CZ:Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians
Welcome Wikipedians and ex-Wikipedians!
Many members of Citizendium have experience of editing at Wikipedia, and have joined this project to try a different model of content development. We want to welcome you here to help us create it. In the past, The Citizendium experimented with multiple collaborative models, and not everything was successful. We have now revised The Citizendium's purpose and goals. Read about who we are these days.
Before you start boldly contributing, please read CZ:We aren't Wikipedia. Many of Wikipedia's policies either do not apply here or have been modified.
If you wish to import material from Wikipedia, see Article Mechanics and How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles.
New practices
- The use of Subpages to expand article content. See our list of subpage types. Note how we have replaced "List of" articles with catalogs.
- Wikipedia attribution template. If any content of an article at Citizendium came from Wikipedia and you aren't the sole author of that content, please add a section at the end of the article called "Attribution" and populate that section with the {{WPAttribution}} template. It is also helpful to post an explanation on the article's Talk page about the provenance of the article. While it's not a legal requirement, Citizendium management considers it the right thing to do. If you are the sole author, please make it clear on the Talk page and post a link to the Wikipedia article history if possible.
- Workgroups, Workgroup Category Tags, and Workgroup Recent Changes. Anybody can edit any article, but we still try to assign every article to one or more Workgroups even if those are not very active.
Asking for help
Questions can be asked in the Forum or from Citizendium's "community managers" or "Sysops". Our managers and sysops oversee adherence to basic policies, settle behavioral problems, and address content problems only if there is a violation of policy. They also review applications and create new accounts.
Images
Any type of open content licensed images are allowable and preferred, although images from Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons and other image banks must pass a two-pronged test before you upload them to Citizendium. Fully copyrighted images are allowable in Citizendium if you place proof of permission in a Permission subpage of the image's talk page.
All images lacking clear copyright data are subject to speedy deletion by constables acting on their own recognizance. Citizendium editors will not nominate articles for approval if the status of their images is unclear.
See Images Help on Copyrights.
Article inclusion policy
Unlike Wikipedia, we do not have a "notability" criterion for article inclusion. Please see CZ:Content_Policy for more details.
Don't spill alphabet soup!
We wish to avoid having an insular, unintelligible community. Accordingly, we don't use neologisms like "NPOV" and "POV", "RS", "FWIW", and "OR". Just use plain English on top of wikilinks or post them in full. In our informal discussions, however, CZ and WP are permissible.
And from Citizendium to Wikipedia
Since Wikipedia changed its license to CC-BY-SA 3.0, it can use material from Citizendium. A workgroup has been formed there, WikiProject Citizendium Porting, to coordinate this.
Further reading
- The Citizendium Policies.
- We aren't Wikipedia
- How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles
- Essentials
- Article Mechanics