Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger is launching a rival to Wikipedia, called Citizendium, which he says will offer more editorial oversight by restricting who can create articles. The site is in alpha testing now and will launch publicly by the end of the year.
Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger is launching a rival to Wikipedia, called Citizendium, which he says will offer more editorial oversight by restricting who can create articles. The site is in alpha testing now and will launch publicly by the end of the year.
The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a “citizens’ compendium of everything,” will be an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance. It will begin life as a “progressive fork” of Wikipedia. But we expect it to take on a life of its own and, perhaps, to become the flagship of a new set of responsibly-managed free knowledge projects. We will avoid calling it an “encyclopedia,” because there will probably always be articles in the resource that have not been vouched for in any sense.
We believe a fork is necessary, and justified, both to allow regular people a place to work under the direction of experts, and in which personal accountability–including the use of real names–is expected. In short, we want to create a responsible community and a good global citizen.
