All, Well, over the weekend (and late last week) the Ad Hoc Steering Committee, about 20 people, have been hard at work with all sorts of stuff.
I've chosen around a half dozen people to help with the processing of these applications. From among the *complete* applications (and there's no overlap in numbers here), we have 43 author applications, 159 editor applications, 55 constable applications, and there's others floating around in other folders as well. There's also on the order of 90 incomplete applications, all of which we've responded to with requests for the missing info. Among the editors are quite a few who are, you know, *shockingly* well qualified. Who would have thought people like this would want to get on board a *wiki* project? We're very happy about that. If you applied, you haven't heard back from us yet (probably) because we haven't got the wiki ready for prime time yet. It's been installed since Thursday, but has been undergoing all sorts of tweaking by Jason, Greg, and Peter, our technical heros, but it is *almost* ready for prime time. We need to examine more fully what *needs* to be in place, but quite frankly, as our technical crew keeps solving problems, and as our workgroup gets to know each other, I'm seeing less and less reason why we can't open it up to the applicants generally. Of course, I am impatient and often overoptimistic, I know... Speaking of our technical heros, they (I think mostly Jason in this case, but they all have been doing tremendous things) set up a shiny new IMAP server on the citizendium.org machine. Yay! Mail that won't be lost if my hard disk crashes! We've also been discussing quite a bit about the shape of the pilot project. It's a privilege to deal with such a clear-thinking and committed bunch, really. I also have to say that I'm more pleased than ever with the choice of David Marshall as Acting Managing Editor. He's got a deep well of experience to draw from. I'm also very pleased with the new constables Ruth Ifcher chose--really smart and a pleasure to work with. I mean, they got up to speed with an IMAP e-mail account and follow some fairly complicated instructions with hardly any further direction. This, folks, is what is referred to as "bootstrapping." :-) None of our families are particularly happy with our bootstrapping these days, but it's for a good cause. In addition to trying to get this three-ring circus started, I had over a dozen press interviews last week. I also made first contact with two foundations (who contacted me), both of which are interested in pursuing relationships which would put money into the Citizendium Foundation's new bank account (that was set up last week, too!). You also might have noticed that about sixty different news sources covered us. Lots of these were reprints, but several dozen different articles about Citizendium now exist. See http://news.google.com/news?scoring=d&q=Citizendium The sources include: USA Today, Computerworld, a blurb in Time, Fox News, ABC News, PC Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Forbes, Belfast Telegraph, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inquirer, Independent, CBC News, Globe and Mail, Guardian, CNET News.com, ZDNet, and the Financial Times. That's all since October 16. There were also several stories in India and other interesting places that means that we have applications from practically every corner of the globe, Egypt, Turkey, Taiwan, etc. Because I've been working on all this stuff, I haven't really had time to put finishing touches on the big policy document, which is weighing in currently at around 16 pages printed out. It's pretty comprehensive and reflects things I read *everywhere* in our little network: the forums, this list, the steering committee's discussions, etc. I have had *some* chance to work on it and need only a few more hours with it, I think, before I can unleash it on the world (and, of course, to deliberation and editing on the pilot project wiki). This Wednesday I'll be giving the keynote at SDForum in San Jose. The talk will be titled, "Why Make Room for Experts in Web 2.0?" I'll make that case, perhaps comprehensively for the first time (for me), and I'll post the result on larrysanger.org. I will also very likely be posting an essay containing the idea that I referred to in the FAQ in these words: "Another funding model (we think it is exciting and innovative) that will be revealed in good time." The essay is called "The Role of Content Brokers in the Era of Free Content." I composed it last June, and held off on posting it, only to discover that I had been "scooped" by Jay Rosen's well-thought-out NewAssignment! Well, that's all right; it's not like it is a brand new idea, anyway. The general notion is that specifically assigned expert-composed and expert-guided content can be given as a gift to the world by various configurations of people and organizations; the Citizendium Foundation decides whether to take a patron's assignment (and money) and, if so, wrangles the content according to certain rules. Well, wait a bit and I'll elaborate my take on this idea. The really wonderful thing that we are developing the *expert, open, non-profit* infrastructure that can *really* make this idea, or one approach to it, take off. If I get around to it, I'll start using CZ's newly-installed blog this coming week...thanks again to our tech guys...and invite quite a few people, maybe a dozen, to be co-bloggers. I would have put this update there if we had actually started using the blog, but we haven't (even though it's installed at http://blog.citizendium.org/), so I'm putting it here. I'm leaving out all sorts of cool stuff, like a very distinguished reference editor who is interested in improving upon another Wikimedia project, but I'll leave it at that in the interests of brevity. --Larry (not overworked, not in the slightest) _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
