interview result with Jérôme Delacroix, CZ exec committee

The following is a summary of an interview conducted via Skype VOIP with Jérôme Delacroix, author of Les Wikis, "the first book about wikis in French," and member of the Citizendium executive committee since its inception. It was conducted on April 21 almost completely in English; the direct quotes are not translations.

I have complete notes for this interview; this summary contains information that will help respond to other people's questions, but does not include every topic of discussion.

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Delacroix says these are exciting times and that our own project, like his, takes advantage of Web 2.0 tools to enable everyone to collaborate, not just a privileged group. "For centuries, we've had a caste of educated people who were holding all the power," he said. This caste was respected for its knowledge, he said, but others who were knowledgeable about a subject, but not among the privileged few, had no means for collaboration.

Today's tools have changed that, Wikipedia being one of the most well-known. "Thousands, even millions, of people can work together," he said, and Wikipedia looked to be a great enabler of worldwide collaboration.

But as the editor of a VoIP white paper and a holder of masters' degrees in management and technology management, Delacroix was "frustrated" by errors in some of Wikipedia's content, particularly on the VoIP entry.

He did not attempt to correct the errors; he sensed "a disrespect, a disregard, for expertise" among Wikipedians, and this worried him because search-engines routinely put Wikipedia atop their results. "My feeling," Delacroix said, "is that there are many, many people who will take for granted" the information in Wikipedia, regardless of its accuracy.

So it was that in September 2006 Delacroix joined the Citizendium's executive committee. The Citizendium's approach "brings together the two worlds" of expertise and broad-based contribution by using experts to vet and approve article content, Delacroix said. Approved articles are highlighted on the Citizendium's main page and the articles themselves are clearly marked as "approved."

"We can have a higher level of confidence" in these approved articles, he said, but "we will not be mistake-free."

Conversely, the crowdsourced draft articles may have good information, but may have incorrect aspects as well -- or may be stubs.

Delacroix underscores that the Citizendium is a very young project. "We are still learning to work on our feet," he said. One of the key near-term goals is to make the approval process "smoother and quicker" and to fully and publicly define the rules for approval.

Socialization of the Citizendium membership is one of Delacroix's key personal goals, given his perception of Wikipedia's systemic disregard for expertise and accuracy. The real-name requirement engenders self-enforcement of good behavior, Delacroix said, making it "likely that people will take more responsibility" for their content.

Rules violations and general bad behavior are managed by the constables, not the editors, which are separate roles in the Citizendium world, a separation that Delacroix considers "very important."

The Citizendium had originally been intended as a "fork," or duplication, of Wikipedia -- which is permissible under Wikipedia's Creative Commons license -- but in January, the executive committee changed direction and opted for entirely new content. "It was an experiment to drive and foster creativity," Delacroix said, and the decision held.

It's still possible to copy Wikipedia content wholesale into the Citizendium, but it is expected to be marked as such using a special checkbox. To be considered a "live" article in Citizendium, a copied article "must have at least three significant changes" from its Wikipedia counterpart.