I had a look at the most recent Citizendium article that I created from scratch, which had been created in July 2010. No-one has edited it since. The number of contributors to the project seems to be so small that there’s no-one with similar interests with whom I could collaborate. But that’s okay, I enjoy sharing my knowledge with the world… except that that’s not really happening either. Since July 2010, there have been around 1,050 views of the article, which works out to less than 2 per day. Not sure whether that number includes spiders and the like, in which case the number of real people who read the article would likely be significantly less than 1,050, but either way, there aren’t that many real people reading these articles. Still, the lack of incentives to collaborate and share may not stop everyone from contributing. I like writing and may not mind putting the occasional article in a free place where it isn’t going to be altered or read too much. However, CZ’s financial issues are a disincentive to doing so (why bother creating something if the site’s going to go under next year?)

Is the project a failure? Certainly there are several different ways to fail. If Citizendium doesn’t have enough money to pay the bills and the lights go out in the near future, that’s one way to fail. Another is perhaps more subtle, but might be considered as significant a failure. Citizendium could turn itself into a blueberry muffin making company or something like that, and it could become wildly profitable, but abandoning all of its goals and objectives would be an implicit admission of failure. It’s only natural to assume there’s going to be resistance to making changes.

But there has to be some sort of middle ground, right? It should be possible to compromise on some things for the sake of project survival while holding firm to some of the more important things. The goal of Citizendium, at least as far as I recall, is that it is an online project to produce a free reliable knowledgebase under expert guidance. Now, to take Editorial Council motions as an example, many if not most of them are neutral as regards the goals of the project (except perhaps to the extent that they thwart contributors). While the motions are consistent with the goal of the project, the opposite of the motions would also be consistent with the goal of the project. There is a lot of leeway to act in many different ways, all of which are consistent with the project goals.

Another big problem is that Citizendium’s bureaucracy is quite large compared with the actual size of the project. It might be compared with a large oil tanker in that it takes time to change the course of the tanker. If an oil tanker is heading toward the coast, you need to start steering it out of the way while it’s still several miles away from disaster; if you try to wait until the last minute to steer the oil tanker away from the coast, you get a bunch of oil-soaked seagulls and tarry beaches. The coast of empty bank accounts is directly ahead of the Citizendium bureaucracy; can they steer away in time?

Although I don’t personally endorse this option, perhaps failure should be admitted, the project left to die and the contributors freed to devote their efforts to more useful pursuits. But if those at Citizendium who hold the reins don’t feel that way, then significant changes need to be made. And, since the coastline of empty bank accounts is within view, the ship needs to be steered away now in order to avert a collision.

Probably the root problem is that most successful Wikis or Web 2.0 sites succeed in the following manner:

1. Good content attracts readers [e.g. through search engines]
2. Some readers become writers
3. Writers contribute good content
4. Good content attracts readers
5. Some readers become writers
6. … and so on and so on …

Citizendium has two problems in this regard. The first is attracting readers through good content. CZ, being a general-purpose encyclopedia, is going to focus on the same articles that Wikipedia does, but Wikipedia is always going to rank higher in search results, causing CZ’s good content to not attract readers. The second problem is that there is a big hurdle towards readers becoming writers; the registration process is convoluted and involves verifying that your account name really is your real name. So, the feedback loop above is broken in two places. Unfortunately, it may not be possible to fix it before the project goes broke.

So, the problem that Citizendium may be forced to tackle is the immediate financial one. How do they make more money? Well, the current donations-oriented way of doing so is just not working based on the current number of contributors. It also seems highly unlikely to me that some philanthropically-minded individual or organization will come along and save Citizendium; these entities would want to see results that the project can’t currently deliver. Possibly a Psychology or Sociology department from some university would be interested in funding Citizendium so that they could study the behaviour of expert-driven online communities, but the chances of Citizendium attracting any sort of donations based on their content is nil. Obviously, another approach needs to be taken.

Citizendium still has a reasonable number of people visiting, so I think they should monetize them through advertising or other sponsorships (this would require a change to their charter so this isn’t likely to happen, but I think that’s what they need to do). Between advertising revenue and donations from the regulars, that should provide enough funds to keep the servers running, which should buy them time to make it easier to register to become an author, which hopefully should slowly fix the broken feedback loop that is preventing the project from taking off at all. Also, they’ll need to look at ways to better retain the authors that they do get.

Can the project do it? I don’t know. Whatever happens, I wish the project luck; it’s going to need it.

Waterloo Chronicle-Telegraph, (Waterloo, ON, Canada), April 18, 1912, page 1

World’s Greatest Vessel Sinks on Maiden Voyage

Women and Children Constitute the Majority of those Saved While it is Believed That First Class Cabin Passengers are Probably Among Rescued

New York, April 15.—A message from the steamer Olympic reporting the sinking of the Titanic and the rescue of 675 survivors, which reached here late to-night, expressed the opinion that 1,800 lives were lost.

