[p2p-research] Wikipedia, Citizendium, Eduzendium, Oh My!

[Jon Awbrey]

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JA = Jon Awbrey
MB = Michel Bauwens

JA: i wonder if it would be possible to move our discussion from the blog
    to this or some other suitable list, as it would allow me to be a bit
    more organized and timely than i can accomplish in those little boxes?

JA: i might also think to invite greg kohs to join the discussion, as he
    knows far more about the financial side of things, for example, the
    relationship between the profit wikia and the ostensibly charitable
    wikipedia.

MB: that's a good idea, I think we can use p2presearch
    and gregory can subscribe to it

Okay, for the sake of those who are just joining the programme
here is the initial blog post "From Citizendium To Eduzendium":

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/from-citizendium-to-eduzendium/2008/01/29

And here is the commentary so far, sans formatting:

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12 Responses to “From Citizendium to Eduzendium”

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1. Richard Norton Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 2:57 am

Many in academia hate wikipedia, because it is not ‘authoritative. Is this new project just a way to “validate and legitimate truth” through the old traditional educational systems?

I don’t care if it is sponsored by one of the Wikipedia founders, that type of authority doesn’t give it legitimacy to me either.

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2. S Rhodes Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 10:39 am

I’m no fan of aspects of wikipedia, but not because of authority or lack thereof. They are really a basic filter of no ads and a guaranteed relevant overview or introduction to information, from which I can get a general enough idea about something to dig further somewhere else. If I find out they’re off, so be it. Most reasonable people use it in this same way.

My biggest problem with wikipedia is that it does not control for people dominating it through spending a lot of time on it, or far worse, tagging, obfuscating, and DELETING content. Rule #1, Do not delete content, you gain nothing and lose a lot by cutting off the long tail.

The problem with wikipedia in academia isn’t wikipedia at all, because I think they were, and are, just another social organism that’s provided valuable lessons about p2p. The problem is that academia is still largely technophobic–or if that is too strong, technoresistant–and clueless about p2p and information, i.e. I go to google scholar and can’t read minimum 75% of the research. Academics are no longer just at universities, and locking up authority makes no sense. PLoS has gotten a clue, but how long will it take for all the other publications?

If most academic authority remains locked up, it is necessary to create academic authority outside those walls. Wikipedia’s perceived dominance as any sort of “deep” research authority is a reflection of academia’s failing, and we would all be well served by opening up those silos of information.

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3. Jon Awbrey Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

As a lifelong critic of almost everything “establishment”, I was more than a little bemused to find that it was actually possible to do things worse, but Wikipedia and Citizendium showed me that it was.

Whether Eduzendium can escape the Randroid fardels of Sanger and Wales remains to be seen, so I will leave that case open for now.

Recent reflections on the Danger To Society that Wikipedia poses are posted here:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=15572&view=findpost&p=76455

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4. Zbigniew Lukasiak Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

I am waiting for a similar venture in computing science - where the assignments would be contributing to some Open Source projects.

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5. Richard Norton Says:
   January 31st, 2008 at 12:12 am

I have worked as a librarian in a university for the past eight years. I am aware of the joke about the dog saying that on the internet no one knows that he is a dog. However, I am sick and tired of faculty, and the Director of the Library where I work telling students about the uselessness of information gleaned from Wikipedia or straight off of Google.

Instead they are directed to State sanctioned databases where they collect rather generic stale articles on various topics. Instead we should be teaching them critical thinking skills to evalutate information with.

The “traditional processes of validating and legitimating truth 
 are suddenly challenged 
” (Paul Hartzog). Peer to peer methods are diffusing the academic sphere so that there is no longer a distinct line between the amatuer and the academic.

Most academics are too locked into the same old traditional ideas that they feed their students.

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6. Michel Bauwens Says:
   January 31st, 2008 at 11:33 am

Hi Jon,

Despite my own critique of Wikipedia, I take a slightly different view on the Wikipedia as an overall project. I basically believe that peer production and peer governance, are a more dynamic mode of production and governance, despite the flaws and dysfunctionalities that we may discover in it. To take a historical analogy: feudalism had qualities and weaknesses but undoubtedly, capitalism was more dynamic and efficient. This means that however flawed Wikipedia might be, it is still this kind of processes which will largely replace earlier modes in knowledge production, such as private exclusionary encyclopedic production a la Brittanica. So, the locus is on either reforming, or offering alternatives to Wikipedia, within the format of peer production of knowledge, the key being the successfull marriage of wider participatio, with processes for the selection of quality and excellence. I do believe that the basic process of opening up knowledge production to non-credentialed experts is a sound one, and if it can work for free software, it can work for more soft knowledge production as well.

What is not clear to me yet is the nature of your critique of Citizendium and Eduzendium, quite different animals from Wikipedia. What do you see as ‘wrong’ with those?

Is your alternative a return to classic expert-written, paid, private IP proprietary, knowledge production ventures?

Michel

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7. Zbigniew Lukasiak Says:
   January 31st, 2008 at 11:38 am

Hey Jon - why are you joining Wikipedia with Citizendium? My understanding is that Citizendium was an attempt to cure the failures of Wikipedia - even if it was not that successful - then applying all Wikipedia critisism to Citizendium without any supportive argumentation is rather unfair.

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8. Jon Awbrey Says:
   January 31st, 2008 at 9:02 pm

Richard,

All of the the Library/Information Science folks that I know have been teaching what they call “Information Literacy” — basically just critical thinking applied to emerging media — for many years now.

The problem with Wikipedia is not so much with the content — it’s mediocre to misleading, but it could be fixed in time if it were not for the warped practices that appear doomed to prevail there — it is the conduct that malleable minds “learn by doing” from the doings there.

