CZ:We aren't Wikipedia

How is the Citizendium similar to Wikipedia?

1. We aim to create a giant free general encyclopedia.
2. We use MediaWiki software.
3. We use wiki methods of collaboration, and we encourage everybody to work on articles in their area of interest and expertise.
4. No particular qualifications are needed to participate as an Author.
5. We rely on "soft security" to a great extent. We work on the basis of trust.
6. We are committed to an objective, unbiased presentation of information.
7. We have similar naming conventions, and some other style guidelines in common. See CZ:Manual of Style for the differences.
8. The community and project was organized originally by one of the people who originally organized Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.

How do we differ?

1. Except for a short period in which Citizendium permitted self-registration, it has had no significant vandalism.
2. Citizendium formerly had experts in certain fields who were called "Editor". Every Editor was also an Author. Now, a few experienced Authors tend to help arbitrate editorial decisions.
3. Citizendium once had a method for producing citable articles that depended on the judgment of experts. This feature is also now mostly inactive.
4. Article policies differ. Citizendium's aim is to craft compelling introductory narratives, not mere collections of data. Citizendium provides sources because doing so helps the reader. We usually do not cite sources to settle internal disputes, or to "prove" a point to contributors.
5. Attached to every article is a set of "subpages" of supplementary information. These may include the standard tabs for related articles, bibliographies, and external articles, but also can be customized to include galleries, tables, timelines, tutorials, and signed introductory articles by experts.
6. Citizendium contributors use their own names and identities. This wiki requires people to sign in, to use their real names and to fill out a publicly readable biography. Citizendium also goes to some lengths to verify identities. Its user pages are for brief, helpful biographies and are not intended as vanity pages. To join Citizendium, please fill out an application form (Google Account required).
7. Citizendium is a community defined by shared principles expressed in its CZ:Policies. Citizendium has a low tolerance for disruption. Its management team has some firm rules that require professionalism. There are rules against personal attacks and blatant violations of the neutrality policy, usually enforced first by warnings (in most cases, and usually done privately) followed by bans, which can be rescinded only through appeal.
8. Citizendium's community managers have mature judgment, and they oversee behavior and adherence to basic policies.
9. The Citizendium community settles policies by discussion and (where necessary) votes by the community. The management team is supported, behind the scenes, by a private advisory group with long-term experience in wiki use and management.
10. Works on Citizendium use the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC-by-sa) license.
11. Citizendium takes defamation seriously. This is why it has a Policy on Topic Informants and a Topic Informant Workgroup.
12. Citizendium has its own unique content policy that differs from Wikipedia's idea of notability.
13. Citizendium normally does not use categories on articles themselves. Instead, we classify them broadly into different workgroups.
14. Citizendium discourages the use of excessive acronyms. Using a lot of acronyms for every small point of policy creates a sort of in-group that makes the community insular and unintelligible.
15. Citizendium applies objectivity differently than Wikipedia. The "neutrality policy" of Wikipedia, as applied nowadays by its leading editors (when they bother about policy at all), is that Wikipedia is based solely on "reliable" sources. If there's a consensus of those, then Wikipedia asserts that as unquestioned fact in its own voice, and other points of view, no matter how widely held, may not even be mentioned. This differs rather widely from the original concept, which was: if there are important points of view that "the scientific community" or some such rejects, one just says so. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium discourages the loaded language which dismisses certain people and ideas in the first sentence of an article by use of labeling them immediately as "pseudo-scientific" or "fads".

See also

• Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians
• How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles
• Citizendium Blog post (Feb. 28, 2008): Who's more command-and-control, Wikipedia or CZ?