RodeWorks

Larry Sanger, one of the Wikipedia founders, has started an alternative called Citizendium:

Citizendium Press Release 2

Citizendium, a project aimed at creating a new free encyclopedia online, announced today that a beta version is now available to the general public. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model with accountability and academic-quality articles as cornerstones of its work. To achieve this, Citizendium requires contributors to use their real names.

When I heard about this new venture I was skeptical — Wikipedia has a lot of entries, and I’ve found it to be a really useful first stop for many information searches.  In many ways I really don’t care if its 100% accurate — what I need is a little background, some keyworks, key phrases, and other information to help me refine my Google search and get at an authoritative web site.  I seldom stop my information search at Wikipedia.  And that’s really the way to use the traditional encyclopedia too — perhaps if you’re in grade school you can use an encyclopedia as your main information source, but that’s it. 

But the academic world has been slow to jump into writing for Wikipedia, and while I do think there is a “Wisdom of Crowds” type of logic to Wikipedia, I do respect the contribution that authoritative voices could offer.  If Citizendium offers enough structure and respect for status that most experts will expect, maybe it can grow to rival the reach of Wikipedia.  But they’ve got a long way to go — is there room for two such projects?

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