User:Geo Swan/my first experience on the citizendium

See User:Geo Swan/Stale drafts#Scaffolding

I decided to try out the Citizendium today. (why am I considering defecting? Briefly, the routine breaches of WP:CIV and other policies over on {{afd}}

I've been asked to give a short write-up of the experience.

I read about the Citizendium in a recent article in The Times. Larry Sanger, who The Times described as the wikipedia's co-founder, is one of the people behind the Citizendium.

The first difference between the Citizendium and the wikipedia you will encounter is that it doesn't allow anonymous editing. One has to apply for an ID first. One's ID is normally one's name, although one can request a pseudonym.

The application isn't onerous -- you have to write a short bio, which becomes the first text on your User page.

Many things work exactly the same way as they do on the wikipedia. Geo Swan 11:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Differences I have discovered so far are:

the from wikipedia box	Next to the boxes for [] minor, and [] watch this page, there is a box that says [] from wikipedia. If you check this box, when you create the article, it adds a sentence at the bottom of the page that says the article includes material from the wikipedia. When I wrote a note on wikipedia:village pump earlier today, I wrote something that turns out to have been incorrect. I don't know whether I just remember it wrong, confused the citizendium with another wiki, or whether there has been a policy change since I visited it in early September. I wrote that the Citizendium, by default, serves up wikipedia pages, and forks a new version the first time an editor edits the page, and that the editor has access to both the edit history from edits on the citizendium and the edit history from wikipedia. This is incorrect. Sorry for misleading everyone. Yet I am sure there is another wiki that does this. The first article I started on the Citizendium was: extrajudicial detention. Rather than copy the most recent wikipedia version I copied only my contributions. The second article I started was Humanitarian daily ration
subpages	On top of the article/talk page dyad the Citizendium adds subpages. When you start an article you are requested to put {{subpages}} at the top. This template brings up a form that asks you to edit half a dozen elements of metadata. We have seen volunteers slowly go through the wikipedia, and try to rate and classify some kinds of articles, after the fact. On the citizendium the initial editor enters some of the metadata that the wikipedia's volunteers enter after the fact. FWIW I think this is a good idea. The initial editor fills in a metadata field specifying how the article should be sorted (presumably in categories). This replaces {{defaultsort}}. The initial editor picks some classifications, like how Other fields the initial editors fills out are used to request various kinds of attention, or signal aspects of the article that need work, like whether it is poorly linked, or whether someone should check the categories. There are other fields in this metadata page, that I ignored, because they are for the use of those who do the equivalent of new pages patrol. Geo Swan 11:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Constables	Like wikipedia administrators, except becoming an administrator is by invitation. (Original wikipedia administrators were all by appointment too, weren't they?) The new articles I created were checked within a few hours. And I got a very cordial note from the administrator constable. Geo Swan 11:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
more later

why I am considering defecting

In my experience breaches of policy are routine in the wikipedia's deletion fora. I have no problem, in general, in abiding by the consensus of the community.

• But the policies of WP:CIV, WP:AGF and WP:NPA are routinely breached in the deletion fora.
• Nominators routinely nominate articles for deletion for criteria for reasons that are counter to the wikipedia policy for what should be nominated for deletion
  • In particular, a perception that an article violates WP:NPOV is not grounds for deletion. I write on controversial topics. That makes it more difficult to comply with WP:NPOV. So I take extra effort to comply. I don't expect to succeed 100%. So I do my best to take every challenge to my conformance with policy seriously. What I have found is that about half of those who have a concern that something I have written has breached WP:NPOV don't make any attempt, or don't make a meaningful effort to engage in a civil discussion of their concern -- instead they nominate the article in question for deletion.
• In my experience an alarming percentage of those expressing an opinion for delete, or keep justify those opinions with reasons that do not comply with policy, or use arguments to avoid.
• In my experience closing administrators don't always comply with policy, and aren't always civil.

In my experience a small fraction of the wikipedia's administrators act as if being trusted with administrator authority has freed them from any obligation to comply with WP:CIV. Geo Swan 11:43, 19 October 2007 (UTC)