Citizendium tries to outdo Wikipedia
A competitor to the venerable Wikipedia has launched today. Citizendium claims to be the first “progressive or gradual fork” of Wikipedia. The project, headed by former Wikipedia Editor-in-Chief and co-founder, Larry Sanger, began a “pilot phase” in November 2006.
The goal of Citizendium appears to be simple enough: be Wikipedia, but better. They hope to do this by requiring editors to use their real names, and by adding a layer of expert oversight.
From Mashable:
The information provided will come from users that feel they know enough on a given topic to contribute to a world source. But Citizendium will differentiate itself in one very important way. It will require users to submit their real name, and possibly credentials too. This brings about a great amount of accountability for the contributors of Citizendium.
It will be a lot of work, however, to come even close to the amount of traffic/authority that Wikipedia already holds. According to Alexa, Wikipedia is the 11th most visited website on the internet.
If Citizendium can gain any traction in the world of academia they might have something going for them. If students were able to cite Citizendium as a source it could gain a lot of attention in that realm, something that Wikipedia has not, and more than likely never will attain.
I’m going to stand by the wayside for now and see how it develops, but I can’t really see it becoming much of a threat to Wikipedia’s dominance in the online-encyclopedia area.
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You’re currently reading “Citizendium tries to outdo Wikipedia.”
- Published:
- Mar 27 2007 / 12:02 PM
- Author:
- Stephen Glauser
- Category:
- Internet
- Tags:
- business, citizendium, competition, encyclopedia, internet, websites, wiki, wikipedia
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