2008 Woodie Awards
Wikipedia announces launch of new site
Jay Baker
Issue date: 4/3/07 Section: Technology
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Most college students are probably familiar with the immensely popular collaborative encyclopedia site, Wikipedia. Equally, most college students are probably familiar with their professor's less-than-approving stance on the site. Well, Larry Senger, the (disputed, like many things Wiki) co-founder of Wikipedia, hopes to address some of the critic's concerns with the launch of a new site: Citizendium.
"Wikipedia has accomplished great things, but the world can do even better," said Sanger in a press release. "By engaging expert editors, eliminating anonymous contribution, and launching a more mature community under a new charter, a much broader and more influential group of people and institutions will be able to improve upon Wikipedia's extremely useful, but often uneven work. The result will be not only enormous and free, but reliable."
Even if Citizendium can pull off its lofty goal of eliminating (or at least lessening) the errors, vandalism and sometimes arcane or pretentious writing that plagues Wikipedia, it will still have quite a bit of competition from its ancestor. Wikipedia has about 1.7 million English articles and many more in languages ranging from German to Zazaki and Voro. Wikipedia has become a shining example of the best (and sometimes worst) of Web 2.0.
Sanger has a plan though. To combat some of the pitfalls of Wikipedia, Citizendium has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. First, unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium will have editors. The editors will have to apply for their position and meet certain qualifications. The editors will bring some much-needed oversight to collaborative nature of the "wiki" philosophy that Citizendium will still retain. Of course, ordinary writers will still be able to contribute and are expected to form the bulk of the Citizendium work force. What's different here is that users will no longer be able to use pseudonyms or IP addresses, they will have to use their real name to edit an article.
It's not clear at this point if Citizendium will be as successful or surpass Wikipedia, but one thing is certain: competition will only bring good things. Citizendium is definitely worth checking out, it has the potential to change to world, just like Wikipedia already has.
"Wikipedia has accomplished great things, but the world can do even better," said Sanger in a press release. "By engaging expert editors, eliminating anonymous contribution, and launching a more mature community under a new charter, a much broader and more influential group of people and institutions will be able to improve upon Wikipedia's extremely useful, but often uneven work. The result will be not only enormous and free, but reliable."
Even if Citizendium can pull off its lofty goal of eliminating (or at least lessening) the errors, vandalism and sometimes arcane or pretentious writing that plagues Wikipedia, it will still have quite a bit of competition from its ancestor. Wikipedia has about 1.7 million English articles and many more in languages ranging from German to Zazaki and Voro. Wikipedia has become a shining example of the best (and sometimes worst) of Web 2.0.
Sanger has a plan though. To combat some of the pitfalls of Wikipedia, Citizendium has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. First, unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium will have editors. The editors will have to apply for their position and meet certain qualifications. The editors will bring some much-needed oversight to collaborative nature of the "wiki" philosophy that Citizendium will still retain. Of course, ordinary writers will still be able to contribute and are expected to form the bulk of the Citizendium work force. What's different here is that users will no longer be able to use pseudonyms or IP addresses, they will have to use their real name to edit an article.
It's not clear at this point if Citizendium will be as successful or surpass Wikipedia, but one thing is certain: competition will only bring good things. Citizendium is definitely worth checking out, it has the potential to change to world, just like Wikipedia already has.
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