Citizendium and Wikipedia
As Michael Fischer observed elsewhere on the OAC, Wikipedia coverage for anthropology is dismal in comparison to other disciplines due to lack of participation by anthropologists. As Rex noted at Savage Minds some time ago, the same holds true for Citizendium. Any ideas as to why this might be the case?
Citizendium even has a program, Eduzendium, where they partner with university programs to create high-quality entries by allowing students, under teacher supervision, to write public entries about key terms pertaining to their discipline. This would be a great project for undergraduate anthropology courses.
Citizendium even has a program, Eduzendium, where they partner with university programs to create high-quality entries by allowing students, under teacher supervision, to write public entries about key terms pertaining to their discipline. This would be a great project for undergraduate anthropology courses.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Beck J on
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Also while I am at Keith your statements about Huon and Kathleen humoring or being ironic are pretty lame. Why can't they speak for themselves? Let them say they were only humoring or being ironic! If they were humoring or being ironic then that is ironic in itself isn't it - after all, irony is so revealing about the user, isn't that the nature of irony. We could all sit there and take a Freudian view of Huon's, Kathleens' or your comments and play them out for all to see - but what is the point. Huon and Kathleen were basically pretty harmless and to my mind were not being ironic but displaying a very situated take on objects that I believe now they have very little knowledge of - but i don't denigrate for that. Indeed it was Daniel's comment last posting that was most revealing of all - and it wasnt humorous or ironic.
Beck
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Keith, last post on these accusations - I don't believe in how many ways you have attacked me; what did I do to you?
you said also that:
"I have never been convinced that the position taken by Beck is genuine and, if it is, he has taken up too much of the space for this discussion. Far from hounding him out for his neanderthal views, several people here, including Huon, have been tolerant and rational, if at times ironic. You now want to escalate the argument into one of a few utopian activists missing the boat when it comes to the vast majority of self-interested or passive OAC members. In the meantime some of us are trying to do something about it. Rome wasn't built in a day"
Ofcourse it is genuine, why would it not be. What is so neanderthal about my views? Am I not trying to do something about it as you put it -whatever that "it" is, by challenging and elaborating on how wikis really operate. What has what I have had to say got to do with building Rome in day? Justin Shafner clearly asked why participation was so low in Wikis - I gave an answer - you might not think it correct but you should say why you think it is not correct, not make ad hominem attacks. Huon and Kathleen could not say why they thought i was wrong either - so as per usual, the student gets the kicking. Thats is what really is going on here I think. Anyway I have to go and play tennis and take swim so I want to clear my head a bit.
Becky
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Permalink Reply by Kathleen Lowrey on
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Hey Becky (if I may), it's upsetting to see you so distressed -- if you go back through the thread, I think you'll see the conversation headed south around the time PCS jumped in rather nastily; I think Keith was responding to that more than to you. I must confess that I was indeed ribbing you a bit when I asked how you felt about public libraries; I think several of us have been a bit perplexed as to your position & Keith was reacting to that perplexity. At this point, it's obvious that your concern about the appropriation of labour and the problem of exploitation is sincere -- I don't want you to take it the wrong way, but I do think you've got hold of the wrong end of the problem in your proposed solutions (more privatization, more for-profit frameworks). But your heart is in the right place and that's important; you're obviously interested in reading and learning too, which is even more important.
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Permalink Reply by Keith Hart on
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OK, Becky, I apologize. The point is that this thread has become about you, every day pushing the same point and diverting those who want to from getting on with discussing what to do about wikis in anthropology. You have been given your say and how! I and several others here think your views are reactionary, but we didn't say that so brutally. Kathleen was right to say that I was responding to another intervention as well. It has nothing to do with your being a student. For all I know you could be a troll from New York having fun. When someone without a transparent ID spends so much time on our front page attacking the most fundamental premise of the OAC, that we benefit from giving free labour to a new kind of anthropological commons, I think some of us are entitled to wonder about that person's motives. I did in fact think that you might be female, but I wanted to show how little about you we know and this is the inverse of your presence on this thread which, as I said, has become mainly about you and your views,. Quite an achievement for a student. Look at the number of posts. If it hadn't been for you, this would have died long ago with a dozen posts. I am off on a plane in a couple of hours, so not available for a while. I wanted to respond briefly before going.
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J Beck/Beck Johnson, While we are on the topic of identity, why have you opened three accounts in the OAC on October 5th, October 15th and now again today? Apart from encouraging transparency in our mutual relations, we also discourage duplication of this sort. Which of your profiles would you like us to delete? You can modify a single profile, you know.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Mietchen on
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Beck J said:
Having recently switched from student to instructor, I am aware of both perspectives, and I agree that the personal interaction in offline courses is an integral part of education. However, I repeat that the Eduzendium initiative is not about additional labour for students — it is one option for instructors to consider for written assignments (that are part of coursework anyway), as an alternative to more traditional ones. All the content-related "labour" by students would be within the usual coursework and thus be the same on the word processor or on the wiki, and if formatting in the latter environment is a problem, help is available via other Citizendium participants (again, up to the instructor to decide, but reasonable requests by students will generally not be turned down). So all the criticisms you put forward against public wikis (except, perhaps the feeling one's way part, which I think may be valid for undergrads, as discussed in another OAC thread) do not apply to Eduzendium, and to keep things focused, I will not discuss here to what extent they may apply to wikis in general or to Citizendium in particular, but I have provided a detailed discussion of web-age ways to structure knowledge in several blog posts, focusing for the most part on wikis.Hi Daniel
Im 3rd year now - nearly finished and I canvassed a few friends on this and no-one wanted to spend their time doing wikis. Also why force students to publish their work when they are still learning to write and explore their fields. We have a seminar series which is intimate and for students only precisely because it is a safe environment for us to feel our way. Also most of us are not stupid, we can appreciate history, economics, politics, maths philosophical or anthropological concepts - but the best way to understand something is to sit down with you teacher and discuss it - and then as you move through - as in the case of anthropologists into the field where you have to readjust all you have learnt for yourself - you experience of it. What does doing Wikis for no money add to that? Presumably there will only be so much that can be written by students about ritual in New Guinea - so only a select few will actually get to write - the rest read what is written. Also we have to pay for everything here so why should I then be forced to contribute labour beyond my course requirement as well - I don't understand - I already pay and now you want me to work for eduzendium?
