RationalWiki talk:What is going on at Citizendium?
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[edit] Somebody add this (Pulido had too many)
[[1]]
[edit] Updates!
Just a note about the latest WIGO, things are actually worse over at CZ then mentioned. Just some other problems I'm aware of of the top of my head:
- The blog is not working, but still linked to on the CZ main page. The last update to it was over 2 years ago in January 2013 so I guess it's not missed. Ironically the last entry was 2013: A Make-or-Break Year for Citizendium?
- Larry Sanger's Accelerated early childhood education article is missing its YouTube video.
- As well as Special:ActiveUsers not working, Special:PopularPages doesn't work either and this one's linked to from the main page. It actually shows up as a red link on the main page. Parts of other special pages are also broken. Special:ListFiles dosen't list any Thumbnails for some reason.
- Many of their Citable articles for example Complex number are unreadable because the math tags no longer work. This has to be the best one ever. Officially the entire point of CZ is to provide more reliable articles then Wikipedia or something, and yet any CZ article that deals with math is unusable. Of course we all know the real reason of CZ's existence is to provide it's players with a Bureaucracy simulation. I guess as long as that is at least technically working anything else is just a minor detail.
Also of note is that the old CZ forums no longer work and look like they will never be coming back. There was some talk about having them as an archive but given the above, hahahaha :) There are a lot of links to the forum in the RationalWiki article. We probably will need to change them over to the Internet archive at some point. 37.228.253.220 (talk) 17:11, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
- Feel free to add the above as an entry - David Gerard (talk) 18:01, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
- OMG It just keeps getting better!
- Today John Stephenson has been having trouble updating the Article Specific Template. Apparently the original attribution line was part of the Pinkwich skin and that was also lost in the upgrade. That was a damn ugly skin anyway so I think this is a rare case of some actual improvement.
- Despite the mighty Charter, Article 8 stating about CZ user pages that "they are not released to be indexed by search engines" John Stephenson has discovered that some CZ user pages are being indexed by Google.
- Yes John, those are the major issues of the day. Not no blog, no users, no articles and no future but Google indexing user pages. 37.228.253.220 (talk) 20:52, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
- OMG It just keeps getting better!
[edit]
This is old, but it wasn't hidden at all.
- if it wasn't being worked on before, what the hell was happening?
Well, the same thing that's happening right now to finish the job. NOTHING. Nothing at all.. We've laughed at the lack of movement on this issue before. 37.228.253.121 (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
[edit] Crowdsourcing the news actually works
An email I received from Larry today:
I had an idea for an experiment to build Infobitt:
- Invite people to commit to write some number of bitts (their choice) per day or per week.
- Collect the commitments on a spreadsheet.
- Report to the group (humorously called the "Commit-tee") what the totals are.
The results of the first week are in. Fourteen people collectively committed to write 33 bitts per day, or 231 for the week. After a week, those 14 collectively did in fact write exactly 231 per day (odd coincidence). The entire community wrote more than that, because quite a few other writers, who didn't commit, wrote a bunch as well.
So: Infobitt is working! We're discovering and showing the world how to crowdsource the news.
I want to invite you to join this same effort! Please reply to this email (larry@infobitt.com) stating how many bitts you can commit to writing, either per day or per week. Even one per week would be great. Two per day is not that hard.
Why it works:
- Infobitt is more fun when there are lots of people contributing.
- When you can be sure that others are contributing, you're more motivated.
- The more people who have committed, the more sure you can be that others will contribute!
And sure enough: in the first week of our experiment, Infobitt has been significantly more active...and more fun. So far, so good!
So, again, please check out the site and send me your commitments!
Best,
Larry
The site is already almost five months old, but Larry already has to get people to commit themselves to using the site. And even then only 14 people did so. It reminds me of the "Write-a-Thons" failing wiki's (like CZ) sometimes try to organize. Sites that people are actually interested in using don't need "commitments", "Write-a-Thons" or any other type of fluff, people will just use the site.
