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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Citizendium launches this week

The Citizendium project has issued its first press release, Co-Founder to Launch Edited Version of Wikipedia, October 17, 2006. Excerpt:

A major new encyclopedia project will soon attempt to unseat Wikipedia as the go-to destination for general information online.  Like Wikipedia, the Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), or "the Citizen’s Compendium," will be a wiki project open to public collaboration.  But, unlike Wikipedia, the community will be guided by expert editors, and contributors will be expected to use their own names, not anonymous pseudonyms.

The initiative is being spearheaded by Wikipedia’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, who, after leaving the well-known wiki project, became one of its more vocal critics.  Sanger first announced the effort on September 15 at the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin.  Sanger, who holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Ohio State University, has taken a leave of absence from the Digital Universe Foundation in order to lead the new project.

This week, the fledgling Citizendium Foundation will launch a six-week pilot project open to potential contributors by invitation....

"Wikipedia has accomplished great things, but the world can do even better," said Sanger.  "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." ...

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