Beck J said:
I was not involved in naming the project, just gave its etymology to facilitate correct spelling. The idea behind the name "Citizendium" is, though, that the project has the long-term goal to generate a compendium useful for citizens to inform themselves on basically anything — rather irrespective of their country — and that decision making within the project should be democratic, as opposed to the rather anarchic style over at Wikipedia.
Anyway if enduzendium is so good why hasn't it taken off and why aren't you paying people? Also you use the word citizen but how is it I am citizen - I am a citizen of my own country I thought. Beck
Why we are not paying people? Well, we are a volunteer project that wants to help collect unbiased information, and you probably know that there are not too many sources of money which would be available to support that.
The question why it hasn't taken off is a valid one, and I do not claim to know a definite answer. I do think, however, that there are a number of reasons contributing to this: (1) Most instructors today do not (yet?) consider wikis (or blogs or other Web 2.0 tools, for that matter) for assigning coursework, (2) those few who do are often not familiar with the vast variety of platforms available, and so they stick to those they know — which is generally Wikipedia or a discipline-specific wiki, rather than the best suited for the purpose of their course (3) Eduzendium was launched only last year, and changes in academic procedures simply take time, (4) we did not engage in PR — even if you regard my participation in this thread as such, we haven't participated in many such discussions because we were concentrating instead on implementing and testing Citizendium as a new form of a wiki, one to which everyone can contribute under their real name, where expertise counts, and where insults are not tolerated. We are about to finish this initial phase with the drafting of a charter for the project (again, similar to constitutional democracies, but applied to a global online community concerned with structuring knowledge), and once this is done, you may also hear about the project more often in the media. Meanwhile, it remains open for those who prefer a quieter atmosphere.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Irvine on
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Beck(y?) you make some interesting points, and hold your ground well on a couple of things, but I am somewhat puzzled at your invocation of Rupert Murdoch. Could you explain where that comes from and what it is that you think that he has said that makes him worth listening to in this debate?
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Permalink Reply by Huon Wardle on -
Becky has voiced her opinion (below) very extensively, and produced some reasons to support it: she has even found someone who supports her perspective. That seems a fair outcome and nobody's loss.
I want Governments to free up the web so that companies can sell services, employ people and so on. I second Rupert Murdoch's claim that Wikis and googles, even Ning etc are the free loaders of today, existing in loopholes and costing the rest of us big time. The open source movement is so detrimental to the development of web based economies that I fear we are costing the world - especially the poor and marginalized for decades to come. I argue that we should close the commons - and countries like Sweden and Denmark who have the most slack approach to regulation of the web should be made to pay compensation.
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Permalink Reply by Philip Carl SALZMAN on
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Hey, Kathleen, let's keep pointing fingers and pouring oil on the fire.
Maybe you would like to explain exactly what is "nasty" about pointing out that Beck is in a different economic position than some of the others of us, and that her perspective may reflect that. Keith's abusive emails are far from his first. I know it is hard, but try not to blame the victims here. If a diversity of views is not welcome on OAC, let's be explicit about the Official Line that must be followed, and be systematic about deleting any views that do not conform.
Kathleen Lowrey said:Hey Becky (if I may), it's upsetting to see you so distressed -- if you go back through the thread, I think you'll see the conversation headed south around the time PCS jumped in rather nastily; I think Keith was responding to that more than to you. I must confess that I was indeed ribbing you a bit when I asked how you felt about public libraries; I think several of us have been a bit perplexed as to your position & Keith was reacting to that perplexity. At this point, it's obvious that your concern about the appropriation of labour and the problem of exploitation is sincere -- I don't want you to take it the wrong way, but I do think you've got hold of the wrong end of the problem in your proposed solutions (more privatization, more for-profit frameworks). But your heart is in the right place and that's important; you're obviously interested in reading and learning too, which is even more important.
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Permalink Reply by Martin Walsh on
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Another thread that has degenerated / tragedy of the internet commons?
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Not at all! I had never heard of Citizendium nor Eduzendium before this, and have found Daniel's explications most illuminating. I also have yet to be in any internet forum, anywhere, that didn't go through regular episodes of more heat-than-light; to say that somehow it's a problem specific to OAC (or that lurking is!) is silly. Does that make me think the internet is a tragedy? Hardly! Without exaggerating, I read 10 times the number of interesting contemporary thinkers on a weekly basis than I did before it existed. Many more of them are women and people of color than was ever the case when access was limited to print forums -- sheesh, look at the latest issue of NLR. 10 contributors, every last one a man; only one has a name that doesn't sound euro-something. Sniffy laments about the internet and how it isn't quite as civilized as one might like are in my view as politically dubious as laments about the good old days, back when people knew their places and conducted themselves accordingly.
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So, why are anthropologists not writing and editing articles for online encyclopaedias/compendia to the extent that they might? (Wasn't that Justin's original question? Have we answered it? Do we accept its premises?)
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