“Loss likely to total 1,800 souls,” the despatch read in its concluding sentence.

It is hoped and believed here that this is an error, unless the Titanic had more passengers on board than were reported. The list as given out showed 1,310 passengers and a crew of 860, or 2,170 persons in all. Deducting 675, the known saved, would indicate a loss of 1,495 persons.

The Olympic’s despatch follows—

“Carpathia reached Totanic position at daybreak. Found boats and wreckage only. Titanic sank about 2.20 a.m., in 41.16 N., 50.14 W. All her boats accounted for, containing about 675 souls saved, crew and passengers included. Nearly all saved were women and children. Leyland liner California remained and searching exact location of disaster. Loss likely to total 1,800 souls.”

Earlier Story Said 1,500 Lost.

More than 1,500 persons, it is feared, sank to their death yesterday, when within four hours after she crashed into an iceburg the mammoth White Star Liner Titanic, bound from Southampton to New York on her maiden voyage, foundered off the Newfoundland Banks. Of the approximately 2,200 persons on board the giant liner, some of them of world-wide prominence, only 675 are known to have been saved. The White Star Line offices in New York, while keeping up hope to the last, were free to admit that there had been “horrible loss of life.”

Greatest Marine Disaster.

Accepting the early estimates of the fatality list as accurate, the disaster is the greatest in the marine history of the world. Nearest approaching it in magnitude where the disasters to the steamer Atlantic in 1873, when 574 lives were lost, and to the Burgogne, in 1898, with a fatality list of 517. Should it prove that other liners, notably the Allan liners, Parisian and Virginian, known to have been in the vicinity of the Titanic, early yesterday, had picked up others of her passengers, the extent of the calamity would fortunately be greatly reduced. This hope still remains.

News of the sinking of the liner and the terrible loss of life in consequence came early last evening with all the greater shock because hope had been buoyed up all day by reports that the steamship, although badly damaged, was not in a sinking condition, and that all her passengers had been safely taken off. The messages were mostly unofficial, however, and none came direct from the liner, so that a lurking fear remained of bad news to come.

The First Bad News.

Shortly after 7 o’clock last night there came flashing over the wires from Cape Race, within 400 miles of which the liner, in the treacherous Newfoundland Banks region, had struck the berg which brought her to grief, that at 2.20 o’clock Monday morning, three hours and fifty-five minutes after receiving her death blow, the Titanic had sunk.

Arrived Too Late.

The news came from the steamer Carpathia, relayed by the White Star liner Olympic, and revealed that by the time the Carpathia, outward bound from New York, and racing for the Titanic on a wireless call, reached the scene, the doomed vessel had sunk.

Left on the surface, however, were lifeboats from the Titanic, and in them, as appears from the meagre reports received up to a late hour, were some 675 survivors of the disaster. These, according to advices, the Carpathia picked up, and is now in her way with them to New York.

For the rest, the scene as the Carpathia came up was one of desolation. All that remained of the $10,000,000 floating palace, on which nearly 1,400 passengers had been voyaging luxuriously to this side off the Atlantic, were some bits of wreckage. The biggest ship in the world had gone down, snuffing out in her downward plunge, it appeared, hundreds of human lives.

Doom Of Men On Board.

A significant line in the Cape Race despatch was the announcement that of those saved by the Carpathia nearly all were women and children. Should it prove that no other vessel picked up any passengers of the sinking liner this might mean that few of the men on board had been saved ,as the proportion of women and children among the passengers was large. The same facts would likewise spell the doom of practically the entire crew of 860.

In the cabins were 260 women and children, but it is not known how many there were among the 740 third-class passengers.

In the first cabin there were 128 women and 15 children, and in the second cabin 70 women and 8 children.

A Faint Ray Of Hope.

A ray of hope appeared shortly before 11 o’clock last night in a message to New York from the operator at the Marconi wireless station at Sable Island, near the scene of the disaster. Answering an inquiry regarding the delivery of wireless messages to the passengers of the Titanic, the operator reported that it was difficult to deliver them, “as the passengers are believed to be dispersed among several vessels.” Even this faint indication that other vessels than the Carpathia had picked up survivors of the Titanic was eagerly seized upon by thousands of relatives and friends of those who had set sail.

Name:

Gang:

1. Johnny has an AK-47 with an 80-round clip. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and shoots 13 times at each drive-by shooting, how many drive-by shootings can he attempt before he needs to reload?

2. Jose has 2 ounces of cocaine. He sells an 8-ball to Jackson for $320 and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram. What is the street value of the balance of cocaine, assuming he doesn’t cut it?

3. Rufus is pimping for 3 girls. If the price is $65 for each trick, how many tricks will each girl need to turn so Rufus can pay for his $800 per day crack habit?

