Wiki Launches to Expert Heights
Wiki Launches to Expert Heights
March 26, 2007: A new pilot project wiki called ‘Citizendium’ will shortly be unveiled as founder Larry Sanger sets his sites on overhauling the politics of user-generated content.
Already Wikipedia has cemented its success in the era of the free encyclopaedia. With over 1.7 million articles in English alone, it’s the tenth most visited site in Australia.
But Sanger, a defector from the original Wikipedia founder tribe, is looking to correct the flaws of Wikipedia in his extremely familiar looking version of the wiki. In Citizendium, users must identify themselves with real names and proclaim their qualifications and credentials. The idea is to protect against vandalism, incorrect entries and bad writing - annoyances currently threatening the legitimacy of Wikipedia.
While anyone is free to contribute and edit articles in the not-for-profit project, they must first register by providing their real names and a short bio on themselves. While Langer claims there is no need for editors and authors to have formal qualifications to participate, the credentials of applicants are still checked before usernames and passwords are given, a process that usually takes around 24 hours.
After commencing work on the project in November 2006, Sanger says his team of editors have worked ‘extensively’ on over 1,100 articles that are ready to be reviewed and sourced by users across the world. Langer claims in his online statement ‘Why the Citizendium will (probably) succeed’ over half are either original articles or have been significantly changed from Wikipedia sources.
The site currently has over 820 authors, 180 editors and grown from 100 edits per day in its early conception to over 500 prior to the launch. Langer comments that a large amount of people have been logging on to do work every day, even while the project is in Beta where the work is only visible to those working on the site.
But where similar Wikipedia projects have failed, what’s to say this one will succeed?
“Some will take this progress report to show that we are a roaring success; others will take it as evidence of our impending doom,” writes Langer. “In fact, the progress report shows merely that the fundamentals of the project are sound, many basic doubts are now dismissible on the basis of solid experience.”
Langer believes the success of the project will be determined on the community around it. Citizendium’s early experience proves a variety of people have a desire to work on projects of this nature and cooperate in communities built on principles of expert guidance and real name disclosure. “So long as we avoid wide-open self-registration as we tried for about three weeks, this sort of project can be free of vandalism.”
Overall, Langer states there are no ‘gotchas,’ no particular reason why the project will fail.
It’s evident the new wiki will chase similar tactics deployed by Wikipedia in an attempt to gain longevity and success in the market. Langer points to the days when Google started spidering Wikipedia and the spike in traffic that resulted. Getting picked up on Google is important, but Langer admits the registration process might make this a little more difficult.