Citizendium One Month Later
Citizendium, the Wikipedia fork (sort of) that aims to be a more credible alternative to Wikipedia, was launched into public beta on March 25th, which makes it nearly one month old. So how does it stack up to its progenitor?
First some background. Citizendium was founded by Larry Sanger, a 38-year-old who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University that some say was a co-founder of Wikipedia (though that's disputed, according to Sanger's own Wikipedia page). The idea behind Citizendium is to improve on the wiki-model by adding what they call "gentle expert oversight" -- which more or less means that qualified users approve articles before they are officially added to the encyclopedia. Further, contributors are required to use their real names, which Sanger hopes will encourage civility and stem the flame wars and ad homenim attacks that plague Wikipedia talk pages on contentious articles.
"It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving," Sanger told the Associated Press when the site launched. Citizendium outlined the lofty goal of unseating "Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online" in an October 2006 press release.
Running the Numbers
Citizendium was initially meant to be a true fork of Wikipedia, meaning that the articles would be seeded using Wikipedia content and edited and reworked where necessary over time. But on January 18, 2007, while the site was still in private development, Sanger made the decision to keep only articles that were original or had been heavily edited from their Wikipedia counterparts. This drastically cut down the number of articles on the site, but ensured that visitors would not be viewing duplicate Wikipedia content.
Citizendium marks files in three ways: CZ Live (articles being written), Approved (articles that have been given the stamp of approval by experts), and a separate draft status for previously approved articles that are being edited. Citizendium currently has 13 approved articles, and 1625 being written (by my quick count). Though obviously an unfair comparison to 6-year old Wikipedia, they trail the wiki encyclopedia giant by about 1.5 million articles.
Can Citizendium match Wikipedia's growth rate?
A more fair comparison would be to look at Wikipedia's early statistics. In its first month, Wikipedia had about 15 articles and 10 users. By the second month, 140 entries, and by the fifth month, 2,300 articles at a rate of 16 new entries per day. By June 2001, Wikipieda also had 110 users. It is probably important to note when making these comparisons that while Citizendium was opened to the public just a month ago, people have been working on the site since November 2006, and had about 900 authors and 200 editors at launch.
"I didn't see the kind of excitement I saw in the early days of Wikipedia," Sanger admitted to the AP. "You get excited about something if you've taken responsibility for it, if you've created it yourself. By conceiving of ourselves as a big mop-up organization for Wikipedia, we essentially lock ourselves into being a version of Wikipedia. ... In order to have a robust, distinct identity, it's important, I think, that we start over." This was part of the reason that Sanger made the decision for Citizendium not to be a true fork of Wikipedia.
Comparing Content
It's hard to compare Citizendium's content to Wikipedia's because there just isn't very much of it. The 13 approved articles are generally more fleshed out than their Wikipedia counterparts, but not necessarily more accurate. In many ways, the Wikipedia articles read like an abridged version of the more extensive Citizendium entries.
But in at least one case, I actually preferred the Wikipedia entry to the approved Citizendium one. For the article on dogs, Wikipedia's entry begins, "The dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a domestic subspecies of the wolf, a mammal of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term encompasses both feral and pet variants. It is also sometimes used to describe wild canids of other subspecies or species." The Citizendium entry, meanwhile, starts off, "Domesticated from selected wolves thousands of years ago, the dog is often called 'man's best friend'. Throughout the world today, dogs are found associated with humans, although certainly not always as a part of the household!"
In this case, the conversational tone of the Citizendium entry seems out of place for an encyclopedia. Further, and I don't profess to be an expert on canine evolution, I caught a PBS documentary a few weeks ago that said some scientists dispute the theory that humans actively domesticated wolves. Wikipedia's entry makes mention of this, while Citizendium's approved article does not.
The 'CZ Live' articles are mostly woefully inadequate. Wikipedia trumps them in almost every case, so comparing them isn't really worthwhile. For amusement's sake, though, compare Citizendium's article on itself to the Wikipedia entry on the site.
Conclusion
Really, the verdict is still out on Citizendium. It is far to early to see how it will stack up against Wikipedia. However, because Wikipedia has such a strong network effect, and such a widely recognized brand, it will be hard to get people excited about Citizendium. Unless something strange happens to drive people away from Wikipedia, I'm not placing any bets on Citizendium. But that's not to say I want it to fail. It is certainly an intriguing idea that could very well yield a more reliable body of work.
However, and both Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Larry Sanger agree on this, neither Citizendium nor Wikipedia should be used as primary sources for serious academic research.
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well i agree that we cannot use wikipedia and citizendium as primary sources for academic research then what website should we use.
Posted by: andrew | April 24, 2007 4:51 AM
Andrew: Your local library. ;) Seriously, though, you want to get your hands on primary sources (in the US Footnote might help in some cases), peer-reviewed journal articles, materials by known experts, etc. when you are doing academic research.
Posted by: Josh Catone | April 24, 2007 5:18 AM
Great idea; you're offering a solid service from what I can tell--not that I'm especially well informed at this point. Still, great plan; great execution; keep going. I'm with you, Josh.
Posted by: Kathleen Maher | April 24, 2007 5:41 AM
Realmente é uma impressionante a quantidade de informacão!! Ótimo trabalho
Posted by: Mateus | April 24, 2007 5:47 AM
Realmente é uma impressionante a quantidade de informacão!! Ótimo trabalho.
http://portaldaadministracao.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Mateus | April 24, 2007 5:49 AM
Thanks for the unusually detailed run-down, Josh. Few bloggers actually time to do "original research" :-) as you have.
