CZ:About: Difference between revisions

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Citizendium is a growing resource of knowledge.  
'''[[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.


Its goal? To provide instant and free knowledge to ''anyone'' with on-line access, world-wide, at ''no'' fee.  
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.  


Oh, and not just any kind of knowledge - but articles that are as accurate and as free of bias as we can make them.
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.


Isn't there enough information on the web already? Well, there's certainly lots of everything on the web, generally unfiltered and chaotic  (not to mention inflammatory and inaccurate), so much that finding anything useful quickly can turn into a big waste of time. We have joined together to create something new - and we very much hope, ''better''-  than what's now available.  Our aim is to provide entry into a Compendium of Knowledge that is clearly written, entertaining, and, as far as we can make it, ''true''. We are glad to have you join us, and share your own knowledge with others. If that knowledge is to be taken seriously, though, we have to know who is saying it and we want to check it over before we approve it on our site. That's why contributions of writing in our articles must be made under your real name, and that's why approved articles are reviewed by our editors before the approval template appears.  
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.
 
Right now we have many articles in the draft stage, and a handful of [[:Category:Approved Articles|approved articles]] that we consider to be finished editions - that is, finished for the present. You can't make changes in those few finished approved articles, although (as you'll see when you go to them) each one has a draft page where a new edition is brewing. You are welcome to add to the draft page and edit what's there- as soon as you've signed up as an author.
 
We hope you'll see another thing about those approved articles. You can actually read them and make sense out of them, and - if you click the "history" tab at the top of each one, you'll see the amount of careful collaboration that has gone into making them. Each has been read and approved by experts educated in the field in an honest attempt to provide you with useful information. Now, we're running on refurbished everything at the moment, so you'll have to excuse the lack of bells and whistles. That's not the nature of our quality, particularly here in the pilot.
 
Our dream is have a resource which can provide an education on the spot, a reference that anybody can use and be enriched by, a global compendium of knowledge. It's a worthwhile dream, we think. We've found ourselves enriched by our attempts to make it real. Join us!
 
You might start with: [[CZ:Tips for new contributors]]

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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