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This page is pretty much dead, but is being retained as a memorial. Please edit it to keep it fresh! Citizendium and thus this page has either outlived its usefulness, or, through neglect and/or indifference, become mostly unused. If you wish to reinvigorate it, just pitch in and add something.
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Keep up to date with how nothing is going on at the alternate Wikipedia, Citizendium, with our rolling reports of the "happenings" there. Older entries are found in the archives.
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What is going on?
Note: Citizendium is a bit like a bad horror film: just when you think it's dead, it comes back and does something ridiculous. That said, we're pretty much documenting its terminal decline now. The WIGO is, however, still open to entries.
April 2022[edit]
   | 1 | The financial report gets a "minor update" revealing that the server operation now costs $99.00. |
March 2022[edit]
   | 0 | After a relative boom in activity in late 2020 and 2021, Citizendium is back to being moribund, having recent days with no edits. One of the few things going on is the ongoing maintenance of the article on macrobiotics. What little information there is on current practitioners in the current version of the article reveals that quite a few important practitioners died in 2021. |
   | 2 | Report is updated, showing donations coming up short of monthly hosting costs for the rest of 2021. But Citizendium can endure for a while as long as someone wants to keep the lights on. |
   | 6 | New Year, same old NIGO entry as Citizendium still hasn't updated the financial report since September 2021. |
November 2021[edit]
   | 4 | A bit like this log, the financial report hasn't been updated in several months. The initially impressive total for June is actually 5 months worth of Paypal donations, which works out at an average of $72.97 a month, just shy of their hosting costs. |
June 2021[edit]
   | 4 | The financial report is updated, showing only $5 monthly donations since the last update. But at this rate, Citizendium can still manage to hang around for another 41 months. |
May 2021[edit]
   | 1 | Although editing rates have improved from their 2019 lows, there's a new problem: the financial report hasn't been updated since February! |
April 2021[edit]
   | 3 | Pat Palmer authors a page giving Citizendium's current reason for its existence, which explicitly states that "The Citizendium" is a supplement to Wikipedia, and not a competitor. |
February 2021[edit]
   | 7 | CZ's Gertrude Stein article is entirely written by Pat Palmer in the style of an opinion blog, and contained this gem of a quote: "Anyone wanting to know about Gertrude Stein's childhood, education, or what she liked for dinner, is welcome to hop over to Wikipedia and find it out there. There will be a list of the famous writers and artists who attended her salon, and much on her personal life, including her same-sex relationships (if that has anything to do with anything literary)." A dissenting editor's attempts to improve the article fall on deaf ears. |
   | 2 | Citizendium gets a big donation (for them) but it's not clear where from. |
December 2020[edit]
November 2020[edit]
   | 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[edit]
August 2020[edit]
July 2020[edit]
   | 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. |
   | 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[edit]
   | 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:
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   | 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. |
May 2020[edit]
   | 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. |
April 2020[edit]
   | 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 | 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[edit]
   | 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. |
February 2020[edit]
   | 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. |
   | 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] |