User talk:Jason Scott/The Tombs: Difference between revisions

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=== A Short Proposal to the Administration of Citizendium ===


Hello, folks. Jason Scott, Wikipedia critic, man about town. I came on and got a nice personal message from Dr. Sanger upon my arrival, to wit:
Hey Jason, I just hope you won't end up skewering us as unmercifully as you have WP.  ;-) --[[User:Larry Sanger|Larry Sanger]] 13:11, 1 February 2007 (CST)
I have reserved real study of the Citizendium's policies, approach and context for several reasons: first of all, I'm pretty busy these days, and second of all, the project is way too new and has not had enough real crises to truly define its character, both positive and negative. Most systems are fine on their own, devoid of upsets to the equilibrium; it's only when the true load-stress comes that we'll know if it was built right.
However, I was recently browsing some of the policy statements and I had a flash of insight.
I wish, if possible at this timeframe, to make a humble request, a small one but which would, in my opinion, represent Citizendium's greatest potential, or at least lasting legacy. In an ideal world, this feature would manifest itself on Wikipeda, although I don't have great faith it will.
In the [[http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Introduction_to_CZ_for_Wikipedians Introduction to Citizendium]], there is a reference about the [[http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Article_Deletion_Policy Deletion Policy]]. The policy is not to rely on "notability" as a criteria for deletion (which I am in agreement with) but instead one of "maintainability". I agree that a Citizendium with non-maintainable articles would be horrible to use, and agree that given a limited workforce (even more limited because you're shooting for some vague levels of quality by forcing editor credentials), articles should not be on the main site that are never going to be fixed up.
The tragedy of the amount of material, good material, deleted off Wikipedia is incalculable in some cases. For every large amount of made-up, trolling, ruinous garbage that Wikipedia rightfully deletes for not actually being based in fact, a number of articles are deleted due to poor choices, fads, and trends. Even if an article has been carefully worked-on, edited, and maintained, the work is deleted forever out of the human record for nothing other than that week's opinion of its use. This is short-sighted.
The most ironic issue is that on occasion, subjects reappear, are properly maintained and updated, and the whims of the groupthink of Wikipedia say it may stay.
I would like to request, beg if I must, that Citizendium consider keeping a small, unlinked, archivable-but-not-necessarily search-engine-allowing site called "The Tombs". '''tombs.en.citizendium.org''' would do, or even '''tombs.citizendium.org'''. I could even see the argument of it being called '''citizendiumtombs.org''' or some separate domain.
In this website would be all the articles marked as being unmaintainable. The previous edits and current revision of the article would be there. They'd be small, unwanted, thrown-away subjects deemed, in the eyes of current editors or constables, as not ready for prime time. Newspapers and libraries have a function like this; projects unfinished, papers unwanted, clips and folders jammed away into the slush pile and ignored, possibly forever. Libraries, because of physical space constrictions, will occasionally throw out, sell, or transfer their collections elsewhere.
I ask you to consider this for the good of history, for the potential of work not wasted, and to provide a jumping-off point for people so inclined to rebuild non-functioning articles into good or worthy or "maintainable" ones. While some articles will never again see the light of day out of the Tombs, at the very least people like myself can browse those forgotten pages, pulling out the slim bit of gold wedged inside massive paragraphs of unworthy text.
If necessary, I offer to fund such a server myself.
I offer my time to help with this in any way I can. While I dream that one day such a thing will exist on the Wikipedia, I ask that you consider making the first step.
- Jason Scott

Latest revision as of 13:48, 12 April 2007

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