A work on citizendium has been complete and will run tomorrow on Wired!
I make an early edit to Assignment Zero's entry on Citizendium; http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Assignment_Zero
What was learned?
So far, I can say this:
Originally, it looked like the first article to be produced was going to be on Crowdsourced Law Enforcement. Work was steady, and fruitful, until a few roadblocks were hit, speedbumps and tire spikes resulted in loss of momentum, and the passengers just got out of the bus and left. Mostly.
So the first piece turned out to be based on Citizendium, which is a similarly goaled project. Perhaps it made the best sense that a crowdsourcing news project would report on a.. well... crowdsourced project. Kind of like looking into a strange mirror. We'll see what the piece is like, and what the resulting fallout is.
How did the citizendium piece develop? Was there more interest? Was it easier to produce? Did it have a larger team? Were the people working on it more steadfast and knowledgable?
In some respects I am willing to both take responsibility in applying my previous post to myself in terms of not doing legwork (I think I was susceptible to my own faults), and to say that I think there was a larger steered effort to produce a piece of citizendium. After all, one chased a relatively current event that implemented a concept that was probably originated on-line with it's predecessor and the other is just a concept, that happens all the time.
Is it fact that because something is new it gathers more attention? Is crowdsourced law enforcement boring, or taken for granted?
In some ways, the two have things in common. Citizendium's success relies on minor policing of the community in order to maintain a level of quality, consistency, and accountability. Law enforcement is about policing communities to keep them crime-free; is wiki vandalism a crime or a result of noneducation? If we educate more wiki contributors, will there be less vandalism? If we educate more people, will there be less crime? Does more community self-regulation result in a lower crime rate?
There are parellels to be drawn, for sure.
What will be the next topic for reporting? Politics, Law, Art, Religion? Does it take a catalyst to motivate people to choose a topic to report on? What will be that catalyst? Synthetic or naturally occurring? Accidental or on purpose? Can it be hype-generated?
I'd like to see the editors weigh in on this one. It seems to be a curious point. How much contribution was there when the site was new versus now? If work is produced every two months will more and more users contribute over time? Will there be an explosion of existing user contribution or new user contribution following the article?
Only time will tell.
