  Citizendium project. The judgment of the Advisory Board, on the matter of the Charter, will be regarded as final. [Emphasis mine.]
</blockquote>

Now, as far as I know, no charter has yet been formed. At any rate, it's 2009 now, long past the "six months to a year" mark. Is this another hitch?

Finally, I turn my attention to [[CZ:Statistics]]. The first graph in [[CZ:Statistics#Number of articles and pages|''Number of articles and pages'']] shows a creation rate that seems to be a constant slope; there has been no exponential growth, as you predicted would occur in 2008. And, if the first graph in [[CZ:Statistics#Number of authors|''Number of authors'']] is to be believed, then the editing community has been in ''decline'' over the last several months.

Do these factors make Citizendium's prospects for the future as a publicly-acclaimed and ''used'' free encyclopedia look good? I'll be blunt: they do not. Let me recap: at least two very important organisational steps have not yet taken place, although they were promised over a year ago; article growth has been constant, with no exponential growth; and the editing community appears to be in decline.

Last Friday, I co-founded [http://epistemia.org/ Epistemia], "the free, reliable, and global compilation of knowledge", which aims to address Wikipedia's flaws by:

* requiring users to log in before being permitted to edit (users can self-register, by the way);
* requiring civil and polite conduct, and showing no tolerance for those people whose intention is to cause disruption or damage;
* requiring people with administrative privileges to use their real names as their account names, with few exceptions (anybody else can use a reasonable pseudonym if they so choose, although they are encouraged to use their real names);
* placing a high emphasis on developing and maintaining content according to established scholarly standards (it is my intention to implement a review system that incorporates both expert and general-community feedback); and
* outlining policy (content, community, and project standards), which is still in development, clearly and simply on a single page.

I would love to hear your take on Epistemia and to have a reasoned, logical debate with you over the merits of these policies.

Best and friendly regards, [[User:Thomas H. Larsen|Thomas H. Larsen]] 00:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

:Ah, those were the 'Good ole days'!  Thomas, I see that you're site is so very [http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Special:AllPages young], but don't get discouraged.  Keep your eyes on the road and nose to the grindstone and you will be rewarded.  If I were to give any advice (not that you've asked), I'd say read everything that you can that Larry Sanger has written and do your best to understand the [[CZ:Neutrality Policy]] and decide on how you plan to enforce something like it.  Then just sit back and maybe someday someone will compliment you by trying to emulate you. [[User:D. Matt Innis|D. Matt Innis]] 01:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

::Good luck, Thomas! --[[User:Larry Sanger|Larry Sanger]] 01:38, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
::: Thanks for the encouragement, folks. I'm certainly an avid reader of Larry's works regarding free content projects. Neutrality is definitely a requirement over at Epistemia (although we call it "balance"; see [http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Policy#Content_standards our policy]).

::: @Matt: You looked at Special:AllPages on Epistemia Meta—try the [http://en.epistemia.org/wiki/Special:AllPages English-language project pages list] (the pages in ''italics'' are redirects). According to [http://en.epistemia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics Special:Statistics], we currently have 91 articles. [[User:Thomas H. Larsen|Thomas H. Larsen]] 03:06, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

::::Perhaps I'm overlooking something, but as far as I can see it the only real constitutional difference between CZ and Epistemia is: ''anybody else can use a reasonable pseudonym if they so choose''. Thomas, do you really believe that that rule decides between success and failure? --[[User:Paul Wormer|Paul Wormer]] 09:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Paul, as far as I can tell their frustration with citizendium is the [http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/User:Richard_Austin/Thoughts_on_other_projects following list].