Still, there are a few things that are off, however. One of your central claims is that the quality of our "CZ Live" articles generally pales compared to the corresponding Wikipedia articles. This is probably true. But you neglect to apply the same analysis that you did earlier--to compare Citizendium not with Wikipedia today but with Wikipedia as it was five months after it started. Since I was there, I can assure you that the quality of our work now is far better than Wikipedia was then.
The other important argument you make is toward the end, when you say, "However, because Wikipedia has such a strong network effect, and such a widely recognized brand, it will be hard to get people excited about Citizendium. Unless something strange happens to drive people away from Wikipedia, I'm not placing any bets on Citizendium."
First, you assume there's a zero-sum game here, which is a definite mistake. It's not like there are 100,000 free encyclopedia editors out there to compete for, and since Wikipedia has most of them, Citizendium can never grow. In fact, in our experience, there are a lot of people who would never work on Wikipedia, but are willing to work on Citizendium. And there are many people who are willing to work, at least from time to time, on both.
But most importantly, one merely needs to observe the steadily growing number of active Citizendians (or Citizens :-) ), and the steadily growing number of articles; the rate of growth, of both, has been increasing. Why should Wikipedia's activity make such growth impossible to continue?
Second, do something I did yesterday (as it happens): search Wikipedia's user, user talk, and talk namespaces for "Citizendium", and you'll find a bunch of people who are saying, "I'm leaving you for Citizendium!" In fact, there are a lot of ex-Wikipedians among us, with new arrivals every day.
I'd also like to make a correction. You say, "qualified users approve articles before they are officially added to the encyclopedia." This really isn't right. As you observe, we have over 1,600 "CZ Live" articles. No one has to approve an article before it becomes "CZ Live." The Citizendium is a wiki, just as robust and collaborative as Wikipedia--just smaller, for now!
Posted by: Larry Sanger | April 24, 2007 6:22 AM
I should have pointed your readers to two relevant pages:
"Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed" (from just before launch--March 2007)
"Big Update" (from the CZ Blog, a few days ago)
Posted by: Larry Sanger | April 24, 2007 6:26 AM
To answer Andrew - if you're looking for citeable, online encyclopedias, there are several options, such as:
http://www.proquest.com/
http://www.bookrags.com/
http://looksmart.com/
These sites contain multiple encyclopedias that you would find in your local library if you weren't too lazy to go there.
Posted by: Henry Delany | April 24, 2007 8:24 AM
Larry,
comparisons with "Wikipedia x months after launch" are nonsensical. Citizendium received huge international media coverage -- Google News still counts over 300 hits -- when it got started, because you continue to ride on the fame of having worked on Wikipedia for about a year. Any success of CZ in building a community is due to the success of Wikipedia. The same can be said, for example, about the bizarre "Conservapedia", which also received massive media attention by positioning itself against Wikipedia.
That said, I think some of the articles in CZ have seen nice development, and I would love to take them back into Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Citizendium (unlike Wikipedia) is not currently free content. Articles written by contributors are under no license, with nothing but an indication that you will "decide" on this at some future point (which, as I've explained to you, is legally highly questionable).
Posted by: Erik Möller | April 24, 2007 10:42 AM
Thanks for an unbiased analysis of Citizendium. It's surprisingly hard to get one, since a blogger is usually situated in one camp or another. I do agree with Erik when he says, it's "nonsensical" to compare the Citizendium with Wikipedia's early days. I don't understand why people continue to make this fallible argument. Wikipedia was the first of its kind, with little media attention or direction. Citizendium is attracting users from Wikipedia and the news.
Posted by: G | April 24, 2007 7:18 PM
I don't think it's entirely nonsensical to compare the Citizendium with Wikipedia's early days. There are many disanalogies, but there are also many important similarities as well. Anyway, both projects started out with important in-built advantages. Wikipedia's was the fact that there was already a 2,000-person strong community--Nupedia--that was committed to creating an encyclopedia. That's an advantage CZ didn't have. And anyway, Wikipedia did enjoy some fairly early press--Slashdot within the first six months, major media a few months after that.
Besides, ultimately, it doesn't matter that much what media attention we get; what's important is that we build participation, and that's hardly a foregone conclusion regardless of the amount of media coverage. I can tell you that what matters for growth on a day-to-day basis is making good decisions, keeping people motivated, solving problems as they arise, etc.
Posted by: Larry Sanger | April 24, 2007 10:18 PM
The more open content encyclopedias, the better. If the good stuff is being written, it doesn't matter if it's in Wikipedia, Citizendium or wherever - it (1) validates the model (2) validates open content. It's most unfortunate Scholarpedia isn't open content.
Posted by: David Gerard | April 26, 2007 4:29 AM
Unless something strange happens to drive people away from Wikipedia, I'm not placing any bets on Citizendium.
There's no one big thing which has been driving people away from Wikipedia, but there are lots of little things. Working on Wikipedia in any serious way requires lots of vandalism cleanup, and working on anything controversial or making certain common mis-steps risks running afoul of overly high-handed administrators. I'm moving over slowly because of both these issues, which Wikipedia seems incapable of addressing.
Posted by: Anthony | May 14, 2007 4:12 PM