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

Fri Nov 12 16:54:22 UTC 2010

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 10:35 AM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> In a message dated 11/12/2010 2:13:03 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> jayvdb at gmail.com writes:
>
>
>> 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. >>
>>
>>
>
> And they don't.  As pointed out they have POV and also they are
> credentialist.  They do not invite the world to contribute, they effectively bar the
> majority of the world from contributing.
>
> They are not a meritocracy.  They are instead an authoritarian oligarchy.
> Of course the same criticism has been leveled at us, but then we don't
> actually engrain it in our principle policies.

I'm one ocean late to this conversation, but I'll give a big +1
offering to host Citizendium.

They wouldn't be a WMF project, and so wouldn't need to adhere exactly
to all the core Wikimedia values.  (And NPOV doesn't extend to all WMF
projects anyway.)

But read the Citizendium neutrality policy, if you haven't.  The core
differences between their policies and ours are about the editing
process and project governance, not the kind of result they are
striving for: "we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and
not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is
correct." [1]  That's not quite what NPOV says, but it's close enough
that we've already been able to incorporate a fair bit of CZ content
into Wikipedia. [2]

[1] = http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Neutrality_Policy

[2] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Citizendium_Porting

-Sage