Q&A: Wikipedia co-founder tweaks 'ignore all rules' philosophy in new project

Q&A: Wikipedia co-founder tweaks 'ignore all rules' philosophy in new project

March 28, 2007 -- Larry Sanger's answer to Wikipedia is a new online encyclopedia called Citizendium, which was launched to the public on Tuesday. Sanger, Citizendium's editor in chief and co-founder of Wikipedia, recently spoke to Computerworld about the launch and why this time around he is tweaking the "ignore all the rules" philosophy he urged others to take when building Wikipedia.

What does Citizendium offer that you can't get with Wikipedia? The world needs something in addition to Wikipedia. The world needs a better, more reliable free encyclopedia. There is little chance that Wikipedia is going to change the policies that I think are responsible for its lack of authoritativeness. A lot of people -- and I don't mean just experts -- have contributed to Wikipedia and come away with a bad taste in their mouth. The problem is that their work tends to be dismissed, and they are often treated disrespectfully. There really needs to be a place that is more inclusive. Wikipedia, by being open to all sorts of abusive and anonymous people, actually makes itself closed to people who don't want to work in that kind of atmosphere.

Why are you changing the "ignore all rules" philosophy you championed at Wikipedia? I am the author of the "ignore all rules" rule on Wikipedia. Some months after I humorously proposed that, I rejected it because other people were taking it seriously. The intent behind the rule initially was that people should not worry about getting formatting right and getting every single detail of policy under their belts before they started contributing. You could say that because I also encourage people to be bold on Citizendium and because I want them to place their own comfort level and their own motivation uppermost when they log on to do work, I actually am in favor of not ignoring the rules -- but [also] not being too fastidious. It's OK if you don't bold the subject of the article. Someone else will fix it, and you will learn simply by being corrected. That is all I meant by "ignore all rules." I certainly didn't mean that you can behave like a jerk and no one will care.

Did you create Citizendium to wipe out Wikipedia? It is very, very unlikely that our existence will lead to Wikipedia's demise. Wikipedia already has enormous momentum and an enormous group of people who really like the polices they have in place. As long as they stay within the law and within the guides of good ethical practice, I am all in favor of their continuing to grow and thrive.

What are some of Citizendium's important policies and processes? We want to have processes in place that allow us to quickly and easily rein in bad behavior. For example, not too long ago, there was one professional contributor who took another professional contributor to task saying that a certain article was simply bad work. One of our constables came along and erased the comment and put in a message to the effect of we have a policy of professional behavior and then linked to the policy page. If someone is obnoxious to other contributors, we will remove them and have done that already.

The most important other policy would be the real names policy. We require all contributors to use their own real names. I think the fact that we require people to use their real names has had a beneficial effect on the level of civility in the project, and it also increases the credibility of the results.

Who has volunteered so far to work with Citizendium? It is a huge diversity of people. We have distinguished tenured professors on down to very bright teenagers. A lot of the people who are at working on it every day are experts and professionals. On the other hand, there are also a lot of people who aren't particular experts in anything. It is pretty diverse bunch, and that is how we like it.