'''Citizendium''':
* boasts about being written by experts, despite the amateurish quality of most articles
* many articles are written in an excessively simplistic style, and appear to be dumbed down and even patronising to readers
* much of the content seems more biased and poorly researched than corresponding content on Wikipedia* many basic topics are missing altogether
* user policy is highly restrictive; this seems to be an extreme kneejerk reaction to the openness of Wikipedia
* bizarre organisation and interface render it inconvenient to use
* seems to be a chimera made up of certain aspects of Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias without fully understanding the success of either

It makes me think we need to promote the "[[CZ:Myths_and_Facts|Myths_and_Facts]]" document a little more. [[User:Chris Day|Chris Day]] 16:59, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

:Thank you Chris, I hadn't seen that list. I would indeed say: Good luck Thomas, you sure need it! --[[User:Paul Wormer|Paul Wormer]] 17:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

::Absolutely. I'd say we should be grateful that we have become big enough to have had a fork and a rather pompous 'open letter'. I would say something rather rude, but I'll keep my pre-emptive giggles of schaudenfreude to myself. --[[User:Tom Morris|Tom Morris]] 17:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

:::Paul, for various reasons, I don't want to have the specific discussion on Larry's page, or indeed any user page.  Nevertheless, I'll note that there are reasons why identifications and membership policies could reasonably be reexamined to see if policies are ideally efficient and consistent. They may or may not be. Pseudonyms are not the only issue, but this may be one additional example of the potential utility of reviewing the process that includes them. [[User:Howard C. Berkowitz|Howard C. Berkowitz]] 17:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

::::I don't wish to be '''too''' rude, but I have never seen a more knuckle-headed (to be charitable) assessment of CZ than the above list.  I don't know who its author, Richard Austin, is, but it's apparent that he has never spent even 5 seconds looking at CZ -- as far as I can tell, every single item on that list is either flat-out wrong or a flat-out lie.  It's hard to betray so much ignorance in so few words. [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 18:17, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

:: Well good luck to them; I'm sorry they don't want to work here. As for the list, I am concerned at the visibility of our best articles - the Random Article button throws up mainly subpages (definitions, atomic numbers...) and the list of Live Articles includes everything from stubs (many of which are indeed just nominal beginnings) to well developed articles. It's not easy for someone looking in to see the large amount of very good work that has been done here.[[User:Gareth Leng|Gareth Leng]] 18:39, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

←Please allow me to correct a number of misconceptions here. Firstly, Epistemia is not a "fork" of either Wikipedia or Citizendium in the common sense of the word; you might call it an "alternative", but referring to it as a fork is misleading as it implies a shared history and split.

Secondly, I'm well aware that good work is being done on Citizendium. Is it enough, though? So far, Citizendium has no real public readership except, perhaps, inside of some academic circles. Will it ever be actually ''used'' widely? Larry predicted exponential growth in 2008—and, as yet, this growth has not occurred, at least according to [[CZ:Statistics]].

Does it matter if Citizendium is widely read? Yes, it does—because the project is worthless unless it is actually perused and referred to by a large, broad category of people.

The list that Chris spoke of was not written by myself. Actually, I think there are three main problems associated with Citizendium:

# it is overly restrictive, and not very dynamic or global;
# it has failed to gain significant public support, after over two years of operation; and
# it alienates people by requiring all contributors to use their real names.

Points (2) and (3) are easy enough to verify through simple experimentation. (1), though, is more subjective, and I could spend hours explaining why it is true. Perhaps I will do so some day, but not now; I've got a project to work on. :-)

Well, we have differences of opinion, I guess. I wish Citizendium all the best. [[User:Thomas H. Larsen|Thomas H. Larsen]] 00:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi--can you all take this elsewhere, please?  I have no time to participate.  I suggest the "non-member discussion" board on http://forum.citizendium.org/ --[[User:Larry Sanger|Larry Sanger]] 02:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

[Aleta Curry]

Wot, another one?? 

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

My thought would be that it really isn't productive to be playing attack-counterattack on this issue.