4. Jarome wants to cut his half pound of heroin to make 20% more profit. How many ounces of cut will he need?

5. Willie gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy, and $100 for a 4×4. If he has stolen 2 BMWs and 3 4x4s, how many Chevys will he need to steal to make $800?
6. Raoul is in prison for 6 years for murder. He got $10,000 for the hit. If his common law wife is spending $100 per month, how much money will be left when he gets out of prison, and how many more years will he get for killing the bitch who spent his money?

7. If the average spray can covers 22 square feet, and the average letter is 3 feet square, how many letters can a tagger spray with 3 cans?

8. Hector knocked up 6 girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the gang. What percentage of the girls in the gang has Hector knocked up?

9. Thelma can cook dinner for her 16 children for $7.50 per night. She gets $35 a month in welfare for each child. If her $325 per month rent goes up by 15%, and assuming there are 30 days in a month, how many more children should she have to keep up with her expenses?

10. Salvador was arrested for dealing crack. His bail was set at $25,000. If he pays a bail bondsman 12% and returns to Mexico, how much money will he lose by jumping bail?

STOP!

Check your answers before handing in your exam.

1. The accomplishment is something that you chose to do
2. You accomplished the accomplishment primarily through your own effort (not by others’ efforts, luck, natural processes, and so on)
3. Simply choosing to do the task did not make the accomplishment inevitable.

I found that it took a while to come up with something that met all three criteria. What’s your biggest such accomplishment?

While, in retrospect, it is quite clear that Paterno’s decision not to let the police know about Jerry Sandusky was wrong, I don’t think we should be too quick to judge him too harshly. I suspect that, if we were in the exact same position that he was in, most of us would do the exact same thing. What if someone that you barely knew came into your office one day and told you that someone that you did know quite well was sexually abusing a child? Especially if you’ve invested 50 years in your job and didn’t want everything to be wrecked over allegations that, for all you knew, might be false? And if perhaps you grew up in an era in which problems were “resolved” in a different way? And if you trusted higher-ups to make the right decisions? And so on, and so forth?

I suspect that many people who have read to this point are thinking, “Not I! Sure, a lot of people might give in to the dark side in this scenario, but I would have the strength to do what’s right in that situation!” Well, let’s look at another example. Take the following experiment. In this experiment, the subject is led to believe that he is participating in an experiment about learning. He is in the position of a “teacher”, and his task is to drill a “learner” in another room on lists of word pairs, administering an electric shock to the “learner” whenever a wrong answer is given. This shock starts out at a low voltage (15 volts) but become increasingly more powerful with every wrong answer, until it reaches dangerous and eventually lethal levels (450 volts). What the subject doesn’t know is that the “learner” is a confederate of the experimenter, is purposely giving wrong answers, and is not really receiving shocks, but is acting as if he were (initially expressing minor discomfort, but later screaming in pain and eventually falling silent as the voltage increases). If the subject expresses concern about shocking the “learner”, he is variously prodded and reassured by the experimenter. Now, what percentage of the general population do you think would be uncaring/sadistic/whatever enough to administer the entire series of shocks up to and including 450 volts?

The experiment described above is actually a famous one that was performed by Stanley Milgram in 1961. Milgram took a survey before performing the experiment, finding that people believed (on average) that 1.2% of the population would administer the full range of shocks. What he found upon performing the experiment, however, was that 65% of people did, while many of the remaining 35% still administered very painful (or so they thought) voltages. While Milgram’s experiment was about obedience, it also shows that under certain circumstances, we are all capable of doing very bad things. However, while we accept that others can do very bad things, we are often blind to the fact that we (or our friends or relatives) can do very bad things.

There are lots of surveys with curious results that illustrate this phenomenon. Fifteen years ago, U. S. News and World Report took a survey of who their readers felt was most likely to go to heaven; the winner was “Myself”, with 87%, well ahead of Mother Teresa, who was in second place with 79%, or Oprah Winfrey, who was in third place with 66%. Here’s a more recent one: Parents with teenagers, on the average, think that about 60% of teenagers drink, but only 10% think that their teen drinks. And so on and so forth.

So, before we berate others for their flaws, perhaps we should look at ourselves first. This certainly isn’t a new idea; 2,000 years ago, Jesus said, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3, NRSV). After all, regardless of what flaws Joe Paterno may have had, these flaws can no longer hurt us. However, our own flaws will continue to hurt us every day for the rest of our lives. Perhaps we should work on those first before we criticize others.

The theme of this post has been really depressing, so I’ll close it off with a positive thought: If we are capable of very bad actions if put in a certain set of circumstances, then we should be capable of very good actions if in another set of circumstances. Our lives and the lives of others would probably be much, much better if we were to work to try to create those circumstances in our lives and the lives of others.