Citizendium is still doomed

Posted by William M. Connolley on September 10, 2008
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More than a year ago, I thought Citizendium was cr*p. And it still is: see its GW article. The top bit is a fairly sane cp of wiki; the bottom half is a fairly insane mix of septic tripe. If you know what you’re doing, you can separate out the two. But as a resource for those who don’t already know, its hopeless.

Anyone know any interesting CZ articles that are better than the corresponding wiki ones? I mean, it doesn’t even have a page on stoat, not even a badly mangled copy of wiki’s. How sh*t* is that?

BTW, since I’m here: I hate window$, especially the auto-restart-update bit, or “please lose my data mode” as it should be called.

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  1. #1 Vinny Burgoo
    2008/09/10

    The Global Warming article is only a draft. Have a look at the article on the Northwest Passage, one of only 74 with “approved” status. “The largest number of expeditions in search of the passage was launched by Great Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, beginning in 1818 …”

    Pish!

  2. #2 Booker
    2008/09/10

    Check out the “Butler” articles, for one.

  3. #3 Tom Morris
    2008/09/11

    As a Citizendium author and a non-scientist, I’m depressed by the global warming article and it now containing large amounts of denialism.

    I’ve been working hard on the pages about subjects I know a little about – philosophy, religion, technology and so on – but I have the global warming article on my watchlist, and watch it’s development every day, hoping that it gets better.

    The article needs to acknowledge that there is a dissenting viewpoint (or rather, there are dissenting viewpoints), but still make clear the scientific consensus as best as possible. We still haven’t got that right. The test we need to apply is to put ourselves in the position of an expert and say “would you give that article to a sixteen year old as their first introduction to this subject?”. Currently, the obvious answer is no. It’d really help if we had more people, especially people with expertise in climate science and other related fields, to collaborate on writing these articles.

    [It would. But I spend my time on wiki. I'm happy, nearly, with wiki's GW article. There isn't really anything much I'd add or take away from it as an intro to the subject. Why would I work hard to, in essence, import wiki into CZ? -W]

  4. #4 Hank Roberts
    2008/09/11

    I gather Citizendum is in competition, not cooperation?
    No tool to put their page side by side with the comparable Wikipedia page and flag the differences. No tool to keep track of the nonsense that’s been removed from one place and inserted in the other, or reinserted.

    Designed to tie up people’s useful time in whack-a-mole?

  5. #5 Russell Potter
    2008/09/12

    As an early committed contributor to Citizendium — with over 3,500 edits on the site — I have to say it is moribund. Though Wikipedia has its problems, its coverage is enormous, and it would take a decade or more at its present rate of growth for Citizendium to come close. A good idea that just didn’t draw enough support, Citizendium may be a model for the future, but the site itself is largely useless.

    But as an aside, I also wrote the above-referenced article on the Northwest Passage — what’s your beef with it??