CZ:About: Difference between revisions

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'''[[Welcome_to_Citizendium|Citizendium]]''' is a wiki for providing free knowledge where contributors use their real names. We regard information as a public good and welcoming anyone who wants to share their knowledge on virtually any subject.  Our online community prides itself on being congenial and supportive.
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|<Big>Citizendium is our suggestion for the [http://blog.citizendium.org/?p=559 next draft] of a collaboratively organized knowledge repository.</Big>
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{{TOC|right}}<br><div style="font-size:1.2em">The ''Citizendium'', a "citizens' compendium of everything," is an open [[wiki]] project aimed at creating an enormous, free, and ''reliable'' encyclopedia. The project, started by [[Larry Sanger|a founder of Wikipedia]], feels that we can achieve this crucial improvement over [[Wikipedia|earlier wiki-based attempts at collecting knowledge]] through measures such as adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names. We already have over {{PAGESINCAT:CZ Live}} articles and hundreds of contributors. Currently, we are [[CZ:Charter drafting|drafting a charter]] for our project, and once this is finished, you will be able to read more details here. </div>
Citizendium's contributors help create online encyclopedia articles that are different from what Wikipedia now offers. We recognize Wikipedia's limitations, and that's why we support Citizendium as an alternative or supplement.  The Citizendium provides a different kind of collaborative environment than Wikipedia now offers: '''we use real names''', so you always know whom you are dealing with, and we have a modest number of active authors so that it becomes possible to know each other well. We strive for objectivity and quality--and civility. Please see [[CZ:We_aren't_Wikipedia|We aren't Wikipedia]] for more details about how the two platforms differ.  


==What is Citizendium trying to achieve?==
It is okay to use The Citizendium as a staging area for an article to be copied elsewhere later (such as to Wikipedia, where it will likely be seen by more eyes), as long as the article meets our stylistic and content guidelines.  Copying our articles to another platform is legal, with the following caveats: the article remains behind on The Citizendium (may not simply be deleted), and at its new home, attribution is given to The Citizendium as per our site license.  In fact, we find these cases interesting to watch over time, to see how the two parallel articles evolve in their different hosts.
'''''Quality'''''<br> 
Our goal is to capture the full range of humanity's various understandings and knowledge of reality, and thereby to paint a maximally broad and detailed portrait of our universe as accurately as living humans understand it. We also expect our approved articles to be, in the long run, as authoritative, error-free, and well-written as encyclopedia articles are expected to be. We believe that an indispensable means to this end is the involvement of many levels of experts who will not only write, but also help guide and, ultimately, approve many of our articles.


'''''Quantity'''''  <br>
We are a growing community, and we'd like to invite you to join us in building Citizendium! ''Please use our {{ApplicationForm}}''.  It typically takes a few days to get a response for an application, so please be patient.
We have already added thousands of articles, and hope to grow to hundreds of thousands of articles within the near future, and millions after that.  This is not the traditional goal of paper-and-print encyclopedias, which have typically sought to offer only mainstream views of the most important aspects of a small number of important topics.  Cheap disk space and bandwidth, and the potential of participation by ultimately ''millions'' of people, means that we can capture humanity's understanding of reality with far more nuance and detail. Quantity, alone, is useless, however, without the trust that comes with high quality, reliable content.
 
'''''A new sort of online community''''' <br>
We welcome experts as well as the general public; we will be built not by top-down orders but as and where contributors wish to work; and we will be organized as a genuine [[republic of letters]] governed by a rule of law.  There will be no "dictators," but a regularly changing group of people tasked to manage a public trust in conformity with a relatively stable code of rules.  It also means that we will have very little tolerance for the sort of immature disruption and abuse that plagues so many other Internet communities.
 
 
{{Organization}}

Latest revision as of 21:06, 31 October 2023

Citizendium is a wiki for providing free knowledge where contributors use their real names. We regard information as a public good and welcoming anyone who wants to share their knowledge on virtually any subject. Our online community prides itself on being congenial and supportive.

Citizendium's contributors help create online encyclopedia articles that are different from what Wikipedia now offers. We recognize Wikipedia's limitations, and that's why we support Citizendium as an alternative or supplement. The Citizendium provides a different kind of collaborative environment than Wikipedia now offers: we use real names, so you always know whom you are dealing with, and we have a modest number of active authors so that it becomes possible to know each other well. We strive for objectivity and quality--and civility. Please see We aren't Wikipedia for more details about how the two platforms differ.

It is okay to use The Citizendium as a staging area for an article to be copied elsewhere later (such as to Wikipedia, where it will likely be seen by more eyes), as long as the article meets our stylistic and content guidelines. Copying our articles to another platform is legal, with the following caveats: the article remains behind on The Citizendium (may not simply be deleted), and at its new home, attribution is given to The Citizendium as per our site license. In fact, we find these cases interesting to watch over time, to see how the two parallel articles evolve in their different hosts.

We are a growing community, and we'd like to invite you to join us in building Citizendium! Please use our application form (Google Account required). It typically takes a few days to get a response for an application, so please be patient.

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