My serious concern, based on two years of experience watching it happen, is that the best lessons of Information Literacy are being undermined by over-exposure to the warp of the Wikipedia culture.

I have collected previous comments on this theme at this page of The Wikipedia Review:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=14474&view=findpost&p=68034

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9. Jon Awbrey Says:
   February 1st, 2008 at 2:38 pm

Michel,

I don’t know what to say. If you believe that Wikipedia exemplifies the ideals of a peer community then I fear to wake you from your dogmatic slumbers — I have seen how grumpy people get on being roused from such a dream as that! Wikipedia has its elite. That elite did not “emerge” from the grass roots of some self-organizing e-lysian field — that elite has been carefully elected and empowered by the ownership of Wikipedia. Wikipedia maintains an Iron Cage like none I’ve ever seen before. Maintain your ideals, but learn to recognize those who would use your ideals against you.

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10. Michel Bauwens Says:
    February 1st, 2008 at 4:58 pm

I am NOT saying that the Wikipedia ‘exemplifies the ideals of a peer community’, I’m saying that it IS an expression of actually existing peer production and governance, and exemplifies the possible dysfunctions of it. Think about it: who is getting paid to produce the wikipedia, who orders the volunteers to write the articles, etc
?? It is neither a market, nor a corporate command structure, but a dysfunctional peer production process, that is nevertheless, despite all its weaknesses, overtaking Brittanica.

This means that reforming Wikipedia to make it into a corporation of paid workers, or a market of freelancers, is not an option, but that it is within that very dynamic of voluntary contributions and universal availability that solutions need to be found, i.e. from dysfunctional to more functional and democratic methods that are more productive in terms of selecting for excellence etc
 or failing that, creating alternative projects that do.

Peer production and governance is an actual practice, that carries with it certain potential and ideals, which may or may not be fully realized, and subject to its own problems and dysfunctions, which cannot be understood in terms of previous mode of productions and governance.

That is the point that I’m making.

Michel

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11. Jon Awbrey Says:
    February 1st, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Michel,

Let’s back up a little then.

I have been assuming that the word peer connoted equal. For instance, the word umpire derives by incorrect division from the Middle French nomper for not equal. So I would not call something a peer system unless all of the people in the system had equal status, that is, no umpires. Wikipedia is so remote from being anything like a peer system that it really makes no sense to apply the concept in any positive way.

I view the economics of motivation and reward in somewhat broader terms than the purely monetary, and I have gotten some sense of what rewards, or prospects of reward, motivate various classes of workers in Wikipedia.

But the fact remains that Wikipedia is exactly like some of the most regressive systems that we have seen in the past — where the majority of the monetary rewards are going to classes of people who OWN the means of production and distribution, and who spend their time figuring out how to increase their control and their exploitation of that production, as opposed to producing anything themselves.

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12. Michel Bauwens Says:
    February 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 am

Jon,

that’s the problem between definitions and real life.

Peer production has three aspects:
1) voluntary contributions;
2) participatory processes;
3) commons oriented output.

Clearly, the Wikipedia has one and three, but the participatory process has gone astray.

A different issue, but of course related, is the relations between the commons and the businesses that live from it. What you have here is I think a similar issue to why democracy invented the separation of powers. What you decry is that the group of people that you say are profiting from it, are perhaps also responsible for the degeneration of the participatory process.

This is entirely possible, but I think that it can also degenerate on its own (tyranny of structurelessness), or it is the degeneration that subsequently creastes possibilities of privileged capture.

What I’d like to know is details about how you see that mechanism of exploitation, and how it impacts the process. Are you sure that the deletionists have the same agenda, and are beholden, to the individual business interests of some in the wikimedia foundation?

My provisional sense is that this is not necessarily related.

At the start you said ‘back up a little’.

So let’s do that. Take the difference between stalinism and fascism. Both are despicable totalitarian systems, but they proceeded from entirely different premises. The first was a degeneration of an egalitarian ethos, the second an actual carrying of an inegalitarian ideal. No matter how rotten the first was, it was originally an attempt for an egalitarian society.

The Wikipedia is similary an instantiation of an egalitarian ideal, that has gone astray. However, we have to keep a sense of perspective on these things, it is still a matter of voluntary contribution, and still a matter of universal availability.

The exploitation part seems very relative to me: how much money are Wales et al. actually making of Wikipedia? Unless you know things that I don’t, I don’t see much evidence of it But I’ll keep an open mind for your answer.

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13. Jon Awbrey Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
    February 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 am

<blockquote cite="Zbigniew Lukasiak, 31 Jan 2008">
Hey Jon — why are you joining Wikipedia with Citizendium? My understanding is that Citizendium was an attempt to cure the failures of Wikipedia — even if it was not that successful — then applying all Wikipedia critisism to Citizendium without any supportive argumentation is rather unfair.
</blockquote>

Zbigniew,

I participated in a couple of the projects that Larry Sanger carried on in the interval between Wikipedia and Citizendium and I participated in the early phases of the Citizendium startup itself.

Based on that experience I would have to express the following evaluations:

Sanger rightly saw the need to fix one of the big problems with Wikipedia, namely, the lack of accountability and responsibility that is engendered by the use of pseudonyms, but he failed to learn almost every other lesson of Wikipedia’s failings, and he is characteristically impervious to any significant criticism of the underlying Wikipedia model, the lion’s share of which he himself crafted.

His feeling appears to be that it was only the implementation of his basic policies that went off track, not the foundation itself that was flawed.

This has resulted in an even more rigid adherence to the fundamental Wikipediot Dogma than we find at Wikipedia itself.

I do not expect anything new to come of that.

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