RationalWiki:Nothing is going on at Citizendium/2020

December 2020

9

Finally they realized that Astrology is not part of Astronomy and that Phrenology is pseudoscience. Kudos to John Stephenson!

November 2020

14

Hayford Peirce has died. Peirce was CZ's treasurer, it's not clear what will happen there. Mark Widmer is current treasurer.

6

Larry's back!? Apparently he wants to upgrade and relaunch CZ (tweet), although I can't find he's actually engaged on CZ since transferring ownership back in July.

September 2020

4

And just like that, they're back to just the usual $5 monthly donation for August. Hey, two months was a good run, right?

August 2020

14

Monthly financial report update: Donation record set again ($505.00), plus monthly costs are down to $74.95 following the recent server upgrade. This comes as Citizendium begins a renewed push to get more users/activity, though it's unlikely this plan will work if the past few years are any indication.

July 2020

14

Now we know what will happen with their funds after CZ has been shut down.

6

Will CZ live after all? Apparently the main page now says "we intend to keep going", while acknowledging that only a few people remain interested in the project.

1

After a mere four years, the site notice displayed to visitors telling them to treat the "new" site as a beta has been removed.

5

As of right now (14:44 UTC July 21), Citizendium is down and giving a "connection timed out error". Edit: Server upgrade was completed around 15:15. Curious time to schedule downtime though.

10

Checking in on the financial report: Citizendium got $295.70 worth of donations in June, the most they've received in a month since December 2017. Citizendium's impending shutdown has also triggered unprecedented levels of editing activity (the past 5 days have all had at least 1 edit), as people seek to make their last edits before the wiki closes.

11

Sanger returns, for the first time in eight years. He transfers ownership of CZ to Pat Palmer and creates an article on Atonement.

19

For its last days, Citizendium will at least have working SSL.

June 2020

2

Now we know what will happen with their funds after CZ has been shut down.

10

Updates to CZ's main page acknowledge the impending shutdown while expressing hope that the site may continue in some form

8

Even as most of the remaining Citizens are on-board with shutting down Citizendium completely, Pat Palmer still wants to keep the project afloat in some form and is now suggesting that CZ be converted into a subscription-based opt-in no-public editing wiki (Darren Duncan also seems to like aspects of the idea, although he also supports a simple shutdown with any remaining content being archived somewhere else). And of course it wouldn't be CZ without keeping the real names policy! As of June 26 the only other Citizen that supports CZ continuing is N Rajendra Raju.

12

The end of Citizendium⁉ Discussion on formally shutting down the project has restarted on CZ with treasurer Hayford Peirce sending messages to users who have made recent edits or who are administrators to contribute to the shutdown talks.

6

Things of note over the last two weeks or so: John Leach returns from what hole he came from to write an article on a long-dead cricketer. Akarsh creates two (very short) articles in two topics: Goods (three sentences) and Services (two sentences). As of today (June 20) there have been no edits since this edit by John on the 10th to the aforementioned cricketer article.

11

The CZ gets its first new user (Akarsh Verma) in almost two years!

7

Just to note for the record that Hayford Pierce is now the only active user of CZ with a single edit to update the financial report. This is the first time CZ has had a single active user; and the first time there has only been one edit in the last 30 days.

9

Hayford Pierce breaks a record 30-day streak without edits to add this month's $5 donation to the financial report. Nobody edited in between monthly updates to the financial report.

May 2020

10

As of today (28 May) there have been no edits to Citizendium since the aforementioned edit by Hayford on 2 May. At almost four weeks this is easily the longest ever dry spell for the site.

7

In the 3½ weeks since 16 April four editors have each made a single edit to Citizendium. Martinkugler edited their user page on 17 April, ‎N Rajendra Raju added the same sentence to P Venkataramana Raju (Rao Bahadur) twice on the 24 April, Martin added two sentences to The City of Dreadful Night on 1 May and Hayford updated the financial report on 2 May.

April 2020

5

As of today (April 16) four editors have made edits to Citzendium this month: John, Hayford, Martin, and ‎Roger A. Lohmann. Among them, only John and Roger have made multiple edits, with Roger's only edits being to his userspace. Schizophrenia and Medieval English Mystics‎ are the only articles to have been edited so far. About the only other thing of note that's taken place this month was a DMCA takedown request that was acted upon.

5

Citizendium's "Recent Events" box is gone from the website, with it no longer being deemed "topical". Prior to its removal, it still listed events such as Mosul and Brexit as "ongoing" but had no mention of the coronavirus pandemic (indeed, Citizendium does not have an article on anything coronavirus-related at all.)

7

CZ's finances drop below $2,000 for the first time since 2017.

7

Justin becomes the first non-Peter editor on Citizendium in weeks, and surprisingly the edit is not about closing CZ down this time.

March 2020

10

For perhaps the first time in Citizendium history, no edits are listed on its recent changes page, instead it shows a "No changes during the given period matching these criteria" message.

1

As of this edit (March 28), Peter's notice is the only edit to the wiki that's listed on the site's Recent Changes page. If there are still no edits by tomorrow, that will mean that Citizendium's Special:RecentPages page will soon be empty for the first time in its history.

10

During these trying times, it's interesting to note that there is no mention of COVID-19 on Citizendium's "current events" box, but other events such as Brexit, Mosul and FBI are included.

7

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as of today (March 26) there hasn't been a single edit to Citizendium since Peter's notice.

9

Peter Jackson notifies the void that he has likely made his last edit for months. He has been the only contributor to Citizendium since March 4th, and during that time, Citizendium had its first stretch of seven full days without edits.

February 2020

10

Only six edits over the past week, all of them by Peter. Did he not get the memo that even his remaining fellow Citizens have given up? You know that the end is near when even Hayford is now calling for the project's demise.

January 2020: A Make-or-Break Year for Citizendium?

18

It might time to start etching Citizendium's gravestone, as Hayford and Justin have decided to contact Larry about shutting down the project. No reply was given as of now to Hayford's first e-mail, but Hayford has sent another one, and a week from now Hayford and Justin may again discuss the project's future.[1]

8

As of today (January 24), a grand total of three editors (Peter, Hayford, and ‎Justin Anthony Knapp) have made any edits to CZ in all of 2020, with Justin's only edits being the aforementioned proposals to close CZ. In addition, there were no edits on New Year's Day, and on January 3rd, 5th to 8th, 15th to 18th, and the 22nd.

12

In the first week of 2020, there was a grand total of 1 edit to content namespaces meaning the encyclopaedia shrank by a net 3 characters.[2]

15

The final end? Justin and Hayford believe the time has finally come to shut the project down: "It's clear that Citizendium is simply not going to be a viable project as an encyclopedia."[3]