Wikipedia is more than just one of the largest and most popular web sites in existence.\u00a0 It is also a major source of evolution of our understanding of many important cultural concepts. \u00a0Wikipedia’s existence alone has forcibly accelerated the debate on a number of topics related to information theory, such as censorship, intellectual property, responsible journalism, the scientific method, and even various issues related to language.<\/p>\n
From this, there have been many interesting debates about Wikipedia’s role and effectiveness in pursuing its purpose.\u00a0 One, in particular, has been quietly raging for years, and has now reached a point in which we feel comfortable declaring a decisive outcome.\u00a0 This is the none-dare-call-it-a-war between Wikipedia<\/a> and what has to be considered its primary rival, Citizendium<\/a>.<\/p>\n Citiwhadium?<\/strong><\/p>\n Citizendium is a Wikipedia-like project that was first launched in 2006 and released publicly in 2007 by one of Wikipedia’s co-founders, Larry Sanger (exactly how \u201cco\u201d he is, we must point out, is itself the subject of debate).\u00a0 Sanger had left Wikipedia early in its formation.\u00a0 The reason was due to an ideological split in the direction that he and other founder Jimmy Wales (who is still with Wikipedia) felt it should take.<\/p>\n Sanger felt that there should be an emphasis on guaranteed expert oversight.\u00a0 Wales disagreed, stating that knowledge is something everyone has to share.\u00a0 Debates ensued, with Wales’s vision winning out in the end.\u00a0 Sanger soon thereafter left the project.\u00a0 Although at the time he blamed funding issues for his departure, when he founded Citizendium in 2006, he had no shortage of hard words about his estranged brainchild.<\/p>\n A flurry of media attention followed, with Sanger making bold declarations about Citizendium’s future.\u00a0 While the site’s own FAQ pleaded that he was not trying to shut down Wikipedia, Sanger stated in 2006 press release that \u201cCitizendium will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online.\u201d<\/p>\n An ugly autopsy<\/strong><\/p>\n Citizendium now marks its 5th<\/sup> anniversary in sort of the same way that a married couple who isn’t even talking to each other might.\u00a0 It’s a number, not a celebration.\u00a0 While the site still exists, its state can be summed up by its plea to find some financial donors to cover its $319 a month in hosting costs.\u00a0 They’ve not hit this fundraising goal once so far this year.\u00a0 In June, they raised $33.68.<\/p>\n The rest of the numbers are just as ugly, so much so that highlighting them almost feels like kicking someone while they’re down.\u00a0 The site has a total of 16,027 articles.\u00a0 Wikipedia cracked 100,000 articles in its second year.\u00a0 New article creation on Citizendium is down from a high of about 30\/day to a mere 2: Wikipedia’s is about 10 times that per minute.<\/p>\n Disapproval of the \u201cApproved\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n A more important metric is the \u201cApproved Articles.\u201d\u00a0 This, after all, was the whole point of Citizendium, to create the finest quality articles as a result of \u201cexpert\u201d involvement.\u00a0 After 5 years, the number of Approved Articles stands at a you-gotta-be-kidding-me 156.\u00a0 And the quality is as equally underwhelming as the quantity.\u00a0 The Approved Article for \u201cPrime Number\u201d isn’t 1\/10 as long as the Wikipedia equivalent, the latter still only earning a \u201cB\u201d grade from its own user base.<\/p>\n Let’s stop.\u00a0 This feels cruel.\u00a0 We’ll just make it official and be done with it: the Citizendium project has failed.<\/p>\n Not without a fight…<\/strong><\/p>\n Sanger remains defiant, but at this point his protests feel similar to the knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with no arms and legs left shouting \u201cI’ll bite your leg off!\u201d.\u00a0 Sanger has stated that the primary reason for this was Wikipedia’s head start.\u00a0 But this is easily refuted by the evidence of how much has changed on the web since 2006.\u00a0 Other wikis started around and have more pages than Citizendium.\u00a0 Also, in 2006 the social networking world was dominated by LiveJournal<\/a> and MySpace<\/a>.\u00a0 How much did their \u201chead start\u201d help them?<\/p>\n Single simply refuses to accept the hard truth that perhaps his original premise was wrong all along.