On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Thomas Dalton <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've been following the CZ statistics page for some time, and I get > the feeling that it doesn't matter because activity on CZ is shrinking > (even Sanger doesn't seem very active) and it will never reach a size > where anyone actually uses it. It's a fraction of the size of > Wikipedia at the same age (in terms of articles or total words) and > growth is slowing (whereas Wikipedia showed exponential growth at that > time). We could discuss why it failed but I think the real answer is > simply that Wikipedia is "good enough" so there is very little > interest in a new project doing the same thing (and which won't be > anywhere near as useful for several years, even with the more generous > assumptions). > I also have been following their stats page (as well as their forums), and I agree with the fundamental issue: Wikipedia had the first mover advantage, and has proved good enough for enough people to prevent any serious competition. However, I don't think we should think of Citizendium as having failed. Certainly, it has failed to realize Sanger's and a few others' hopes to be on its way to eclipsing Wikipedia. But CZ has a fairly stable community; it's shrinking a little, but so is Wikipedia's community. It's a free content project that is producing some useful material, and some editors find it a nicer place to work than Wikipedia. It's licensed CC-by-SA 3.0, which means it will be compatible with Wikipedia soon. And a rather high proportion of content is stuff that isn't present on Wikipedia. The anti-Wikipedia ethos of the project has also waned as they've begun to sort out their own identity beyond "Wikipedia with real names where experts have power". Sanger keeps claiming that they aren't growing simply because they haven't yet gotten serious about recruitment. I don't find that convincing, but it's not inconceivable that concerted efforts at recruitment could result in another wave of growth or two (though probably never exponential growth). -Sage (User:Ragesoss) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
