CZ:FAQ

Introductory topics

What is the Citizendium, anyway?

The Citizendium is a wiki encyclopedia project aiming to create the world's finest free encyclopedia (and general reference) source. It involves the general public, but makes a "gentle guiding" role for experts. Our contributors use their real names, and the whole project is largely vandalism-free and friendly--but also productive and growing!

How are you progressing?

Quite nicely, with thousands of contributors signed up, hundreds participating every month, and over 5,500 articles. Our rate of article production has increased, and we're accelerating in other dimensions as well.

How does one join?

It's pretty easy. Fill out a short form--we ask for a name, e-mail address, short bio, and (private!) information about how to confirm your identity--and then you'll be asked to confirm your e-mail address. When that's done, a community manager, called a constable...and then read about how to get started.

The project's people and culture

How similar is this project to open source hacker culture, and how similar to the culture of academia?

This is a part of our experiment: we are trying to marry the two cultures. So far, it seems to be working pretty well. On the one hand, we want to teach academics and other professionals to work in a strongly collaborative way and adopt the principles and ethics articulated in, for example, Eric Raymond's essays "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Homesteading the Noosphere" (essays we recommend you read, if you have not yet done so). So this will be a bottom-up, collaborative, distributed wiki project. It is not the command-and-control, bureaucratic sort of project with which many academics are familiar. On the other hand, we want to make a special place for experts to get involved as senior members of the community. Really, this is not that different from open source software projects, because those projects have senior participants who decide what's goes into and what stays out of the code. This only means that the hacker notion of a meritocracy on the basis of visible work must be qualified--not entirely jettisoned, of course--so that people with real-world, hard-won credentials are given an appropriate sort of authority in the project. (That's visible work too.) See "The Role of Editors" below.

Who is behind the project?

The bedrock of the project are the rank-and-file volunteer authors and editors who work on it regularly. Leading the project including an Executive Committee, an CZ:Editorial Council, and a Constabulary. There are other people with various responsibilities as well. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is Editor-in-Chief. For a further introduction to the community and how it operates, see Community Overview.

What partnerships do you have now?

We are a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We intend to become an independent nonprofit before too much longer. Steadfast Networks of Chicago is currently hosting our servers and providing our bandwidth. Steadfast has donated two servers and other items, while we are paying for three more ourselves. Some of our mailing lists are hosted at Purdue University. We have had three reasonably significant grants from different foundations or individuals associated with foundations (see Donors).

In many open source communities, there are "benevolent dictators for life." Is that Larry Sanger's role here?

No. We believe that a collaborative online community, to be healthy, must resemble a law-governed, constitutional republic--just like offline communities. So, when the charter is adopted, Larry will be fully beholden to whatever processes it defines. He might then lose his role as editor-in-chief. He's willing to take that chance in order to set up a community that is healthy, vibrant, responsible, and self-managing. In fact, since the beginning of the project, Larry has been committed to stepping down from the leadership of the Citizendium in 2009 or 2010 at the latest, to set the healthy precedent of allowing others--members of the volunteer community--to take over his role according to a rule-governed, regular transfer of leadership.

Funding and Related Issues

Can I donate to the project, to help ensure it comes into existence?

Yes, please! We take major credit cards and your donation is tax-deductible. You are donating the money to Tides, legally speaking, but the money is earmarked for the Citizendium (minus Tides' very reasonable fee for their valuable administrative work).

Will the Citizendium accept advertisements?

No. Sponsors of the Citizendium would have the opportunity to be named in brief, unobtrusive, text-only sponsorship statements at the bottom of Citizendium pages. A statement might read something like this: "The Citizendium is made possible in part by a generous grant from XYZ Corporation." The articles on which these statements appear will be determined randomly, but the frequency of any given name would be determined by the amount of the grant. This is done in public television and radio and such sponsorships are not generally regarded as being at odds with the non-profit mission of public broadcasting.

The Citizendium community will enjoy broad oversight over the sponsorship program as well as the proceeds from it. Guidelines for sponsorship statements will be included in the community charter. We will also be writing into the project charter both that sponsors will have no editorial influence over the project, that enforceable, adequate oversight of this rule must be in place, and that no grants that make specific editorial demands will be accepted. (The precise wording of such rules remains to be worked out.)

How committed are the Citizendium leaders to making and keeping this a non-profit project?

Completely. If some big corporation were to offer us a million dollars to reorganize the project as a for-profit (if that were possible somehow), we would refuse. We're not in it for the money.

Not in it for the money? Why not?

Because that's the only way the Citizendium can thrive as a project that is at once reliable, guided by experts, and maximally welcoming to the open source community. We believe that volunteers--both from academia and from the hacker world--will refuse to contribute to a Wikipedia-style knowledge project if it merely lines the pockets of profit-making enterprise. Besides, the best way to ensure freedom, independence, and neutrality of information is to make sure that the information does not depend on any particular vested interests--that the content itself is ultimately in the hands of a responsible online "republic of the mind."

