The Divine Wisdom of Citizendium
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | September 19, 2006 | Share This
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Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger recently announced the initiation of Citizendium, his “progressive” rendition of Wikipedia. The semi-wiki project will mirror the contents of Wikipedia, except in the case of articles that are updated in Citizendium. Unlike its predecessor, Citizendium attempts to implement a hierarchy based on expertise, wherein an author’s credentials will determine their level of authority on disputed posts. Credentials are in turn recognized or rejected by “the crowd,” the same way that politicians are theoretically elected into office. Meanwhile, “troublemakers” posting fake edits will be kept in check by peer-elected “constables” – aka – the glorified hall monitor. Sanger will serve as the editor-in-chief, in which “unlike the case with Wikipedia, he will not be answering to anyone other than himself and the larger community.” Ultimately, Citizendium is meant to be self-managing, but authority-governed wiki, in the manner of a “constitutional-republic.”
Critics thus far have been kind to ignore Sanger’s elitist stink (“We do expect people who have proper respect for expertise, for knowledge hard gained, to love the opportunity to work alongside editors…”), but have pointed out a number of fatal weaknesses in his system of authority. Some write that notoriety and “the desire to teach” is not enough motivation for this degree of volunteerism, without some form of compensation for experts. Sanger is yet to reveal Citizendium’s revenue model beyond sponsorship and donations. Others question the ability of experts to act as unbiased editors – as Steve MacDonald writes, “who decides who is an “expert” on contentious topics? Is Rush Limbaugh a suitable expert on gay rights? How about Robert Fisk on Islamic extremism?”
Clay Shirky has a particularly interesting analysis of the Institutional overhead required by Citizendium’s censorship process. He writes,
“Sanger’s view seems to be that expertise is a quality like height – some people are obviously taller than others, and the rest of us have no problem recognizing who the tall people are. But expertise isn’t like that at all; it is in fact highly subject to shifts in context…As a result, you cannot have expertise without institutional overhead, and institutional overhead is…what will stifle Citizendium.”
In other words, the job of policing the site will become too much for Sanger to maintain.
To add to Shirky’s analysis, I’d like to emphasize that Citizendium will struggle because it is about the survival of experts rather than the survival of edits. By using external credentials to establish an internal hierarchy, the site becomes more about politics than content. Wikipedia editors are kept anonymous because the quality of their participation is only as good as their actual contribution. Thus the degree of authority that any editor might hold over another is based on activity alone. As such, the power curve is scaled only within the context of Wikipedia, rather than by credentials from external institutions.
In sum, Citizendium may survive temporarily because it is supported by Wikipedia. But, if it doesn’t become stagnant due to a lack of activity, it will eventually become too massive to patrol. Its editorial peer review is too political to encourage community engagement, and in the end, Sanger’s apparent god-complex threatens to unravel the entire project.
Topics: Open Source |