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I hadn't seen Citizendium before, that looks interesting.

I think the two projects have differing philosophies and goals although there is some overlap. I think that Knol is "less wiki-like", more a collection of expert (and amateur) articles that allows for author controlled collaboration. Citizendium seems to be like a classic collaborative wiki with stronger authentication and editing policies.

Of course I could be completely wrong. I'm suppose to be debugging not surfing. Doh!

There already are competitors: http://en.citizendium.org/ and http://uncyclopedia.org/. The latter may be a bit less useful as Wikipedia, but it is a lot more fun.

Why duplicate the efforts of Citizendium? Are knol's goals substantially different?

It's not much of a difference. August 6, 1991 was the magic date. But 1993 was more important, with the "free for all" announcement and the release of Mosaic.

"...please show me a criminal conviction by Microsoft in any court..."

Assuming you mean "a criminal conviction of Microsoft", in the first case I cited Microsoft was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. That is a criminal offence. If still in doubt, check paragraph 3 of this page http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Antitrust
or any other source of legal information.

Or, "1995 called, it wants its Yahoo! back."

In the absence of the mythical, impossible strong-AI, there will always be an important role for experts -- you know, thinking meat, sitting there pushing charges through neurons, having opinions about stuff -- and those experts will probably use a lot of mechanized search tools to improve the breadth of their knowledge, their awareness of knowledge, and the accessibility of information. Technology and people work together!

But you're an idiot if you take out the wetware-based BS filter.

It's coordinating all that expert opinion, and filtering out the drivel, that poses the great organizational challenge of our collective information future. Wiki-based approaches are a good first step; maybe a "trusted-wiki" like Citizendium will be the next step; it's definitely going to keep evolving. But it's long been recognized by the reasonable that if you want an informed opinion, rather than a pattern match, you ask the librarian. We've known that since Alexandria -- nay, Ur -- and it's a shame we keep forgetting.

The reason there's no article for pornography is that Citizendium has a policy of only allowing "family friendly" content. Whose family? Who knows.

Citizendium can be the answer to many of these problems...

Also Wikitruth sheds a lot of light on ol' Jimbo Wales and his shenanigans

I think you're looking for Citizendium. I also think you're wrong. To cite one study (emphasis added),

In this paper we examine how contributor motivations affect the quality of contributions to the open-content online encyclopedia Wikipedia. We find that quality is associated with contributor motivations, but in a surprisingly inconsistent way. Registered users' quality increases with more contributions, consistent with the idea of participants motivated by reputation and commitment to the Wikipedia community. Surprisingly, however, we find the highest quality from the vast numbers of anonymous "Good Samaritans" who contribute only once. Our findings that Good Samaritans as well as committed "zealots" contribute high quality content to Wikipedia suggest that it is the quantity as well as the quality of contributors that positively affects the quality of open source production.

I've seen others in the same vein. I'm pretty sure one even said a majority of actual content was written by anonymous users, whereas a core of registered users made many more edits but mainly in terms of maintenance and dealing with vandalism.

As for trying to gauge expertise and then giving experts authority over their subjects, well, you could do that. Or you could require everyone to provide adequate citations and trust the community to recognize when someone has expertise, and defer to them when (but only when) it's appropriate. Wikipedia has so far chosen the latter model, and is now about as reliable as other encyclopedias by the metrics I've seen. The former model is open to anyone: Wikipedia is, after all, licensed under the GFDL, and a fair amount of Citizendium content is forked from it. Which will succeed? We'll see, I guess. I don't believe in trusting experts any more than they can back up their claims, especially not on controversial topics. "Experts" like political scientists, economists, alternative-medicine providers, etc. would have field days with their respective articles if not kept in line by amateurs with some common sense.

"not true, stubs are welcomed at citizendium."

If that is so, they could explain things better:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:How_to_start_a_new_article

What should you write?

An encyclopedia article, first of all, and one that is accurate, neutral, coherent, comprehensive, well-written, pitched at the university student level, not original research, family-friendly, and legal and responsible.

