User talk:Mikael Häggström

[User bio is in User:Your Name]

Welcome

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via Twitter. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any administrator for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun!

You can find some more information about our collaboration groups if you follow this link CZ:Workgroups.You can always ask me on my talk page or others about how to proceed or any other question you might have.

Have fun and Happy editing!

--Matt Innis (Talk) 08:16, 22 July 2007 (CDT)

My inactivity so far

As of July 2007 I'm still rather inactive in my contribution to Citizendium. The reason is that I'm still considering whether my faith lies within Citizendium or Wikipedia. In fact, I'm a little bit sceptical to this whole project. I mean, it will never attract as many editors as Wikipedia, and therefore probably never will have the same amount of creation, scrutiny and editing of information. In contrast, it rather pulls the expertise away from the people. When people look for information they look at Wikipedia, because that's were they find everything (even the smallest piece of dust). Therefore I think isolation to an own little island of knowledge is letting the people down.

However, it is a beta version after all, so I'll wait and see. Mikael Häggström 03:30, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

No explanation was necessary, Mikael. But I don't know why you think there can't be two encyclopedias. There are already very many, aren't there? Can't humanity support more than one big wiki encyclopedia? --Larry Sanger 03:34, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Citizendium really is a well-planned project, and the articles created in it are truly reliable. However, with all due respect, I can not help thinking that the knowledge as well as the editors would benefit the world more if merged back to Wikipedia, making the corresponding articles featured and, if necessary, semi-protected. With an encyclopaedia with both credibility and quantity there would only need to be one. Mikael Häggström 04:45, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Coming from Wikipedia, I do know what you are thinking. I prefer to think of it as creating a source that Wikipedia may one day be able to cite, with external links to our full articles. The difficulty with rejoining Wikipedia is that they already have articles on these same subjects. It is very hard for experts to come in and fix perceived problems because of Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy. It is too time consuming for these people to get something inserted into an article only to have it deleted the next day. The stability that the 'approved versions' means we don't need as many editors or authors as Wikipedia because we won't have to be wasting our time 'defending' articles or fighting trolls and 'POV pushers'. These editors can move on to more productive writing... albeit slowly ;-) Eventually, Citizendium will amass a large enough volume, that google will bring people here and people can find what the experts say in a well written prose that does not change on a daily basis. Take your time, get a cup of coffee and start working on the article of your choice. It won't take long till you get hooked on the calm. If you see something that you would like to see happen, jump in and start it. --Matt Innis (Talk) 08:10, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

My activity so far

After the first day of any significant activity in this project, I can at least say that I've experienced a much warmer hospitality as a newcomer here than I can remember I had when I first joined Wikipedia (if any at all). Furthermore, I've realized advantages with Citizendium I didn't notice before. For instance:

• The ability to remove whole sections of Wikipedia articles where people just have dumped trivia and other really unimportant fragments of information, without any complaints from the creators of that mess.
• A sense of duration in my contributions - I'm not afraid that my edits will be blanked or vandalized when I turn away.

In short, I'll probably have a peaceful sleep, and be back tomorrow. Thank you and good night Mikael Häggström 14:29, 25 July 2007 (CDT)