There also seems to be very little information about infobitt on the net. The Wikipedia article is just a short stub, and Google search results show only a few articles from late last year. I guess the internets aren't interested in Larry's so called "movement" to fix the news or whatever.
It looks to me that infobitt is going to be another Larry failure, which is no surprize. But I was surprized that it doesn't seem to have even taken off at the beginning. People have learned their lesson from CZ :) 37.228.229.180 (talk) 11:57, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
- So what is the relationship between Citizendium and Infobitt? Are they part of the same organization or just kind of overlap? 192.241.143.118 (talk) 20:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
- Just Larry - David Gerard (talk) 09:33, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
- Both were founded by Larry Sanger, both were going to change the world, and both have fallen into obscurity. 37.228.229.180 (talk) 18:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
[edit] CZ Election 2015
So, the CZ Bureaucracy is starting up again this year for election time.
Firstly, a quick recap of last years election. Written partly for myself as it's hard to follow all the red tape.
- Gareth Leng was elected to an editor seat. Ran unopposed and needed only an approval vote. Since election he has made 10 (ten) edits to the Citizendium.
- Peter Schmitt was elected to an editor seat. Also ran unopposed and needed only an approval vote. Since election he has made 1 (one) edit to the Citizendium.
- Christine Bush was elected to the only author seat. She stuck around for a few months. Her last edits were back in October 2014 to archive her Pseudonym Policy page and cut her user page down to a stub. I don't think she's coming back.
- Meg Ireland was also up for the author seat. She is the only person not to get elected and blanked her talk page afterward. She returned on 5 March 2015 to NOINDEX her user and talk page.
- Anthony Sebastian was elected as Managing Editor. Ran unopposed and needed only an approval vote. He's still around, but has only made 7 (seven) edits since 1 January 2015.
So with all the success of last years election let's talk about this years election.
Only Christine Bush's seat is actually ending this year, all the other terms end in June 2016 and whoever gets elected to this position will be given a two year term (until June 2017). Also, there are no longer different seats for authors and editors, at the last election all Council seats were opened up to all Citizens. The CZ:Governance mentions something about holding special elections to fill council seats that become vacant within (roughly) 90 days after a regularly scheduled election. Well, Peter Schmitt's seat looks pretty vacant to me so I'm wondering if they will try to fill that seat as well.
This was hard to write. I couldn't stop laughing at parts of it. 37.228.229.180 (talk) 03:21, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- 18 edits from CZ's elected leaders. It's hard to have inept leadership when there isn't any... Jeez. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 03:47, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- I was afraid someone would misinterpret what I wrote. There have been a lot more then 18 edits from CZ's elected leaders, it just that they haven't been sustained. Here are the raw numbers to look over. I was going to upload a graph but even with an account I don't have the necessary permissions.
| Gareth Leng | Peter Schmitt | Christine Bush | Anthony Sebastian | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | 3 | 1 | 84 | 28 |
| August | 1 | 0 | 131 | 8 |
| September | 1 | 0 | 83 | 17 |
| October | 2 | 0 | 79 | 18 |
| November | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| December | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| January | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| February | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| March | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Total | 10 | 1 | 377 | 82 |
ElectionJune2015 (talk) 04:26, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- Ah, I see now. Either way, not promising. Cømrade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 04:30, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
ElectionJune2015 (talk) 04:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- That Christine Bush edit count is misleading. Around 270 of those edits appear to be comments left on Talk pages and gardening her own User page, not mainspace editing. Also Peter Schmitt hasn't edited any mainspace articles for nearly 3 years. 37.235.54.87 (talk) 09:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- I knew there was a reason I never went through all the hoops to join over there. PacWalker 11:14, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- That Christine Bush edit count is misleading. Around 270 of those edits appear to be comments left on Talk pages and gardening her own User page, not mainspace editing. Also Peter Schmitt hasn't edited any mainspace articles for nearly 3 years. 37.235.54.87 (talk) 09:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
- The edit counts are just to show how active these people have been on the site. CZ edit counts are always inflated anyway because of the bureaucracy. For example, a new page on any normal wiki is one edit, but on CZ it's four because they have to create the talk page, a metadata page and a definition page. ElectionJune2015 (talk) 18:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
[edit] Potential nominees
I've been wondering who might possibly be nominated for the job. I went through the list of their active users, there's only 13 of them, to see what I could find. Now, an "active user" is any user who preformed an action in the last 30 days. For those user's I looked at how many edits they have made so far this year. I also had a quick look at how they responded to nominations in the last two elections. Note that I put this table together manually so there may be mistakes, fell free to correct any you find.
