Dear philosophers
This is my kick-off mail for our new recruitment effort, sent to PHILOSOP and PHILOS-L. It explains why philosophers should get involved with CZ, despite the existence of Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Feel free to forward it to philosophers! –Larry
Dear philosophers,
Larry Sanger, long-time listmember and Wikipedia co-founder, here. I’m now Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org/) and I’m writing, again, to invite you to join the project, which you can easily do
here:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount
A human being will look over your (brief!) application and let you in typically within an hour or two. But why should you join? Read on.
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Some differences
Some months ago, I announced here the start of the non-profit, free, international Citizendium (”the Citizens’ Compendium”). “CZ” as we call it is a wiki and a general encyclopedia project. Since first announcing the project, it occurred to me that many of you may have not seen its point. So I wanted to describe the project’s interesting niche. What makes it different from other projects, and why should philosophers join in?
* Unlike Wikipedia, contributors to our wiki are required to use their real names; experts have a role (they approve articles and can make decisions about content issues in their areas of expertise); and the community is managed by “constables” who ensure that contributors follow the rules. As a result, our open, but expert-led community is remarkably pleasant and virtually vandalism-free. It’s been called “Wikipedia for grown-ups.”
* Unlike the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy–both fine reference works, which I have used regularly over the years–CZ articles are not signed, and they are constructed collaboratively. Furthermore, CZ is considerably more open and interdisciplinary. These are “differences that make a difference,” as I’ll explain below.
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We’re growing
We’re about to celebrate the first year anniversary of the launch of our pilot project. In the intervening time, we have developed over 3,100 articles–three times what we had last spring. Every month, over 200 different people edit the wiki, and some 2,000 people have signed up with accounts, of which about 240 are expert editors. We continue to grow robustly and, recently, at an accelerating rate. Wikipedia started small, too. In a few years, we will have over a hundred thousand articles (my opinion of course). There is no reason that we cannot replicate Wikipedia’s sort of growth, which as Wikipedia’s organizer I engineered; our fundamentals are very solid.
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So, why another encyclopedia?
But, you might well ask, what *reason* is there for another online philosophy encyclopedia?
There are in fact four excellent reasons.
(1) Collaborative, unsigned articles are less idiosyncratic and more neutral. I think collaboratively-developed articles have interesting epistemic features that articles with single authorship do not have. Such articles, to the extent that they are developed by many people from a variety of perspectives, and if managed by experts (as CZ’s are), tend to omit idiosyncratic and highly implausible information, and they tend to be include a very wide variety of perspectives, and to be more neutral. Just imagine if all those Wikipedia articles had been developed collaboratively *by experts* or *under expert guidance*. You’d take a second look, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s what we’re creating (better late than never).
(2) Articles developed by people from many disciplines are broader-based. SEP and IEP, excellent though they are, present only the professional philosopher’s approach to certain very interdisciplinary topics. Consider topics such as cosmology, God, space and time, information, morality, the state, the law, and many more topics that are studied by other experts, often from multiple fields (think of how many disciplines study the topics “communication” and “community”). Articles on those topics, if written so as to bring together many different disciplinary perspectives, will be considerably more interesting to the average reader and broader-based.
(3) Articles that allow for public contribution are more comprehensible to non-experts. If you have ever referred undergraduates to SEP’s articles, you discover, as I have, that they are too advanced. IEP’s articles are usually better. But the fact is that most philosophers find it difficult to write very comprehensibly for non-philosophers. In my experience with both Wikipedia and the Citizendium, it helps experts considerably to have active, intelligent non-experts around to consult about how to put things clearly.
(4) CZ’s growth rate far surpasses those of SEP and IEP, both in terms of number of articles and number of words. We will, in fairly short order, have far more articles, on a far wider variety of topics, than these (again,
excellent) sources. I don’t pretend that size is what matters; but there is no question that it is *useful* to students and others to have a very large variety of articles on all sorts of topics.
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But why contribute if you can’t take personal credit?
I could go on at great length about this question, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that (1) if we succeed, and there is an excellent chance we will, it will be **enormously** beneficial to humanity (imagine Wikipedia done right); (2) it can be great fun, the psychological rewards can be curiously intense; and (3) for the Ph.D. philosophers on the list, editorship and other positions of responsibility can be claimed on a CV (I make no guarantees that this will help–but it’s something!).
You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to participate; students and amateur philosophers can become authors: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:The_Author_Role
Editor candidates may want to look at this: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:The_Editor_Role
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But what about our level of quality?
It’s a young wiki, so most articles are “in progress.” To get an idea of the level of quality we are aiming at, and very capable of, please see our lists of “Approved Articles” and “Developing Articles”:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Approved_Articles (scroll down)
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Developed_Articles
In the previous year, we have discovered something very interesting: wiki-based expert/public collaboration is capable of producing large numbers of really high-quality articles. I’m particularly proud of our approved articles–check out “life” and “biology.”
There are only a few philosophers active on the project at present, but I am hoping that this announcement and these arguments will help change that.
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Help us fill in the top 99 philosophy topics
I’d also like to invite you to create any from a set of 99 “core articles” about philosophical topics. Here’s the list:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Core_Articles/Humanities#Philosophy_-_Stage_4
Use this link if the latter is broken: http://tinyurl.com/2j7yvl
I would be happy to discuss Citizendium privately, or either on CHORA (let me know if you post about it there as I don’t currently subscribe) or on the “Non-member discussion” board of the Citizendium Forums, here: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/board,73.0.html
There’s much more to read on the website: http://en.citizendium.org/
Again, do join us!
Here: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount
Regards,
Larry
—–
Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. | http://www.larrysanger.org/
Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium | http://www.citizendium.org/
sanger@citizendium.org
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