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Google is in it to test their idea of "micro-content for micro-payment", IMHO. The idea that people are supposed to write blogs and run google ads on those blogs worked for a while, until the masses figured out that we don't have that much to say. So, what if people could contribute a 'fraction' of a blog or content, and subsequently get a 'fraction' of the ad revenue? It makes sense from Google's business model, as sort of a lower price entry point for writers/ad buyers.

I don't think it will work, but then again, I have a bias toward robust wikis.

One "side-wiki" that I frequent is the Lostpedia. Package that with the season DVD box set and you've got a whole new kind of product.

The German Wikipedia is currently ranked 2nd according to the wikindex.com, but the fascinating part is what other popular wikis are out there: the World of Warcraft wiki is huge, beating many euro language wikipediae; TV show wikis are big, as are online games and sexual collections.

I guess my point is that I agree with you: the interesting thing about wikis is the non-standard collection of ideas, no matter how "non-important" or esoteric they seem to the general public.

The problem with citizendium is the basic premise that the masses aren't "qualified" to contribute. This is what made the wikipedia so much fun-- all of us dilletantes had a place to put in our smattering of knolwedge about history, geography, or punk rock. But only a minority of the population graduates college, and an even smaller minority have the advanced degree in place to be a qualified 'authority' to speak authoritatively on a given subject. Citizendium depends on this minority, and frankly wikipedia is migrating the same direction.

As a result, the masses are moving toward what they know: TV shows, pop culture, and fictional universe wikis. The Lyric wiki is 6th on the http://wikindex.com/, and the TV wiki is 13th overall. World of Warcraft, Star Trek, and Battlesar Galactica are bigger than many non-european language wikipediae.

People go where they feel smart. When citizendium makes things tough, only the tough will remain.

• subject specific wikis (protein biology, Asian travel, etc) are much more vibrant (where vibrancy is measured as the ratio of updates to total pages)
  
• fictional universe wikis are insanely popular - Memory Alpha (The Star Trek wiki) beats all but a handful of the european language wikipediae, and the battlesar galactica wiki is even bigger.
  
• wikis are the new bulletin boards - TV shows are using them for all the complex character backfill. Have you lost track in "24" or "Lost"? Try the wiki, it's aaaalll in there.
  

According to the http://www.wikindex.com/, The English Wikipedia is still waaay above any other wiki out there. I have been tracking wikis for a while, and just like other blogs and websites, the bulk of them focus on pop culture, and wikis are increasingly splitting into niche fields. So, if you assume that really only 1% of readers out there actually contribute, and that 1% are fanatic about something but have limited time, then they would more likely contribute to a topic-specific wiki rather than the general encyclopedia.

This makes sense-- would you rather read about Ubuntu updates on the general encyclopedia, or a ubuntu-specific wiki? On a lighter note, one can almost see which TV shows have greater loyalty based on their wiki sites.