| Active users For 23 March 2015 — 22 April 2015 |
Total edits this year 1 January 2015 — 22 April 2015 |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| John Stephenson | 320 | Declined 2013 |
| Ro Thorpe | 289 | Declined 2013 |
| Martin Wyatt | 158 | Accepted 2013 |
| Robert A. Estremo | 134 | Declined 2013 and 2014 |
| Hayford Peirce | 129 | Declined 2014 |
| Peter Jackson | 93 | Declined 2014 |
| Pradyumna Singh | 77 | |
| Robert Badgett | 40 | Declined 2014 |
| Anthony.Sebastian | 7 | Current Managing Editor |
| Pat Palmer | 5 | Accepted 2013 |
| Darren Duncan | 2 | Tech Staff |
| David Yamakuchi | 1 | |
| Ramanand Jhingade | 1 |
My guess is the top six get nominated and whoever accepts will run unopposed, especially if Peter Schmitt's seat goes up for election as well. Or maybe someone I missed will crawl out of the woodwork and take the job. Or better yet, ten people will suddenly realize that they do not need a "council" of four to manage them. ElectionJune2015 (talk) 01:46, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
- Christine Bush made only two edits prior to being nominated, so contributions don't seem to be factored in with nominations. 37.235.54.87 (talk) 03:18, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
- First, to correct some factual inaccuracies: Christine Bush was nominated on 8 June 2014 after she had made 14 (fourteen) edits. Your point however (that contributions don't seem to be factored in with nominations) is well taken. To be honest, this just raises more questions than it answers. How the feck did she beet Meg Ireland 5 votes to 3!? I always thought I never heard of her before because she was someone from the beginning of the site who lapsed for a while and then came back. I remember we even ran a quick poll on the WIGO page and Meg convincingly beet Christine. What did Christine Bush do to get people to vote for her over someone who was actually active at the time? Did she run some sort of off wiki email campaign or something? I honestly don't get it! CZ is like quantum theory, the more you look into it, the less you understand it. ElectionJune2015 (talk) 04:09, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
- I stand corrected, but I should point out her third edit (1st June) was three days after the election, for that year, was announced (29th May), and seven months after her last edit. Coincidence? I think not. I'm not privy to what discussions occurred between admins and Christine Bush but the fact she made public mention of donating money to Citizendium, a number of times, may have something to do with it. There of course, could be a lot more to this behind closed doors, but we can't be 100% sure. 37.235.54.87 (talk) 08:35, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
- First, to correct some factual inaccuracies: Christine Bush was nominated on 8 June 2014 after she had made 14 (fourteen) edits. Your point however (that contributions don't seem to be factored in with nominations) is well taken. To be honest, this just raises more questions than it answers. How the feck did she beet Meg Ireland 5 votes to 3!? I always thought I never heard of her before because she was someone from the beginning of the site who lapsed for a while and then came back. I remember we even ran a quick poll on the WIGO page and Meg convincingly beet Christine. What did Christine Bush do to get people to vote for her over someone who was actually active at the time? Did she run some sort of off wiki email campaign or something? I honestly don't get it! CZ is like quantum theory, the more you look into it, the less you understand it. ElectionJune2015 (talk) 04:09, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
