Citizendium in Beta

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has finally taken Citizendium (a new & improved Wikipedia) into beta, but the question remains--will the experts follow?

Early this month, Vermont's Middlebury College banned Wikipedia citations in history papers after several students were found citing incorrect information. Because Wikipedia is user-generated, professors chastised the site for its inaccurate articles; however, with Wikipedia being one of the top ten most visited sites worldwide, the site is more than accessible regardless of whether or not the information is correct. So why start a new site? Why not just teach academics to edit articles?

Simple: vested interest

I could care less about Citizendium's policy to show users' real names. Let's look at their conflicts of interest. According to a Sci-Tech Today article, Forrester Research VP Josh Bernoff, noted that corporations are extremely frustrated with Wikipedia's policies. Said Bernoff, "Companies have had real challenges getting their perspective on the facts addressed in Wikipedia."

Well Josh, companies don't actually have perspectives- principals and stakeholders who are too lazy to write Wikipedia articles do. Perhaps you should learn to value consumer input OR at the very least, embrace a true democracy and write articles rather than building a series of online gatekeepers. Yes, professor, that's mud in your eye too.

Wikipedia is popular, REALLY popular, and whether or not traditional institutions want to believe it, this makes it relevant as a social meme. The real question is, if words like "meme" and "irregardless" can become normative simply via common usage and consensus, can inaccuracies become accurate over time? God I hope not.

In the 60's, famed Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan challenged Dr. Timothy Leary to come up with a memetic catch phrase. The result was, "turn on, tune in, drop out." My call to action is much less poignant. Directed to academics, progressives & anyone who has ever wanted a voice: THE REVOLUTION IS YOU. QUIT WHINING & GET TO WORK.

THE EVOLVING MEME:
Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, started Conservapedia.com, a site he describes as "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American." Given that hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia viewers and editors are neither Christian nor American, it's probably true that there is a partiality towards more secular beliefs including the infamous Flying Spaghetti Monster.

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[ READER COMMENTS ]

1

David said:

Well said.

I have to agree that it is time that the old institutions stopped trying to force their pre existing models on the way information flows through the net.

Companies complaining about having a difficult time getting there perspectives out to the people? Maybe it is time to siphon a fraction of their marketing budgets, hire a writer or two and start doing some leg work outside of 30 second bits between crappy sitcoms and the sports updates.

And professors....

Students coming in with incorrect information. Grade them on it. Maybe they'll learn to do start researching from more than one source or teach them critical thinking. Maybe they'll even go back and correct the mistakes on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is accessible and for better or for worse it *is* popular.

You're bang on: "Stop complaining and start contributing."

Posted at 02:24 PM, on March 30 2007

2

sports wikipedia said:

For the most part the wikipedia articles are correct but it hard to keep the information there as anybody can go in and edit it at any givin time. They need to people to write these because it would take a lifetime for a person to do it themself.

Posted at 04:48 PM, on May 23 2007

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Citizendium in Beta

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