Some user feedback

[Daniel Mietchen]

Found here.

I just returned to the Citizendium website again, even clicking on the various subsections. I have no idea what kind of info is available to me on Citizendium.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Found here.

I just returned to the Citizendium website again, even clicking on the various subsections. I have no idea what kind of info is available to me on Citizendium.

On following the link, I will admit that I'm not totally clear about her concerns. What is a "section"? Is it a workgroup?

Nevertheless, there is an important point: there  is no evidence that Citizendium is going to approach Wikipedia in breadth. We have nice things to say about an editor-guided model, but Jitse's study shows the very real problem with lack of active editors. Anne has ambivalence about "editor" versus "curator".

Jitse's analysis raises several questions:
*Why do we have editors that never do anything but sign up? I think that's a very different problem than the general author who may not contribute; for one to have met editor criteria, one obviously must have demonstrated a confident ability to write.

• Have we created a place in which editors want to work, or is it more of a critical mass area in areas/workgroups?  Chemistry and closely related areas seem to have a working mass (although it would be nice to clean up element subpages). I believe we have more Computers authors than any other sort, but there are very few Editors working to any substantial extent and Approval has become a backlog.
• Is it even worth contributing in an area if one is the only active Editor, with no serious hope of getting to Approval?
• At least some editors, who did contribute, left over issues of editorial authority, and, yes, fringe issues.

Where am I going? We...are...not...Wikipedia. Either we evolve the editor model such that it works, or what are we?

I'd rather not try to cover some areas at all, and say so, if we can't sustain critical mass. Melissa stated things well for one perspective, even though I come to a similar conclusion different reasons: the top-level articles, even if stubs with lots of related articles, have to set context in an expert-guided model. Otherwise, since we are not attracting large numbers of contributors, what is our identity?  What does our brand really mean, not to someone reading the Statemen of Fundamental Principles, but to someone trying to use us as a resource?

Top-down may not be the answer either; I've written a reasonable top-down structure in the extrajudicial detention, torture, interrogation, and intelligence area, but there just isn't collaborative participation. Should I take that as feedback that no one is interested in the subject, unless they can write their own free-standing article?

[Chris Day]

Much as I support your idea, as a "need to know" writer, I won't spend my time trying to let the database determine my research topic.

What does she mean by this?  i have read her comment a few times and I still can't figure it out.

[Daniel Mietchen]

Much as I support your idea, as a "need to know" writer, I won't spend my time trying to let the database determine my research topic.

What does she mean by this?  i have read her comment a few times and I still can't figure it out.

my guesses:

• sentence 1: she "needs to know" things for writing about them, and what she finds over at WP usually lets her know enough
• sentence 2: if there are (many) topics that are not covered by a "database", she simply does not want to use it

[Daniel Mietchen]

For context, I should perhaps add that her blog post said she searched for "orchid", while the link she provided was to a search for "orchids" (which I created as a redirect to "orchid" when reading her post). So I assume she hasn't seen the orchid article, since she did not bother to click through the list of her search results ("orchid" was first).

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

For context, I should perhaps add that her blog post said she searched for "orchid", while the link she provided was to a search for "orchids" (which I created as a redirect to "orchid" when reading her post). So I assume she hasn't seen the orchid article, since she did not bother to click through the list of her search results ("orchid" was first).

That really mystified me. I am no expert on orchids, but it would seem as if we have some substantial content there.  I am not qualified to judge if we have inadequate breadth but a lot of depth.

I wish I knew the answer, or even the question. We have areas with lots of breadth but not much depth. I've put a lot of breadth and depth into (politicomilitary) intelligence, but maybe the lack of collaboration makes it unattractive. 

At least for some of the actual problems with which I deal on the periphery, I find useful content, as a user, in chemistry, chemical engineering, and physics. 

[Matt Innis]

This is the part that caught my attention:

"Re expertise, 'expert' doctors are frequently paid off by the pharma companies. We live in a 'who do you trust' world these days, and I caution that even the 'experts' are suspect. We don't believe in institutions generally now. Hopefully, that trust will be regained with the general public."

I agree that this is the reason that wikipedia is so popular amongst the masses.  Repairing this image of experts is really what Citizendium is all about.  If we can show people that we can deal with controverial subjects objectively and reasonably, we will regain their respect, by earning it.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

This is the part that caught my attention:

"Re expertise, 'expert' doctors are frequently paid off by the pharma companies. We live in a 'who do you trust' world these days, and I caution that even the 'experts' are suspect. We don't believe in institutions generally now. Hopefully, that trust will be regained with the general public."

I agree that this is the reason that wikipedia is so popular amongst the masses.  Repairing this image of experts is really what Citizendium is all about.  If we can show people that we can deal with controversial subjects objectively and reasonably, we will regain their respect, by earning it.

Just noticed this, Matt; my cold must have been around longer than I thought for me to miss this. I can take your goal and put it into a golden frame.

Unfortunately, other than my Aunt Shirley's ego, there are no unlimited resources. Unless you are really good at efficiencies, you can't lower taxes and increase government spending. With a warship or a tank, you have to trade off between armor, weapons and speed, or the thing won't move.

I'm not going to try to argue the inclusionist issue, but I'll simply say we are resource-constrained on experts. We need, in several areas, to improve that. My general feeling is it's far easier to start from an area where there is strong mainstream content, and get people involved there, rather than trying to recruit editors and immediately throw them into problem situations.

At some point, the expert vs. inclusionist (including fringe) balance has to be set.

We also need to present our strengths to the world, not get known for fringes. Don't get me wrong -- I personally make use of some of the chemical engineering and chemistry articles--but some of our best work is in other than high-traffic areas. Speaking for myself, I think there is some decent coverage in politicomilitary matters, which could be made a lot better, and could draw traffic. Don't knock food -- especially when we started cooking equipment as well as recipes, we might offer a contrast to WP.

For people to look at us as experts, we both need to be using experts effectively, but also using expertise on subjects that draw interest. At the same time, we have to recognize that we are volunteer, resource-constrained, and people will generally write about their interests rather than what "market research" suggests is needed.

If not Catch-22, at least Catch-17.645 and growing.