A few points are worth discussing, but among Citizens. In my opinion, and also based on a bit of research with people who have not joined, as well as some very extensive experience with smoothly functioning online professional communities, I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss some of the signup issues. That's another thread, though, presumably under Real Names Policy.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is the benefit of continuing this particular discussion, which seems adversarial, or at best documenting a decision of a group or individual to do something else? I don't feel especially masochistic.

[Chris Day]

Should this be in the non member section? Thomas Larsen is a member of the CZ community in the sense that he has a user page.

[Aleta Curry]

...Thomas Larsen is a member of the CZ community...

Well, bless his capricious little heart!  Is he sure he *wants* to be??

[Thomas H. Larsen]

There's not really much point continuing this discussion. I'm not going to try to stop it, but I'm not going to participate unless something major comes up that I should address.

Yes, I'm a Citizen. I think it's a mistake to categorise people into black-and-white contrasting groups--one can be a Wikipedian and a Citizen at the same time, for example. Technically, this post shouldn't be in the "Non-member discussion" board, because that is misleading and inaccurate. Never mind, though.

I invite anybody who wants to check Epistemia out to join the project and contribute. You don't have to abandon Citizen-ship ...

--Thomas Larsen

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

There's not really much point continuing this discussion. I'm not going to try to stop it, but I'm not going to participate unless something major comes up that I should address.

Yes, I'm a Citizen. I think it's a mistake to categorise people into black-and-white contrasting groups--one can be a Wikipedian and a Citizen at the same time, for example. Technically, this post shouldn't be in the "Non-member discussion" board, because that is misleading and inaccurate. Never mind, though.

I invite anybody who wants to check Epistemia out to join the project and contribute. You don't have to abandon Citizen-ship ...

--Thomas Larsen

Sometimes, it is a mistake not to categorize people into black-and-contrasting groups. There are resource problems here. It doesn't need further diversion. I haven't gone back to Wikipedia.

If I leave CZ, which has occurred to me for reasons I won't discuss now, it is that I have given up on the basic open Wiki model. I don't intend to go to another one, but will concentrate on other means of information sharing that manage to work quite well without the politics and drama.

Sometimes, it's a very fine idea to take stands.

[Aleta Curry]

we currently have 91 articles.

Aw, jeez, Thomas--people who live in glass houses really *shouldn't* throw stones.  I took you at your word and started at the top, there are at present 97 articles, so far I've only seen stubs.  The Category Arts has one subcategory: music, the music category contains one article, [[music]], which is four sentences long; the only subcategory is musicians, and the only article there is [[Avril Lavinge]], about whom there are five sentences.  All righty, then.

Oh, Matt, well said.

I think Chris, Gareth and Howard have all raised good points.  Certainly, arguing with Thomas would not be the best use of our time.  Can we have some serious, probably private discussion about what we need to improve, and make a plan for doing so? 

I think we've identified plenty in the past, and people have come up with good ideas, but they've remained that, just good ideas.

[Thomas H. Larsen]

Aw, jeez, Thomas--people who live in glass houses really *shouldn't* throw stones.  I took you at your word and started at the top, there are at present 97 articles, so far I've only seen stubs.  The Category Arts has one subcategory: music, the music category contains one article, [[music]], which is four sentences long; the only subcategory is musicians, and the only article there is [[Avril Lavinge]], about whom there are five sentences.  All righty, then.

We're only five days old. Citizendium is, let's see, over two years old ... There will be a difference in quantity.

[Aleta Curry]

Duh.

I was speaking to the above list of...er...criticisms attributed to one Richard Austin, who wrote most of the stubs I read and has absolutely no business in my oh-so-terribly-humble opinion insulting anyone else's professional writing or research ability.  His writing is not bad, but there's nothing of a quality that compares with the best of CZ.

You should have 'gone live' with something spectacular--and some well-qualified people--if you wanted others to take your pointed (and unjustified) insults seriously.

[Paul Wormer]

I checked out http://en.epistemia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=30&hideminor=0. A sad story: one sporadic contributor (who claims to be 12 or 13 years old).