January 1, 2008 (Vol. 28, No. 1)
URL:
http://en.citizendium.org
Rating:
Strong Points: Emphasis on accuracy
Weak Points: Needs to expand
Summary:
With a name that literally means a citizen’s compendium of everything (how’s that for ambition?), Citizendium bills itself as “an encyclopedia project and more.” As one might guess, the project is another Wiki aimed at credibility and quality, with less of a focus on quantity. From what I saw of the biology and natural science offerings, it looks very promising. It appears the effort is just getting off the ground, with only about 1000 articles, so the site’s creators refrain from considering it strictly as an encyclopedia at this time. Citizendium’s strategy for accuracy is based on two principles. First, contributing authors must use their real names – no anonymous contributions. Second, information is added to as a result of “gentle expert oversight.” Will Citizendium succeed? I’m guessing it has a difficult challenge ahead of it. The more expert oversight used, the more expense is involved and expense has been an issue with the biggest such effort, Wikipedia. Here’s hoping however, that Citizendium achieves its lofty goals, though
