[Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?

Fri Nov 12 10:12:49 UTC 2010

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/11/12 John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>:
>> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> Providing help to an organisation that can be considered part of the
>>> Wikimedia movement makes sense. The issue with Citizendium is that they
>>> explicitly distance themselves from many of the basic corner stones of what
>>> has made Wikipedia what it is.
>>
>> Which cornerstone is that?
>>
>
> I think the most serious problem with them is that they do not follow
> NPOV. Instead they follow a kind of biased-sympathetic-expert-POV.

Is that systematic, symptomatic or merely evidenced in a small set of articles?

I've seen lots of people point out specific problems with their
content, but we have many problem articles too.

> Anyway, I think it is worth helping Citzendium, but in a way to leave
> their editorial policy freedom and clearly state, that they are not
> going to be Wikimedia project, but they are a different approach,
> interesting but not in line with some of our basic values such as
> "anyone can edit on equal base" and "NPOV".

I agree with everything except whether or not they are in line with
our basic values.  They may not align with Wikipedia's values, but as
a separate project they dont need to be; instead they need to fit
within the core values that all our projects have in common.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values

--
John Vandenberg