Ars Technica has an article about the overall failure of Citizendium, the attempted fork of Wikipedia by co-founder Larry Sanger that launched five years ago this month. (David Rothman covered Citizendium for TeleRead in September and October of 2006 when it launched.) Sanger was concerned that the freewheeling anyone-can-participate editorial style of Wikipedia could turn off actual experts in the fields they were editing about. He feared they would get fed up with having to defend their edits and stop contributing.
So Sanger created Citizendium, which would be like Wikipedia (in fact, it forked its article database from Wikipedia at the time) but edited by experts. However, as Ars points out, gradually most of the “experts” working on Citizendium got fed up and drifted away themselves.
Sanger still thinks that Wikipedia should have started with a model closer to Citizendium’s from the outset, and attributes much of Wikipedia’s success over Citizendium to the fact that it came first.
What went wrong? Sanger argues that the primary problem was Wikipedia’s overwhelming first-mover advantage. "As long as Wikipedia is a top ten site, it’s going to be difficult for a competitor to get any traction," Sanger told Ars. "A lot of people are going to try to draw the conclusion that there’s something about the model which meant that it couldn’t take off. I really don’t think that’s the case. The model works very well in many ways."
This isn’t the first “like Wikipedia, but with experts” project whose failure I’ve brought up here. Back in January, I pointed out that Google’s similar Knol project had also been largely abandoned by contributors. It seems likely that the reasons were similar in both cases: not enough “experts” to keep up the critical mass of community, and without that critical mass people just drifted away.
But the interesting thing is that not only has Wikipedia flourished, but other more-narrowly-focused encyclopedias built around the Wikipedia model have as well. There are fan-written wikis for many popular TV shows, books, movies, and other pop-cultural phenomena. Having fewer contributors than Wikipedia itself hasn’t slowed any of these sites down—and as a result, fans of the shows can enjoy Wikipedia-like depth of focus and accuracy on matters too narrow for Wikipedia itself to cover.
The Wikipedia model reminds me of what Winston Churchill said about democracy, that it is “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” By the same token, the Wikipedia model may very well be the worst model ever for an on-line encyclopedia—except for all the other ones people have tried and failed to get off the ground.
First, I found amazing that the Ars Technica did not see fit to link to Citizendium once in the article. How insulting is that!?
Second, you might enjoy reading my quarrel with an imperious Wikipedia editor about my contributions. http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2008/05/digital-maoists-prevent-articles-about-digital-maoism/
Third, I think wikipedia is utterly incapable of covering book culture adequately. Lots of author pages are abandoned or defaced or blandified so much as to be unusable. Wikipedia tends to demean anything written by bloggers (since it is not a “real publication”) in favor of commercial newspapers and magazines.
I’ve added bits and pieces to current events articles on wikipedia and have been amazed at how speedily anything remotely controversial is removed in favor in something blander and less informative. I’m not talking about making additions which violate the NPOV but information which another editor has deemed not relevant. The problem is that in many cases the editors who are overruling others are simply not qualified to do so. My feeling is that generally any edit I add to wikipedia — not matter how carefully thought out — can be simply overruled by someone less qualified. At some point, you have to think, what’s the point?
Frankly, I like the wikimedia software, but there is no reason why everyone should be able to sign up for an account. Rather, they can solicit volunteers and then allow these people to start writing and editing and then selectively give an account to those requesting it.
Finally, Shirky’s criticism of Citizendium can be balanced by Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism article — which seems more relevant now more than ever. http://edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html
“Third, I think wikipedia is utterly incapable of covering book culture adequately. Lots of author pages are abandoned or defaced or blandified so much as to be unusable. Wikipedia tends to demean anything written by bloggers (since it is not a “real publication”) in favor of commercial newspapers and magazines.” = stuff written by bloggers can’t be used unless they are PUBLISHED by a reputable publishing house.
“I’ve added bits and pieces to current events articles on wikipedia and have been amazed at how speedily anything remotely controversial is removed in favor in something blander and less informative.” – Citation needed. And if it’s not in a reputable publication, it cannot be included.