The Role of Editors

Who will be able to become an editor, and how?

We want the editor selection process to be as simple and least open to "political control" (in the broad sense) as possible.

We will be posting a list of credentials suitable for editorship. We have not finished constructing this list yet. A Ph.D. will be neither necessary nor sufficient for editorship. As a rule of thumb, editors in traditionally "academic" fields will require the qualifications typically needed for a tenure-track academic position in the field. Editors in "professional" fields require the usual terminal degree in their field and at least three years responsible professional experience, and, in most cases, several publications as well. Editors in non-academic or "hobbyist" fields require varying other kinds of qualification. In addition, in the future, persons will be able to become editors by direct appeal to editorial workgroups--this exception should, we hope, take care of the unusual cases.

The requirement of real world credentials reflects no great love for credentials per se, but instead represents a crucially important means whereby editorship can be established independently of the internal politics and bias of decision-makers.

This will be "Expertpedia," won't it? Experts only, right?

Not at all! As with Wikipedia, ordinary people will form the backbone of the Citizendium.

But experts will be involved and made into editors. Aren't you trying to turn the successful "bazaar"-style Wikipedia model into a failed "cathedral" style of project?

Again, no. Experts are expected to work shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary people in this project in more or less the same bottom-up fashion that Wikipedia uses. The difference is that, when content disputes arise, whatever editors are paying attention to the article will be empowered to articulate a resolution--if the article falls in their area of specialization. Furthermore, their decisions will be enforceable. Think of editors as the village elders wandering the bazaar and occasionally dispensing advice and reining in the wayward. Their presence is merely a moderating, civilizing influence. They don't stop the bazaar from being a bazaar.

Can you really expect headstrong Wikipedia types to work under the guidance of expert types in this way?

It depends on the Wikipedian. For many, probably not. The Citizendium will not be Wikipedia. We do expect people who have respect for expertise, for knowledge hard gained, to love the opportunity to work alongside editors. Imagine yourself as a college student who had the opportunity to work alongside, and under the loose and gentle direction of, your professors. This isn't going to be a top-down, command-and-control system. It is merely a sensible community: one where the people who have made it their life's work to study certain areas are given a certain appropriate authority--without thereby converting the community into a traditional top-down academic editorial scheme.

Well, can you expect the experts to want to work "shoulder-to-shoulder" with non-experts?

Yes, because it's already happening; that's one of our early successes, i.e., showing that expert-non-expert collaboration can be done to great effect. Furthermore, experts will have an incentive to work in this project, because when it comes to content--i.e., what the experts really care about--they will be in charge.

How can you possibly ensure on a wiki that editors will have the carefully limited authority you want to give them?

Two ways. First, as anyone with much experience in thriving Internet communities knows, the community itself places significant peer pressures on people to follow the rules. This works for most people, and is one key reason that wikis are able to work. Second, for those not susceptible to peer pressure, there are both editorial workgroups for content-based problems, and "constables" (the local name for the people empowered to ban troublemaking editors) for behavior-based problems.

Will editors ever be paid?

It's hard to say. The hope, of course, is that we may raise enough money to pay key members of the community to work on the project full-time. Honoraria might also become possible, but it all depends on the level of donations, sponsorship, and other revenue-generators.

What, then, can motivate editors to get involved? After all, they are professionals used to getting paid for their expertise.

The same thing that motivates experts to get involved in Wikipedia. (There is, after all, a not-insignificant number of experts involved in Wikipedia.) The idea is that this is a free resource for the entire world to use. Editors will have a desire to teach. Some people also feel a professional obligation to teach, something that is reflected by the fact that so many professional organizations have educational and outreach committees. And, after all, Wikipedia is--as, we hope, the Citizendium will become--one of first sources of information that many students and other information-seekers consult. Scholars and students alike are rightly concerned that such widely-disseminated information about their interests be correct. The idea that we have the opportunity to create a resource that is not only enormous but truly reliable as well should be very exciting to many academics. Besides, the process is fun, which is motivation for many participants at all levels of attainment.

The Justification and Prospects of the Project

How did the pilot project go? What does it say for the future of the Citizendium?

It's gone very well. In the period, we worked on over 1,000 articles, we gained over 800 authors, with over 180 of those being extremely well-qualified, expert editors. We grew from around 100 to around 500 edits per day. We have received two major donations, from the Revson Foundation and an individual, as well as many smaller donations.

In short, we're growing on every front. The future of the project, at this point, is quite bright.

You have decided not to fork Wikipedia after all, at least experimentally. Why? And does this mean you've somehow given up?

Please see this blog post for an explanation. The short answer is that, while the project has been a success so far, we think we can do even better because people might be more motivated to start their own articles than they were to edit old Wikipedia articles.

We think it is a healthy sign in a cutting-edge project that there are bold course corrections.

Is this project just motivated by a personal animosity between Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales?

