Click and Double-Click, Episode 20: Citizendium
Laura Blankenship September 13th, 2007
Today Mark and I talked to Leslie Madsen-Brooks from the University of California-Davis and Jerome Delacroix, a member of the editorial board for Citizendium, a wiki encyclopedia project that seeks to remedy some of the problems with Wikipedia. Their approach is to have contributors use their real names and to have an actual editorial process. They seek to get academics involved as much as possible but are open to amateur contributions as well. This conversation arose out of a blog post by Madsen-Brooks where she questioned the “gatekeeperesque” stance Citizendium has taken and its effect on marginalized groups such as women and minorities. We discuss Citizendium’s editorial process and goals as well as the issues raised by Madsen-Brooks. It’s an interesting conversation. Take a listen.
Other links:
- A follow-up to Leslie Madsen-Brooks’ post.
- Wikichix, a group of women involved in Wikipedia issues.
Yeah, the problems with Wikipedia are legion. My favorites examples are (1) someone with a personal agenda editing a page on Leslie Feinberg to turn it into an anti-Feinberg slander-rant; (2) someone deleting an article on a well-known, nationally-reported murder of a trans woman because trans women aren’t “notable” enough to be included in Wikipedia.
But I think that Citizendium will present its own problems:
* Despite their claims that anybody will be able to post, I think that academicians will be privileged and people w/o much formal education will be frozen out, and that brings up race and class issues;
* It seems impossible for non-academicians to become editors;
* Just because editors are acamedicians with advanced degrees, doesn’t mean that they will be without prejudices. Example - can you imaging Michael Bailey, Janice Raymond, Mary Daly, or some other Ph.D. bearing transphobe being the editor of articles on trans issues? Or, more subtly, someone who has 100% social-constructionist views about gender refusing to approve articles that claim an inherent gender identity outside of social influences.
* Similarly, editors who are members of privileged groups that dominate a subject matter will tend to shut down people who are not of that privileged group. Example: The field of evolutionary biology is dominated by men, hence editors will mostly be male, and articles by women will be suppressed. (This is pointed out by Joan Roughgarden in her book “Evolution’s Rainbow”).
I think that Citizendium is just going to replace one set of problems with another.
Better for Wiki is to see how ODP work!
Thanks,
ODP volunteer