Wikipedia Co-Founder Seeks to Start Over.



In just six years, Wikipedia has mushroomed into one of the Web's most astonishing successes, with 1.7 million articles in English alone. The downside is that the free encyclopedia has its share of errors and juvenile vandalism, and sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane.

Mar 25, 10:41 PM (ET)
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN

...This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be nonprofit, devoid of ads and free to read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

One can only hope that the new scheme will be enthusiastically received and have as many contributors as does Wikipedia, while maintaining some semblance of authoritative articles.
Regards,
John

This sounds like a great idea, but that is going to be alot of work screening throught all the edits and stuff...

And what about people that do stuff for a hobby, that know alot about it but don't necessarily have a degree in that field? Will they still be able to contribute?

Hopefully, the information will be better than what Wiki provides which hopefully would mean it will be 'legal' to cite for papers in classes. Which sucks because many google searches I try come out with articles from Wiki.

Speaking of vandalism, anybody else see when Gabe Newell (Valve Software) said the Sony Playstation 3 launch was a disaster? I guess people totally decimated his Wiki information.

Wikipedia articles must always be taken with a grain of salt, just because they can be edited by anyone, and for any purpose. Collaborative entries also suffer from discrepancies in facts, tone, and purpose.
Many of the entries, though, are fairly sound; the breadth of entries is really amazing sometimes, especially in obscure areas.
John

This sounds to me like a way to control the information and points of view obtained from various sources. Does the person need to be educated, with a degree, in order to be considered a reliable source, or can anyone put in opinions to the contrary of wide-held beliefs on a subject?

For example, global warming could be contributed to human activity. The government has long denied it, but has recently changed its opinion. Would the opinions on this website also change with what our government assumes to be true? Our world history has shown that Earth goes through periods of intense warming and cooling. The Ice Age has its name for a reason, that being that the periods surrounding it showed a lack in the abundance of it. Does that mean global warming does or doesn't exist, and will people be censored for providing doubt with their arguments?

I believe that taking away the anonymity of its users is not going to solve very much, and possibly make it much worse. A school could demand that you can't use Wikipedia as a source, but everyone's "evidence" is just opinion based on the facts anyway. Who cares if there are those juvenile enough to deface what others have written, because it will be exposed and corrected at some point. I think it's just highlighting a problem we have in the online world, and that it's solutions are going to add to the problem by providing a false sense of security from flawed reasoning.

In addition, with me giving credence to conspiracy, exposing people's names in order to have more reliable debate may put them in danger. Could someone end up getting killed for their beliefs, even for simply disagreeing?

~Vapur OJI Rupy

Exactly. I believe that is the point.

Encyclopedias have been doing that for a long time.

I see nothing inherently wrong with a source that attempts to provide only truthful, accurate information.

I'm much more concerned over a source that claims to be authoritative that is full of bias and prejudice.

"...can anyone put in opinions to the contrary of wide-held beliefs on a subject"

It seems to me that opinions have no place in an encyclopedia, since it is designed to present the information in a fair and unbiased manner. One of the problems of collaborative effort is that bias, opinions, and downright mis-information can creep, disguised, into an article. Encyclopedias are designed to reflect the common stock of knowledge at the time, and should not be debating grounds for mere opinions.I think this discussion at Wikipedia is instructive:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?titl...t&oldid=756



Regards,
John

looks interesting