Citizendium Blog

March 28, 2007

We ain’t elitist

Filed under: Experts, Recruitment — Larry Sanger @ 11:21 am

Because the Citizendium has a role for experts, some have suggested recently that we’re “elitist.”  But the claim is, frankly, absurd.  Projects that allow teenagers to work with tenured professors and seasoned professionals cannot with any good sense be called “elitist.”  Consider a hierarchy of “elitism” in content-production organizations:

  1. Very exclusive: the only participants permitted are not just experts, but distinguished experts.  Example: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  One of the finest free reference works available online, just by the way.  Would it be appropriate to accuse them of being “elitist”?
  2. Exclusive: experts/professionals only.  Examples: most big newspapers and magazines; some academic journals.
  3. Expert-focused, but semi-expert-welcoming: while experts are most actively recruited, honored, and empowered, the system is also open to people who have a solid but nonexpert understanding of the relevant material.  Example: Encyclopedia of Earth; some academic journals (think: first papers written by grad students).
  4. Open, but making a special role for experts: no expertise is needed to participate, but experts are invited to fill a special role in the system.  Example: Citizendium.
  5. Radically epistemically egalitarian: everyone may participate, and no roles are made for experts; everyone is on an equal footing when it comes to making judgment about what is allegedly good, true, and beautiful.  Example: HotOrNot, Wikipedia, and most Web 2.0 projects.

We are far more open and egalitarian compared to most everything outside of Web 2.0.  To accuse us of elitism is merely to expose the limitations of your world.

8 Comments »

  1. So Larry, exactly how much time do you spend on “HotOrNot”? :-)

    Anyways, you’re certainly right. Even in things like Linux and Open Source, there’s still a hierarchy where experts fulfill certain roles. If you want to add code to Linux, it’s going through 2-3 people who certify it before it stands a chance of getting into the main branch. Just like here your contributions go through 1-2 editors before getting into an approved article.

    Comment by ZachPruckowski — March 28, 2007 @ 3:38 pm

  2. What’s “HotOrNot”? :D

    At any rate, it is *very* useful to see these categorized like this.

    Comment by Stephen Ewen — March 29, 2007 @ 5:20 pm

  3. So Larry, how much time do you spend reading newspapers? (Sorry - the parallelism with comment 1 was too good to pass up.)

    Newspaper reporters are hardly experts on anything, and most magazine reporters aren’t a lot better. There’s something called the “sportswriter test” - does a reporter know as much about the subject (s)he is covering as the sportswriters for the paper know about the sports they cover? Most newspapers will fail badly at that test for most other subjects. The Wall Street Journal’s business writers pass, and many papers will have one or two reporters who know all about one of the areas they cover, but overall, newspapers are more around level 3.5 - semi-experts or even interesed amateurs are able to participate, but there are non-expertise-related barriers to entry.

    Comment by Anthony — March 30, 2007 @ 9:17 am

  4. What reporters are expert about is journalism itself. So the point in the list above is that one really must be a hifalutin expert ”journalist” if you want a job at a big newspaper or magazine. By the way, I spend a lot of time being interviewed by reporters and have done so since 1999. The experience has given me a lot of respect for their work — particularly for the good ones. It is very difficult for most people to get things down as accurately as most journalists are able to do; there really is expertise required to do it well.

    Comment by Larry Sanger — March 30, 2007 @ 9:05 pm

  5. […] just a cheap shot for rhetorical glitter.  I mean, sheesh.  CZ ain’t elitist; we occupy the middle ground.  If there is a “cult of the expert,” it can be found in […]

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  6. […] the name, is formed from “Citizens’ Compendium.” That’s our identity. We ain’t elitist. At present, we have around 2000 authors drawn from the general public, and some 200 expert […]

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  7. […] how the project describes itself: Outrageously false.  How many times do we have to say this?  We ain’t elitist.  This myth does a huge disservice to the project, because it leads “non-experts” to […]

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  8. […] the Citizendium.  It is very sad that some people still think that we are an experts-only project; we aren’t, as anyone who has investigated us the slightest bit […]

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