Citizendium
On March 25, 2007, Citizendium ended its pilot phase, entering a live and publicly readable beta phase. The launch coincided with a feature-length Associated Press article that ran widely, with a title in USA Today of "Citizendium aims to be better Wikipedia." Unlike Wales, who has compared his role in Wikipedia with that of a British monarch, Sanger said he would not head Citizendium indefinitely, and in 2007 announced his intention to step off the leadership team in two or three years.
Two weeks after the launch of Citizendium, Sanger criticized Wikipedia, stating the latter was "broken beyond repair," and had a range of problems "from serious management problems, to an often dysfunctional community, to frequently unreliable content, and to a whole series of scandals." Sanger stated in part:
The work of the Wikipedians has astounded the world, but the amateur nature of Wikipedia's contributions, whose authors remain anonymous, is not for everyone. Some experts are hostile toward the idea of Wikipedia and many avoid Wikipedia altogether. We may take Wikipedia as an early prototype of the application of open source hacker principles to content rather than code. I want to argue that it is just that, an early prototype, rather than a mature model of how such principles should be applied to reference, scholarly and educational content. Where Wikipedia shares the culture of anonymity found in the broader Internet, the Citizendium will have a culture of real-world, personal responsibility.
Citizendium has a form of peer-review, in which the site's content is subject to "gentle expert oversight." In reference to creating a new encyclopedia project Sanger stated: "I think there is a need for a more reliable and free encyclopedia. If we can create a more reliable and free encyclopedia, particularly if we adopt a different system than Wikipedia's, then we should." As Citizendium's editor-in-chief, Sanger commented in late October 2007 about its first anniversary, from its initial private launch date of October 30, 2006. Citizendium's readers, he said, have only just begun to see the power of the project's model:
Simply put, we've pioneered a new and better way to use wikis, and an interesting, dynamic way to build an online knowledge base. Increasingly, the Citizendium is looking like the next step in the evolution of the collaborative Internet. The project's fundamentals are solid and growing stronger through motivated, diligent effort. Given enough time and enough people, the results would surely be amazing. If this possibility is amazing, it is even more amazing that it's within our grasp. What I do know is that if we do have a good chance to create something so stupefyingly useful for humanity, we must try.
When asked in an interview with The Minnesota Daily: Do you see a role for Citizendium anywhere in academia? He responded: "Of course. The idea is it will be good enough for professors to be able to send their students and students to get reliable information from. I know a lot of students use Wikipedia as a place to start to learn about a subject. For that purpose it's fine. I actually think, as a place to start to get some information, it's a fine resource. Approved articles on Citizendium hopefully will be more reliable than articles on Wikipedia."
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