Why did Citizendium fail? Options Rating

[Peter Damian]

One of the worst things Sanger did was to start Citizendium. It failed, and Wikipedians now have a wonderful argument to add to their armoury. It failed, because of the policy on attracting experts. Ergo, crowdsourcing is the only way to build a comprehensive and reliable reference work.

Here are some reasons I think Citizendium failed:

1. There was only ever room for one Internet encyclopedia, for Google and 'network effect' reasons.

2. Experts have a limited attraction for any such project as this. I remember Larry claiming that when he advertised on the philosophy lists, philosophers would come flocking in. They didn't. I was working with one other philosopher (aka Mel Ititis on Wikipedia) at Citizendium. He left due to some petty dispute with Sanger, and I left not wanting to be the only philosopher.

3. Sanger was unspeakably rude to many of the participants.

4. After he realised that it would be hard to attract experts, the bars were lowered and all sorts of strange pondlife registered.

Just my thoughts. Or am I wrong? Is crowdsourcing the only real way to create a comprehensive and reliable reference work?

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

It is not working. It is doing something, I grant you that, but it is not working.

How does one judge "work"?

The "bigur numbaz is betur" approach so beloved of the IT world of which it is a subset? Or positive good minus negative bad divided by waste x damage = type of equation?

I think it sort of appeals to that primal part of us that likes to frenzy and what you have is frenzying. It is only "good" if you enjoy it particular type of mental war gaming. I think it is not working because the other 3 part of the equation overwhelm the "good" bit.

Citizendium, as the fully resolved collaborative encyclopedia model, failed because it lacked better, ballsier marketing, including better software.

The Britannica.com is another example of how not to do it, in particular how not to do ads. It is lie trying to read an encyclopedia with the commercial TV on loud.

I think the biggest disincentives for any serious folk to get involved in Wikipedia is that there is no migration route for professional quality individuals to enter the game at a higher level, and a lack of flagged "finished" versions to articles where good work can be assured to be left alone by the jerk off factor.

And I thought constables was a pretty silly title. Larry was always a good boy who no doubt spent his all his time in the library, and probably didn't not know that constable were always called cuntstable from the playground to the street.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy: