CZ Talk:Why Citizendium?

Here's another page that could greatly benefit from some groovy formatting...anybody? --Larry Sanger 10:16, 22 February 2008 (CST)

I don't think this version of the article really argues the case forcefully enough. So I'm making a new version, below. --Larry Sanger 09:07, 27 February 2008 (CST)

Is there a reason why this article uses a different font size than the rest of CZ? Russell D. Jones 15:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the "why cz" page is a kind of put down of wikipedia (wp). This seems kind of negative. Is there a more positive way to present the case? For example, "Using real names means that real people are attached to the entries, you can ask them questions if you like, get responses from a real person. It also means that someone cares enough about the topic to invest themselves and let others know who they really are." Thanks. Gene Shackman 14:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this sentiment. It's high time that CZ advance itself on its own merits instead of as a reflection of WP. Russell D. Jones 20:42, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

I figure the real issue with anonymous contributions is not vandalism on Wikipedia. The time from vandalism, discovery and revert is diminishing. The real problem is that some contributors concoct so called Original Research (WP:OR) and Undue Syntheses (WP:SYNTH) that very much look like true. Some articles there are worse than no article at all. Tomas Kindahl 15:11, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Without them having a system of locking down articles after some sort of expert appraisal and sign-off, they're *always* going to have this problem. And obscure articles in which a vandal has come in and made a tiny little edit that purposely inserts a wrong fact, or a negating word, or some such, which then passes unnoticed. Hayford Peirce 16:50, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

There is, I believe, a current acceptance of controlled original synthesis here, and the Charter draft does establish that a future Editorial Council could establish policies for original research. No one is thinking, however, of these being done in other than a well-managed way. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:53, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Your point about vandalism is quite true. And the solution to WP's pushers of "undue synthesis" is, as Howard suggests, "a well-managed" and "controlled" system of research and writing. My concern is that too much emphasis on "management" and an over-zealousness for "control" will make CZ like Fordist modes of production: well-engineered but debilitating to the human spirit. Fordist production overcame this debilitation through high wages. However, for CZ, as well as for WP and other collaborative knowledge projects, few people will want to subject themselves to that sort of engineered control for free. Russell D. Jones 20:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)