As posted on way too many blogs to count, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has decided to fork Wikipedia in to a new project called Citizendium. I know, I had no idea what it was either. Luckily, their “website” provides the gist of the project:
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.
So essentially, it’s an expert regulated version of Wikipedia. Real people with names, not IP addresses, supply the content and actual experts work as editors in their respective fields to validate and mediate the content. Good idea? No, great idea.
In recent years, Wikipedia’s dominance in SERPs and popular culture has created a so-called “Wikiality effect” — if enough people believe it to be true, then it must be. Who can blame novice internet users for believing that a site with the phrase “free encyclopedia” in its title is accurate? After all, nobody in their world is telling them anything otherwise.
I love being internet savvy and working in the same industry, but the general public has very little understanding of the internet’s function and is oblivious to nearly all of its inner workings. They don’t read the Google blog or know what Web 2.0 is. To them, AJAX is that stuff you use to clean your sink. They operate in their world and we operate in ours. But communication between the worlds does happen: through production and consumption. We produce products and they consume them. So when an internet product is bad, rarely does the general product notice or care — there isn’t anything new to consume. I takes a new and improved product to come along and make everyone realize there is a better way. It happened with Firefox vs. IE, and it can happen again with Wikipedia.
Thus, Citizendium’s biggest strength isn’t the expert editors or the catchy name — it’s the fact they’re not Wikipedia. They should make it a point to show people why they’re different. Curious users, and a few lost ones I’m sure, will stumble upon Citizendium. And if they take a few moments to see the differences, I’ll guarantee you it will change the users their minds on Wikipedia. Not because to them Wikipedia is bad, but because Citizrendium is better.