Not at all. This project, and forces that led to it, are much, much bigger than two quibbling personalities.

How can you possibly succeed? Wikipedia is an enormous community. How can you go head-to-head with Wikipedia, now a veritable goliath, if you have just a few people?

It would indeed be ridiculous if we were pretending to create something better than Wikipedia with just a few people. But what just a few people can do is organize a new community. There are very many people with read/write access to the Citizendium project wiki, for instance. We firmly believe that there are already very many people who love the vibrancy and basic concept of Wikipedia, but who believe it needs to be governed under more sensible rules, and with a special place for experts. We hope they will join the Citizendium effort. If there is enough interest, then we'll be able to make a go of it. Give us a few years; Wikipedia has had a rather large head start. So we'll see!

Who is joining this community?

People who support the basic project design. To mention just one group, many disaffected Wikipedians have gotten involved. Many academics have gone out of their way to try to edit Wikipedia, only essentially to be beaten back by the community. Not only are they welcome, they are being asked to form part of the editorial leadership of the Citizendium. There are also a number of people, put off by Wikipedia, who have tried to start alternatives to Wikipedia, particularly in their special disciplines. But most such efforts have not made much headway. Those people are welcome to this project as well; bear in mind that there is strength in numbers, and huge amounts of responsibility to spread around.

There are also, of course, a few people who have never tried to edit Wikipedia.

Do you have any plans to fork (or improve upon) other Wikimedia projects, such as Wiktionary?

Not at this time. We believe that most Wikimedia projects need to be completely reconceived. Citizendium may, perhaps, absorb the Text Outline Project (Textop), which Larry Sanger started in spring 2006, and on which some small progress has been made. (Larry has limited his own participation in Textop in order to get the Citizendium started; but he intends to return to it in a year or two.)

Wikipedia and the Citizendium

How does the project differ from Wikipedia?

In several significant ways: expert involvement, the requirement of logging in and real names, and more. What will not change is that the project will still be an open/free content wiki.

Do you want to try to "steal" people from Wikipedia and divide the community?

That is not the aim. Wikipedia has already driven off no doubt thousands of would-be contributors, and there are thousands, if not millions, of people who never would think about contributing to Wikipedia in the first place, but who might be willing to give the Citizendium a go. We want to set up, not a replacement, but an alternative to Wikipedia, a responsible constitutional republic that makes a special place for experts and invites the general public to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Are you attempting to shut Wikipedia down?

No. That makes up no part of our aim. We wish instead to take the best of Wikipedia's model and use it to create something better.

Aha! So you are trying to outdo Wikipedia, aren't you?

Well, of course.

If you're not trying to shut Wikipedia down, then what relationship do you want with Wikipedia?

A mutually complementary one, in which we occupy different social niches, as it were. Those who want to work in a system committed to the maximum empowerment of amateurs should always be able to do so on Wikipedia. Those who, by contrast, want to work shoulder-to-shoulder in a bottom-up system with experts, in which the experts are able to settle content disputes, will soon have the option of doing so on the Citizendium. Furthermore, those who want the option of working anonymously and in a wild-and-woolly atmosphere in which rules are not necessarily enforced should always be able to do so on Wikipedia. Those who, by contrast, want to take personal, real-world responsibility for their efforts, and to work in a dynamic but rule-governed environment, will soon have the option of doing so on the Citizendium.

Besides, the world has had multiple encyclopedias for a long time. There's no reason why there needs to be just one free, collaborative, general encyclopedia.

You could have started this project a long time ago. Why now?

The full and frank story is very complex, and not ready to be told. Perhaps we should have done this a long time ago. But perhaps we were not fully justified in doing it until fairly recently. In particular, many of us think that Wikipedia's attempts to paper over its very public mini-scandals with minor changes have been weak. It is pretty clear to us that Wikipedia will probably never seriously attempt to solve what we, at least, regard as the central problems of the project. For further explanation, see "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge."

International Prospects of the Citizendium

Will you be attempting to start versions of the Citizendium in languages other than English?

Yes, if the English language Citizendium succeeds. We have seen quite a bit of interest from people speaking all major European languages.

If Citizendia in other languages are started, will the central management of the Citizendium be fully international?

The extent to which the project is centralized at all, or instead federated or "franchised," remains to be decided. Participants must not assume that we will simply replicate the current, problematic Wikipedia model; we will be developing our relationships much more deliberately and carefully.

How will you actually get the Citizendia in other languages started?

This remains to be worked out and debated. We've started listing potential contributors in other languages.

Contact the Project

How do I contact Citizendium staff?

We love notes of encouragement!

Please send your mail to the right address:

• Constabulary: constables at citizendium.org
• Personnel matters: constables at citizendium.org
• Bug reports: bugs at citizendium.org
• Editor-in-Chief: sanger at citizendium.org
• You can also e-mail many editors and authors by clicking on the "E-mail this user" link

Bear in mind that these mailboxes may be quite full, and we may not be able to answer right away!