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September 08, 2007
Citizendium
So, there's a new competitor to Wikipedia. Citizendium. Andrew Keen supports it (which isn't a plus).
The movement’s champion is Andrew Keen, who argues in his book The Cult of the Amateur that free but substandard online content risks destroying entire industries. The idea that open collaborative projects can replace the work of professional individuals, he argues, represents an “extraordinary popular delusion”. Citizendium is led by Larry Sanger , a co-founder of Wikipedia, who left that website to become one of its most vocal critics.
“Wikipedia has accomplished great things, but the world can do even better,” Dr Sanger said. “By engaging expert editors, eliminating anonymous contribution and launching a more mature community under a new charter, a much broader and more influential group of people and institutions will be able to improve upon Wikipedia’s extremely useful, but often uneven work. The result will be not only enormous and free, but reliable.”
So, I have a look at something in which I am an expert. Scandium.
It tells me that scandium has no uses and that it is radioactive. The first will be something of a surprise to the metal halide light bulb industry, the bicycle, baseball bat and aerospace ones, too. The second will be something of a surprise to all of those people who have used it over the years, that thy've not yet dropped dead of radiation poisoning.
Well, Mr. Keen, I think you've got a little bit of work to do here, trying to get that "reliable" thing going.
September 8, 2007 in Web/Tech | Permalink
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Comments
Bunkum ... um
Posted by: Anthony North | Sep 8, 2007 11:13:14 AM
Well, indeed. We have lots of work to do. Is that a surprise? It takes time to write an encyclopedia, facts need to be checked, and we haven't been around for that long. We post our drafts, as any open project does. But does it prove anything important about the long-term reliability of Citizendium that you are able to find some errors at this early stage? Of course not.
Hey, you could always join us and fix the error. ;-) But I'll link your blog post from the talk page anyway.
Tim adds: Re the long term I've actually written a couple of essays about Wikipedia and Britannica (Robert McHenry and I sparred over it) and they're somewhere over at TCS. It could be that you're going to avoid the problems of both approaches: however, my gut feeling is that you're going to end up "with" the problems that both approaches have.
Posted by: Larry Sanger | Sep 8, 2007 1:38:39 PM
Andrew Keen is basically a troll who has written a book slagging off a lot of Intrernet-based content. Unfortunately he's an artful troll, and some people haven't realised he is trolling and have taken him and his silly book seriously. This has given him publicity and has fuelled sales of his book. (The other booster of his book is people who work in traditional publishing and feel threatened by the Internet).
I would advise everyone to ignore him.
Posted by: Philip Hunt | Sep 8, 2007 2:08:38 PM
You can't just let and uncredentialed nobody like Tim edit your entries; you'll end up as bad as Wikipedia! If the Professional Gatekeepers say scandium is radioactive, all that remains for the rest of us is to scrutinize the motives of the people who want us to think it isn't.
Tim adds: I agree, obviously. I mean, taking the word of the person who runs the global scandium oligopoly would be just so, oooh, capitalist, wouldn't it?
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek | Sep 8, 2007 2:10:38 PM
To be fair, I don't see anywhere in the Scandium article which says it has no uses, nor that it's harmfully radioactive (just harmfully corrosive). Certainly the article needs to be improved, but it doesn't look incorrect.
Tim adds: Right hand sidebar.
Posted by: Mike Johnson | Sep 8, 2007 4:08:32 PM
Check the sidebar, Mike. (N.B.: The only naturally-occurring isotope, Sc-45, is not radioactive at all, let alone harmfully so.)
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek | Sep 8, 2007 4:38:51 PM
Paul- yes, you're right (I've just fixed it in the article). And I see where Tim gets the "no uses" information from the article (again, the sidebar).
Do you have any comments/critiques of our approved articles?
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Approved_Articles
Posted by: Mike Johnson | Sep 8, 2007 4:58:35 PM
Now it's my turn to miss seeing something on that page; I can't find the part where it says the article is unapproved.
No particular comments on the approved list, except to say I'm glad that the article on the Iraq War-- written by some guy taking dictation from the fillings in his teeth-- isn't on it. How do they improve on their Wikipedia counterparts?
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek | Sep 8, 2007 5:34:17 PM
I note that Andrew Keen was quoted on Samizdata recently saying that Polly Toynbee and Robert Fisk are heroes of his.
An intellectual giant of a man.
Posted by: Smidgeon | Sep 8, 2007 6:41:18 PM
My question was directed at Tim (as the person who picked scandium as the article to discuss), actually. I should have made that clearer. Though if others have relevant comments on any of our approved articles I'd be happy to hear them.
Paul-
contrast http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Scandium with
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/DNA (we give notice when an article is approved, rather than when an article is not approved).
Posted by: Mike Johnson | Sep 8, 2007 7:32:11 PM