\u00a0 Wikipedia has been shown through multiple studies to be roughly as accurate and reliable as professional encyclopedias.\u00a0 It is the #6 site on the web, and has been Top 10 for years.\u00a0 In short, it has passed all of the tests.\u00a0 It is nowhere near perfect, but it has roughly achieved what it set out to do.<\/p>\n …but the fight is over…<\/strong><\/p>\n A look at Sanger’s fist in the air provides us with the lesson that we should take from this experiment.\u00a0 Even to this day, he continues to decry what he sees as \u201canti-intellectualism\u201d in the Web 2.0 world.\u00a0 From the tone of his writings, it seems that the \u201canarchic\u201d approach of Wikipedia simply bothers him on a philosophical level (and he is, in fact, a Doctor in Philosophy).\u00a0 When we look at Citizendium today we see the reflection of this obsession: at this point, there seems to be more work being done on its inner political structure than on the articles themselves, like bureaucrats fighting over ownership of an anthill.<\/p>\n There, then, is the rub: it’s become ceremony before principle.\u00a0 That is what went wrong, and that is the lesson that we should get from this, especially those in a position of management.\u00a0 Being dead set on making sure something is done the way that you are personally sure is the \u201ccorrect\u201d way is a great way to ensure your failure.<\/p>\n The truth is that there is always more than one way to do things, always more than one way to solve a problem.\u00a0 It’s not just data that everyone has access to, but ideas.\u00a0 Wikipedia, as a further contrast, doesn’t just has its pages open to debate, but its methods.\u00a0 Very few rules come from on high.\u00a0 Most of the internal procedures are user-created, and in a continual state of evolution.<\/p>\n Another angle to take on it is this: respect comes from continual effort.\u00a0 It is not some commoditive title that one holds forever for obtaining a degree or winning some award.\u00a0 Moreover, it’s not something that anyone has any requirement to afford some pre-calculated level of deference to.\u00a0 Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman both won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.\u00a0 You’d be hard-pressed to find a whole lot of people who would afford the theories of these ideological opposites equal respect.\u00a0 Or how about this: neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates graduated from college.\u00a0 According to Citizendium’s policies, this would make them unqualified as a \u201cconstable\u201d, their term for sysop.\u00a0 Get it, yet?<\/p>\n …and the hive mind has won.<\/strong><\/p>\n For managers who cherish their position a little too highly this may be a hard pill to swallow.\u00a0 Swallow it anyway.\u00a0 The more that you trust that the people around you have within them to capability to solve problems and the more you untie their hands to do so, in general, the more that they will prove you right.\u00a0 One final example from the story of Citizendium’s fall highlights this fact.<\/p>\n One of the main incidents which pushed Larry Sanger to create Citizendium was one in which the biography of one famous individual, John Seigenthaler, was altered to state that he was involved with the Kennedy assassinations.\u00a0 Sanger was contacted personally, and in attempting to address the problem, found the Wikipedia user base response unacceptable.\u00a0 He concluded that the only remaining response was to start his own encyclopedia.<\/p>\n Yet, while Citizendium has risen, floated, and crashed, new policies were created on Wikipedia to address how this happened.\u00a0 The result?\u00a0 While there is always a minor undercurrent of vandalism, there has not since been a single case of defamation that has risen to this level of notoriety.<\/p>\n Yes, the hive mind does tend in the long run to work.\u00a0 As Citizendium and other \u201cscholar-based\u201d encyclopedias flounder (even Google’s \u201cKnol\u201d couldn’t crack this nut), and Wikipedia in turn approaches its 4 millionth article, this is no longer theory.\u00a0 This is observable fact, one that passes the victorious Wikipedia’s standard for inclusion in its articles: verifiability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wikipedia is more than just one of the largest and most popular web sites in existence.\u00a0 It is also a major source of evolution of our understanding of many 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