The word stub is nowhere to be found on that page.

all the best,

drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/

"Based on the difficulties Wikipedia has had to raise money lately, I'd say most people don't like their stand. Fork wikipedia already, I say, and create an all inclusive wiki, before there is only a handfull of articles left which reference Britannica as their only reliable source. Sigh."

Yup, there are some interrelated problems from my point of view.

I think a possible solution would be to leave stuff in, but somehow promote "good" articles to some sort of "official article" status.

I gave up trying to add to wikipedia a long time ago due to info I added getting deleted. Granted, I never added or tried to add complete essay articles. I added more like bulleted info on areas I knew something about and where I could find no info on the matter on the site.

My take is that some info is better than no info. And it might inspire someone to add a bit to it and things can grow.

So I came across Citizendium again the other day and decided to check if I could perhaps add something there. No, they only want complete articles it seems. That is not my bag. They are going to get nothing from me. I would like to contribute, but they are ruling my contributions out before I begin. Which, I guess is better than after I have spent and wasted time trying to contribute.

( http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page )

I think the dual status idea could help both sites.

Info can be added and remain even if not up to par. (Not talking seriously inaccurate here, just not complete and finished articles.) It can stay this way as long as it takes. When and if an article reaches a certain level of quality or completeness, it can get some sort of official article status.

Give viewers a toggle switch to limit views to only official articles should they so choose.

all the best,

drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/

why don't you become an editor and help it along?

When talking about Wikipedia editors, there is no "them"

There's already a Wikipedia fork which focuses on expert opinion and reliability - Citizendium.

Doesn't have the big "Google" name behind it, and not very many articles, but for all I care, it's Wikipedia done right. Ever since the deletionism and notability nazis have taken over Wikipedia, I'm kind of disillusioned about it.

Seriously, what bullshit.

Look 25 years into the past. That means 1982. Then look at any "25 years from now" articles from 1982. What's your guess as to their accuracy?

Cell phones? In 1982, we had the "B-Net" here in Germany. It was analog, had about 20,000 users and 75 channels. The devices were huge, very few people carried them around.

Computers? The original IBM PC had just been released (August, 1981). In case you don't remember, it had a 4.77 MHz CPU and 16 or 64 KB of RAM (extendible to the legendary 640 KB). It also had no hard drive. It did come with floppy drives, though - 5 1/4".

Games? I'm too lazy to google up all the details, but Akalabeth, the predecessor of Ultima, was released in 1979.

Internet? Well, TCP/IP was developed in 1982. Two years later, the Internet had about 1000 hosts. Anyone claiming in 1982 that this fragile university-connection thing would have billions of users in 2008 would've been laughed at. BBS was what networking was about, and FidoNet (started in 1983) appeared as a more likely candidate for an international network for the masses into the 90s.

So in other words, any "what's the world going to be like in 25 years" is, to put it bluntly, bullshit pulled out of someone's ass. 25 years from now, we'll look at it and shake our hads in sad admiration of the guy who was daft enough to publish something so obviously wrong and nonsensical.

Last I had heard, Wikipedia was getting attacked left and right for not being elitist enough; wasn't that what led Sanger to split off his own project with more expert peer-review of articles? I guess you can't please everyone...

True but considering that Wikipedia is run by the Wikipedia foundation and the current 'ruling class' is not necessarily part of that foundation I think the idea applies here. How ever it seems that while no official ties exist both are very buddy buddy. So for change to happen knowledge of these admin abuses would need to become common, for example a major story in the NY Times. If this happened Jimbo might need to consider a massive change to keep things going and to keep the donations coming. Remember we keep Wikipedia running by donating to it and supporting it. The more stories like this I hear about the more I will start telling people to go elsewhere for information. No viewers means no donations means no Wikipedia.

This may be better worse, depending on if you think wikipedia need more or fewer anarchists.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page

Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:

"Dear colleagues,

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.

But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.

Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount

Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."

Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:

"Dear colleagues,

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.

But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.

Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount

Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."

Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:

"Dear colleagues,

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.

But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.

Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount

Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."

Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:

"Dear colleagues,

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.

But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.

Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount

Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."

Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook than Wikipedia. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:

"Dear colleagues,

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.

But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.

Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount

Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."

Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook than Wikipedia. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:

"Dear colleagues,

Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.

But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.

Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.

In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount

Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."

That's the experience of the Citizendium project so far. No vandalism. No trolls. Very little actual abuse. Just the usual opinionated, argumentative people you find online--as on any good moderated mailing list.

Fair point, Wikipedia does have a significant head start (although some of Citizendium's content is explicitly a "fork" of Wikipedia content used as a base).

However, I am instinctively a believer in the "more eyeballs" theory of open source development... more people poring over, tweaking, and writing code will improve its quality. If Citizendium is seen as limiting or discouraging by potential contributors, the articles won't be worked on as much, and I expect it will suffer in the long run.

Yeah, that's a good point. Although I believe that there's a widespread perception that non-experts aren't so welcome at Citizendium. This is probably wrong, but maybe they need to do a better job of advertising this fact.

I guess I basically don't feel that Wikipedia is lacking or shoddy in any of the fields where I rely on it for technical information (condensed matter physics, materials science, signal processing, computer programming). Some articles lack sorely in terms of having a coherent narration of their topic, but in terms of fact-checking and having ability to follow up with more in-depth references, I'm very pleased. So perhaps I just don't clearly see what the separate expert role brings to the table...

I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).

While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either.

Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities).

I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).

While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either.

Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities).

I agree there is a difference in quality between the two Biology articles (particularly with the overemphasis on philosophy) but the quality so far may have something to do with how long the article has existed, the amount of edits and number people working on it so far compared to Wikipedia's entry. To use the Biology article as an example, experts and current contributors at Citizendium may know their Biology but not be as good at writing articles but the improvements will come over time as Citizendium continues to exist and gains more authors who are good at both Biology and writing articles (as happened with Wikipedia).

While I personally would not have "approved" the Biology article with its current introductory paragraphs, I think it is a little unfair at the moment comparing current Citizendium to current Wikipedia -- it would make more sense to compare current Citizendium after one year to where Wikipedia was at around the same time. Perhaps the Biology article on Wikipedia back then was not so great either.

Also, to correct one misapprehension in your post: anyone can contribute to Citizendium--they just have to sign up for an account; it's not just the experts who write the articles--in fact, the bulk of articles are created and edited by ordinary, non-"expert" authors and the experts (called editors in CZ-speak) mostly just keep a watch over the factual aspects--making sure there are no egregious or subtle errors creeping in--and making the odd contribution here and there (being experts in their field they are most likely also very busy outside of their Citizendium responsibilities).

Well, David, why don't you actually argue for this interesting position, instead of simply asserting it? We've invited people to contribute their thoughts. If you feel that strongly, why not contribute an essay? We don't have to host it. You can host it yourself and we'll link to it.

RRRRT! Thanks for trying, no prize. More uninformed remarks based on little more than your personal biases. Really, if you're going to reply, at least have the sense to read the debunkery.

You seem to think that projects like Wikipedia just instantly spring into existence. Well, they don't; they take time to build. Wikipedia certainly took time--I ought to know. But, on your view, if there aren't instantly Wikipedia-levels of participation, it means there are no participants at all.

Wikipedia also started with few active people. Our own fund of active people is growing, with (on average) over 40 people editing the wiki each day, about 40 people making 100 edits per month, and over 200 people making some edits per month. This might not sound like a lot, but the numbers are there and are clearly trending upward, and our rate of article creation is accelerating. Moreover, we're getting lots and lots of new people with this press release, the Slashdotting (gee, how can dozens of Slashdot readers be interested in joining CZ?!), and with the recruitment drive that just started.

Expand your mind a little: maybe there really are a lot of people who actually prefer to use their real names.

We ( Citizendium, Slashdotted yesterday) have no "notability" policy. Like much that is conceptually confused on Wikipedia, that policy was invented after I left.

Of relevance: we do have a maintainability policy. I'm not sure what our stance toward webcomics might be, but I suspect it would turn out to be more permissive than Wikipedia's. Just note that we do have a strict rule against self-promotion. This means that a webcomic would have to be at least important enough for someone else to want to start an article about it. Fair enough, no?

