User:DavidGoodman/comments: Difference between revisions

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==live==
{{AccountNotLive}}
Larry, because of the way the pilot works, we have already made some of these choices. Since all linked articles are incorporated when the link is made (or followed?). then we have all the linked articles in Cz, at least as far as the pilot is concerned, The only control is, as you've told us, the use of the 'live' tag--If we copy linked text, the page it links to becomes part of Cz unless we remove the links. I suppose this is unavoidable, but it sets some limits.
==non-commercial use of CZ ==
*We are not in competition with WP, nor are we a branch of WP. What we are is a separate but similar project, with the same general goal of producing a free public encyclopedia by community writing and revision, but the specific goal of producing one with controlled expert review. There are good reasons to have both, and therefore they should both be done optimally after their different fashions. We want our project to be as good as possible, so we wish to use good attributed copyright-free material from other sources, subject to our editing and review.  We also want to encourage their project to be as good as possible, and therefore want them to use whatever of our material may serve their purposes, realizing that they will be subject to their processes of editing.


I wish it worked otherwise--I wish it made a transwiki link, and opened the relevant page in WP. But is this even possible? Do we have any way to see what articles we actually do have, live or otherwise.? Except by following links, how else can we figure out?
==thoughts on expertise==
The inherent problem in retaining experts is that experts have POV in their subject, and care very much about the details of their positions. They have attained their expertise by mastering the minutia and knowing the arguments. The more in detail one knows a subject, the more one realises how frail the academic consensus really is--and this is as it should be, because it is by working on  the details that do not quite fit that one makes progress.  


This immediately settles the question: since some of the linked articles will be very poor, we do not have the option of starting with less than the full contents. All of the articles about things we might decide not to emphasize, are going to be there, every last football club of them. We'll need a much  stronger wording for them than merely "We make this disclaimer of all Citizendium article versions that have not been specifically approved."
I have known many collective products, and it is always the case that the untrammeled editing by experts without the control of the more generally educated tends to lead to intellectual provincialism and ownership. But it is a little rare for an expert to accept such criticism in his own particular specialty.  


I think the only way to clarify this is for the editors to start rating the WP pages as quickly as possible, as they come in, because only then do we have the choice of improving the good ones a little, or upgrading or truncated or deleting the bad ones. They will all be there.
The way in which I thought it was going to work here is that the editors in a broad subject field would be generally very knowledgeable, knowledgeable enough over a broad range to be able to judge the balance and  subject pertinence of the true specialists who would be writing the articles.  
(As you asked in a discussion yesterday, are there any uses for the WP article tags: well, here there is: I'm not sure what text to use, or what categories but we could place a sticker indicating the status.) [some of this emailed] >


(For another question you asked, I've already put comments on the talk pages to the extent I can.).
The people who insist on ownership and heir own view prevailing in the articles they edit will not be happy in a cooperative editing project. Not everyone --however excellent they are as subject matter experts and as writers--can work successfully in a cooperative editing environment. And there is nothing wrong with them or the project; there is no reason why any particular individual need fit here. This is still a distinctive and experimental environment.
 
The meaning of "live" , I take it , does not mean "finished"? So in the real Cz, as in the pilot, where would the distinctions be? We would have pages being edited, with the working version not visible & only the WP displayed, pages edited at least provisionally, with a Cz version displayed, and pages not even looked at, with the WP page  no matter how bad it may be displayed.
 
Is this what is intended for the public version, or can we do something different.?  I note that all the pages we are now talking about are in fact now visible. If we don't want to display half-finished editing , we'd have to change things a little.
I think the only way to clarify this is for the editors to start rating the pages as quickly as possible, because only then do we have the choice of improving the good ones a little, or upgrading or truncated or deleting the bad ones.
 
