CZ:Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians

Welcome Wikipedians and ex-Wikipedians!

Many members of Citizendium have experience of editing at Wikipedia, and have joined this project to try a different model of content development. We want to welcome you here to help us create it.

Before you start boldly contributing, please read this document. Many of Wikipedia's policies either do not apply here or have been modified.

Citizendium is not a mirror of Wikipedia. If you wish to import material from Wikipedia, see Article Mechanics and How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles.

Why Citizendium?

In the past, The Citizendium experimented with multiple collaborative models, and not everything was successful. We have now revised The Citizendium's purpose and goals. The Citizendium wants to be a small, supportive community of collaborators who work on articles which could not be developed in Wikipedia, that are different from what Wikipedia now offers, though not necessarily either better or worse. Please understand that we love Wikipedia; most of us consult it several times per day. But we also understand its limitations, and that's why we are support The Citizendium also, not as a competitor but as a supplement. We acknowledge and honor Wikipedia's successes in seeking to be a complete compendium of everything; it would be futile to duplicate that effort. We also believe that the philosophy of "less is more" sometimes applies, where an important aspect of a topic can be emphasized without trying to include everything known about a given topic in a single article.

The Citizendium provides a different kind of collaborative environment than Wikipedia now offers. We use real names, and we have a modest number of active authors so that it becomes possible to know each other well. We strive for objectivity and quality--and civility. We consider ourselves to be a community. To help address control issues, we're open to having multiple articles developed on a single topic (to be located via a disambiguation page). For those who want more fully to lead the direction of an article, we allow "signing" of articles. Signed articles can still be collaborations, but the signers are the ones who get to lead the direction and emphasis of the article.

We have no problem whatsoever with people using The Citizendium as a staging area for an article to be copied elsewhere later (such as to Wikipedia, where it will likely be seen by more eyes). This is legal, with the following caveats: the article remains behind on The Citizendium (may not simply be deleted), and at its new home, attribution is given to The Citizendium as per our site license. In fact, we find these cases interesting to watch over time, to see how the two parallel articles evolve in their different hosts.

Differences in style, approach and tone

You're probably used to well-developed Wikipedia articles being divided into many short sections, full of bulleted lists. Some are written in dense prose that shows off erudition more than really introducing a topic.

We don't like to speak "encyclopedese." Rather, we want Citizendium articles to be lucid, highly readable introductions written in compelling, narrative prose. This doesn't mean our articles will have less information or be more lightweight. It means we simplify the difficult, engage our readers, and allow a narrative voice to come through.

For further information, see Article Mechanics. You might also want to have look at Sage advice on writing CZ articles, and our list of ready-for-reading articles.

New practices

• The use of Subpages to expand article content. See our list of subpage types. Note how we have replaced "List of" articles with catalogs.

• Wikipedia attribution template. If any content of an article at Citizendium came from Wikipedia and you aren't the sole author of that content, add {{WPAttribution}} to the top of the article (below {{Subpages}} if it's there). This adds a link to the corresponding Wikipedia page. (You don't need to do this if the page is already marked as an External Article.)

• If you are the sole author, please make it clear on the relevant talk page and post a link to the Wikipedia article history giving evidence of such. The {{WPauthor}} template has been created for this purpose.

• Workgroups, Workgroup Category Tags, and Workgroup Recent Changes. Anybody can edit any article but we want every article to have its editorial team assigned.

See We aren't Wikipedia for other new practices.

Acting professionally

Our professionalism policy is our cornerstone behavior policy and is about our intent to create — and enforce — a respectful, pleasant, and productive working environment.

• Part of behaving professionally is signing with your real name on the wiki. You need not worry about your real name showing up all over the Net from CZ pages, since we use robots.txt to prevent that.

• Handling content disputes without "edit warring"; See Dispute Resolution

2020 Update: The role of Editor in Citizendium has, in practice, receded due to the low participation rates in recent years. All writers, whether technically identified as Editors or not, collaborate side by side as equals. Officially, we don't have Constables these days; but our sysops monitor the Forum and the Enquiry Forms. This is not yet codified as policy but is what has evolved in practice.

At Wikipedia and in Citizendium, everyone has the same role when it comes to making judgments about article content. Here, participants play three two different but complementary roles:

Editors

You already know we make a special role for experts. But this does not at all mean you cannot professionally argue your case with them; you most definitely should. To edit, editors must work shoulder-to-shoulder with authors and other editors. See CZ:The Editor Role.

Authors

What can authors do? Almost everything. Authors can start articles, edit existing articles, talk things over on the talk page, and much else. Both authors and editors are represented on the Editorial Council. See CZ:The Author Role.

Asking for help

Our constables are Citizendium's "community managers" or "Sysops". They oversee adherence to basic policies, settle behavioral problems, and address content problems only if there is a violation of policy. Constables also review applications and create new accounts.

Images

Any type of open content licensed images are allowable and preferred, although images from Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons and other image banks must pass a two-pronged test before you upload them to Citizendium. Fully copyrighted images are allowable in Citizendium if you place proof of permission in a Permission subpage of the image's talk page.

All images lacking clear copyright data are subject to speedy deletion by constables acting on their own recognizance. Citizendium editors will not nominate articles for approval if the status of their images is unclear.

See Images Help on Copyrights.

Article inclusion policy

We do not have a "notability" criterion for article inclusion, as different authors have very different views on what is notable. Citizendium's Article Inclusion Policy allows an article to be deleted by editorial decision in cases where all three of the following criteria are met: a) it has significant weaknesses; b) that deleting its content would remove nothing of importance from the project; and c) that the article is unlikely to be improved as there is no active interest from any member of Citizendium in developing it.

Don't spill alphabet soup!

We wish to avoid having an insular, unintelligible community. Accordingly, we don't use neologisms like "NPOV" and "POV", "RS", "FWIW", and "OR". Just use plain English on top of wikilinks or post them in full. In our informal discussions, however, CZ and WP are permissible.

And from Citizendium to Wikipedia

Since Wikipedia changed its license to CC-BY-SA 3.0, it can use material from Citizendium. A workgroup has been formed there, WikiProject Citizendium Porting, to coordinate this.

Further reading

• The Citizendium Charter
• Rules
• We aren't Wikipedia
• How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles
• Essentials
• Article Mechanics