In other news, the Citizendium has just started its own funding drive. If you're boycotting Wikipedia over deletionism, but you want to support free knowledge, why not give to an outfit that really needs your money? :-)

We ( Citizendium, Slashdotted yesterday) have no "notability" policy. Like much that is conceptually confused on Wikipedia, that policy was invented after I left.

Of relevance: we do have a maintainability policy. I'm not sure what our stance toward webcomics might be, but I suspect it would turn out to be more permissive than Wikipedia's. Just note that we do have a strict rule against self-promotion. This means that a webcomic would have to be at least important enough for someone else to want to start an article about it. Fair enough, no?

In other news, the Citizendium has just started its own funding drive. If you're boycotting Wikipedia over deletionism, but you want to support free knowledge, why not give to an outfit that really needs your money? :-)

We ( Citizendium, Slashdotted yesterday) have no "notability" policy. Like much that is conceptually confused on Wikipedia, that policy was invented after I left.

Of relevance: we do have a maintainability policy. I'm not sure what our stance toward webcomics might be, but I suspect it would turn out to be more permissive than Wikipedia's. Just note that we do have a strict rule against self-promotion. This means that a webcomic would have to be at least important enough for someone else to want to start an article about it. Fair enough, no?

In other news, the Citizendium has just started its own funding drive. If you're boycotting Wikipedia over deletionism, but you want to support free knowledge, why not give to an outfit that really needs your money? :-)

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium claims 3300 articles. After a year, only 39 of these are "approved" articles ... expert approval being their unique selling point. Far from exhibiting accelerated growth, Citizendium's own statistics shows a year's worth of uniformly flat growth.

After one year, Wikipedia - which did not have the distinct advantage of being able to lift content wholescale from, err, wikipedia, had 21,000 articles.

Again, despite it's touted experticity, it still has barking mad articles such as Jake the Explainer, that looks like little more than a homespun essay; Cows in popular culture, deleted from Wikipedia for being just too barking mad, massively incomplete in Citizendium; Common student exercises in computer science - random drivel. I could go on: Joan of Arc, memory of (WTF), Choosing a dog - decent enough article but encyclopaedic? And their Catalog of Cajun and Creole cuisine - one of a number of similar catalogues ... only four entries, to four articles that do not exist.

Even with the very best will in the world, it is difficult to see Citizendium progressing in any meaningful way before its funding expires.

Citizendium seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem...

We already have a widely-used free encyclopedia that a lot of people see as reliable, broad, and timely... or at least a good enough combination to be useful: Wikipedia.

When I heard about Citizendium, I expected that the articles it produced would be very thorough, thought-provoking, and clearly written. But I'm pretty disappointed. Take a look at the article "Biology", for example. It meanders through a lot of history and philosophy of biology, without getting into much of the actual material, and without even clearly identifying subfields or specific topics. Way too general. Contrast it with the wikipedia article, which is of a similar length but much more USEFUL in my opinion. The wikipedia article gets straight to the point in outlining the framework of modern biology, identifying subfields and topics of interest, containing useful images, and ABOVE ALL the wikipedia article has extensive links to almost any term that might be unclear or simply merit further interest.

Obviously the experts who are in charge of the citizendium articles really know their stuff, and are good at writing... but are they good at really providing a dense framework of information? To me that's the most useful thing about wikipedia... anyone can write an article on anything they know a bit about, and have it appear quickly. So a user can almost effortlessly investigate the details of a subject, and its interconnections with other topics.

A lot of the sort of negative comments above were anticipated and shown to be myths in TFA, right here.

Also, hey, think of this. On the one hand, (1) I have nothing whatsoever against anonymity online; there is a right to anonymity online. But (2) I also think that certain projects--like encyclopedia projects--can greatly benefit by requiring people to identify themselves. If you bring yourselves to realize that (1) and (2) are compatible, maybe you anonymity advocates won't be so hostile to CZ.

In short, I don't think that the right to anonymity requires that you have the right to be anonymous everywhere. You have the right to have sex with other consenting adults, too, but you don't have the right to have sex with other consenting adults everywhere. (Hey! Get off my car!)