There are two ways to start: with the overview articles and the specific ones. If we do the
specific ones first, we'll have gaps in CZ content for years, although for many of them we can pretend the WP content is passable.18:27, 31 October 2006 DavidGoodman (Talk | contribs)
 
==quality of WP pages==
 
I think as we have all been talking the last few weeks, the feeling is we should not start out be having the WP article as the default place holder--at least until we have looked at it and removed the junk and evaluated.
(As you asked in a discussion yesterday, are there any uses for the WP article tags: well, here there is:
I'm not sure what text to use, or what categories but we could place a sticker indicating the status.
 
For example, consider the botany page in WP: I think I could say a good deal more in that space, but what there is in not actually misleading. But then look at the zoology page, where you will see the complete absences of content: it was all deleted by accident on Sept 2 while reverting vandalism, and nobody seems to have put it back. so everyone has a chance to look, I will reinsert in, but not until Nov. 3. Even with it, there wasn't much. I would perhaps put it in for the moment, but with a very different label, and it would be a high priority to redo. There are several hundred good zoology pages on individual species, which range in quality from good to excellent. I would put them all in, and not worry too much about revising them right away.
 
I think it will have to go page by page. this way. I looked at another field I know, and he technology related parts are fair to good, and the others unmentionable.
 
There are in various fields, WP pages that in the past have been better than they are now. Generally not by accident, like Zoology, but as a result of a revert war--the argument was solved by deleting both sides.
 
==links==
Larry & Nancy-- first of all , we can always get the links for the version in the page history. as when we check the links, we should also decide on whether we need them--which is in turn a matter of policy. WP links every significant word on its first appearance. When i first look at WP the practice seemed absurd & a sign of amateurism. By now I no longer notice it, but it still seems absurd. I know it helps in th categories, but I do not think we need a category of everything that happened in 1901, 1902,1903 except in fields where it matters. nor do we need lists of people born in ....
& also many irrelevant subject based links; every article the word "history" appears in, and looking at what I've just written , "article" or "subject' or "link". Subdisciplines as you mention, certainly.
==stages==
It would be very useful if all those working on these pages were to give some indication at the top of what stage they are at.
I don't want to comment on an half rewritten article that the other half hasn't been done yet, but its hard to tell. Are any of these at the point where the editor involved thinks they are finished?23:11, 1 November 2006 (CST)

Latest revision as of 03:42, 22 November 2023


The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.


non-commercial use of CZ

  • We are not in competition with WP, nor are we a branch of WP. What we are is a separate but similar project, with the same general goal of producing a free public encyclopedia by community writing and revision, but the specific goal of producing one with controlled expert review. There are good reasons to have both, and therefore they should both be done optimally after their different fashions. We want our project to be as good as possible, so we wish to use good attributed copyright-free material from other sources, subject to our editing and review. We also want to encourage their project to be as good as possible, and therefore want them to use whatever of our material may serve their purposes, realizing that they will be subject to their processes of editing.

thoughts on expertise

The inherent problem in retaining experts is that experts have POV in their subject, and care very much about the details of their positions. They have attained their expertise by mastering the minutia and knowing the arguments. The more in detail one knows a subject, the more one realises how frail the academic consensus really is--and this is as it should be, because it is by working on the details that do not quite fit that one makes progress.

I have known many collective products, and it is always the case that the untrammeled editing by experts without the control of the more generally educated tends to lead to intellectual provincialism and ownership. But it is a little rare for an expert to accept such criticism in his own particular specialty.

The way in which I thought it was going to work here is that the editors in a broad subject field would be generally very knowledgeable, knowledgeable enough over a broad range to be able to judge the balance and subject pertinence of the true specialists who would be writing the articles.

The people who insist on ownership and heir own view prevailing in the articles they edit will not be happy in a cooperative editing project. Not everyone --however excellent they are as subject matter experts and as writers--can work successfully in a cooperative editing environment. And there is nothing wrong with them or the project; there is no reason why any particular individual need fit here. This is still a distinctive and experimental environment.

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