Linguistlist.org: $6000 for Wikipedia

[John Stephenson]

I'd been holding off submitting a post to linguistlist.org, the main announcement list for linguists, until we launched and had Google crawl the pages. However, I'm not sure how well we'll be received given that linguistlist users have just raised $6000 to update the Wikipedia articles:

http://www.linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/

This is interesting: on the one hand, you can argue that if people are willing to fork out six grand on something that can be wrecked within days by contributors who don't know what they're talking about, perhaps they'd be more eager to transfer future resources to something like Citizendium in future. More negatively, you could also argue that they're committed to the Wikipedia model and aren't going to let the likes of us in.

Probably Citizendium will have to be pitched to the linguistics community as something to complement, rather than compete with, Wikipedia.

[Larry Sanger]

Announce CZ immediately, please.  The linguists have to know about us.

[Stephen Ewen]

Probably Citizendium will have to be pitched to the linguistics community as something to complement, rather than compete with, Wikipedia.

I doubt it. I'd pitch it as an exceeding better place to invest their time. I'd venture a lot may feel "donor's remorse" after an announcement is made.

[John Stephenson]

Announce CZ immediately, please.  The linguists have to know about us.

Done. It'll take two or three days to appear if accepted. Meantime, I've copied the contents to my blog:

http://j-life-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/citizendium-call-for-linguistics.html

[EricMGearhart]

Man I hope they "get it" and figure out what sheer madness Wikipedia is.

This could turn into some good press guys! (Wikipedia donation averted to the Citizendium-type headline)

[Catherine Woodgold]

It seems possible to me that paying someone $6000 to improve a Wikipedia article is in violation of Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest policy.

If so, and if Citizendium is open to working with these people, then one option open to them might be to work on the page on Citizendium, and then once it's done, put a message on the Wikipedia talk page suggesting that someone might want to copy it to Wikipedia.  Perhaps it would not be considered conflict-of-interest if one of the donors, as opposed to the recipients of the grant, were to copy it to Wikipedia.

Hopefully it would then list Citizendium in the bibliography in the Wikipedia version of the article.