Category: Projects
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A comment on Wikileaks
Over the weekend, I wrote a series of Tweets inspired by Wikileaks’ then-upcoming release of U.S. diplomatic communiqués. This caused quite an uproar, with people insulting me vociferously and demanding that I explain myself. (A few people were supportive, and thanks to them.) I am not going to write a whole essay in defense of…
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More replies about Wikimedia and the fallout of my report to the FBI
Background: on April 7, I posted the text of a report I made to the FBI to the EDTECH mailing list, in which I stated that, in my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation may knowingly have posted “child pornography,” by which I meant one common usage of the term, namely, “obscene visual representations of the sexual…
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Reply to Slashdot about my report to the FBI
On April 7, I posted the text of a report I made to the FBI to the EDTECH mailing list, in which I stated that, in my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation may knowingly have posted “child pornography,” by which I meant “obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.” In short, the Wikimedia Commons…
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Citizendium: A New Vision for Online Knowledge Communities
Speech delivered at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, Feb. 7, 2008, as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series, “Wikipedia – Democratization of Knowledge or Triumph of Amateurs,” hosted by Marshall Poe. Contents Familiar territory The problem of quality and relevance Three principles A role for experts Why real names The rule of…
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An explanation of the Citizendium license
Preliminary notes (please read): Purpose: this long essay explains in depth why we have chosen CC-by-sa as the license for our own original collaborative content. Summary: this probably isn’t an easy read. You can skip ahead to the license decision, and here is asummary of the reasoning behind it. About links: links to places within…
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The Citizendium one year on: a strong start and an amazing future
Contents: Debunking some myths What we have demonstrated in our first year Our new initiatives Short-term plans Longer-term plans The coming explosion of growth Essential reading in bold above. A possibility you may not have considered It’s been exactly one year since work on the Citizendium wiki started ramping up. I said then that I…
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Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed
This essay argues that the Citizendium is feasible. The wiki is in public view, or will be within a few days. You can join now. 1. So far, so good. The Citizendium pilot project wiki got under way privately at the start of last November. In the intervening months, we have steadily grown to some…
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Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)
1. Thinkers of the world, start imagining. According to one source, there are over one billion (a thousand million) people on the Internet. That means there must be tens of millions of intellectuals online–I mean educated, thinking people who read about science or ideas regularly. Tens of millions of intellectuals can work together, if they…
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The Role of Content Brokers in the Era of Free Content
Draft June 9, 2006; very lightly revised, October 2006 I. The problem of funding content Ever since entering the open content arena in 2000, I have thought about, and been asked (repeatedly) about, how to pay for free content. This is a pressing problem for professional content creators, because of pressures from the Internet. It…
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Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism
This first appeared on the now-defunct Kuro5hin.org. Wikipedia has started to hit the big time. Accordingly, several critical articles have come out, including “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia” by a former editor-in-chief of Britannica and a very widely-syndicated AP article that was given such titles as “When Information Access Is So Easy, Truth Can Be Elusive”. These…