I just want to say that I've heard the "consensus vs. credentials" argument before, and from Sanger. I think that criticism is purely wrongheaded. It is impossible to pay attention to credentials without making room for bias to creep in. If we were to write Economics from a credential-based system (which Citizendium either has done or will do), we might get some Keynsian vs Monetarism disputes. The non-experts would be ignored, and the experts would use WP as a battleground, whichever side having more actual editors winning. You'd end up with a totally biased article. I'd also like to note that evidently Sanger hasn't (or won't) read Citizendium's article on Homeopathy. In that case, instead of a battleground, there were no experts to represent the "homeopathy is crap" opinion, so the article noticeably lacks it (or has it squeezed into the bottom section; here's a quote: "The “balance of evidence” as to whether homeopathy has any effects other than placebo effects depends on who is balancing the evidence."). Now read our article on homeopathy (I hope we can all agree that homeopathy is crap, right? Our article says "Homeopathy's efficacy beyond the placebo effect is unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence." and has ~8 citations after that sentence). Results speak for themselves. (I won't even bother with the perennial "how many (approved) articles do they have now?" because we've all heard it before)
Far too many interviews with Singer on Wikipedia can be summarized in a simple series of questions-&-answers: (1) Are there problems with how Wikipedia works? [yes] (2) Does Singer think Citizendium is a better model, despite indications to the contrary? [yes] (3) Has Singer said anything new? [not in this interview] (I am not criticizing the authors of this article, just pointing out that Singer really hasn't said anything new or thoughtful about Wikipedia in a long time.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:31, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You have a point in (1) and (2), but if you look at the version history, you will see that I rewrote the story to cut out some of that repetitive stuff. The Slate interviewer asked some good questions and in reply Sanger did say some interesting things which to my knowledge he hasn't said before:
His admission that he didn't have a special interest in encyclopedias before being hired for Nupedia (it has sometimes been implied that the topic of his Ph.D. thesis sort of predisposed him to be an encyclopedist), and that having had more knowledge about the history of encyclopedias would have been useful in the early years of WP and Nupedia. Also, the comment about Winchester's book
Acknowledging that "basic facts" on Wikipedia are "fairly accurate" (I seem to recall other comments where he qualified his WP criticism in that respect, but not this clearly)
Offering a clear explanation for CZ's lack of growth
I really enjoyed the Gardner interview when I read it earlier this week. Her characterization of Wikipedia content-writers as (and I am paraphrasing) a nerd-army of young males with project-specific writing missions rang true — bearing in mind that the "young" part doesn't necessarily apply to me, ha ha. The desire to expand the circle of content-writers geographically, by age, and by gender seems well-intentioned, appropriate, and desirable. Her analysis gave me a lot of hope.
As for Sanger, his song remains the same. He blithely ignores the fact that the expert-reviewed-and-approved model has been a huge failure twice now, at Nupedia and at Citizendium. Wikipedia has structural issues, to be sure, but it is based upon a living, breathing, growing, functioning model that works. I think it would be good for the world if Sanger would fold his tent and to bring the debate back in-house. Somehow he has confused WP with Lord of the Flies though, so that doesn't seem terribly likely at this juncture. Still, Sanger has something to say and it would be good if he was saying it in person here rather that running it through the media to our ears second hand.
"They don't want to be paid. They want to be praised." I'm not sure that we really do want to be praised. Being receptive to praise from outsiders implies that we care about what they think, which in turn implies that we will be receptive to criticism ("I never use Wikipedia, it's such a waste of time"), which, over time, may make us question whether or not we want to continue editing. I don't want my editing to be affected by the moods of the largely ignorant masses. I would much prefer to just sit here under my rock and do my own thing. I suspect I am not alone in this perspective. --Cryptic C62 · Talk14:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think the praise in question is internal. I can't speak to whether newer editors are around for external impact reasons, but certainly every editor when I joined (including me) became a regular because they were a little obsessive-compulsive about their pet topic/activity, and the respect of other editors that you already respect is a powerful motivator. If the community's primary motivation was external popularity, the site would never have gotten off the ground. - BanyanTree02:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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