Before the weekend, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger presented his new project Citizendium at the Wizard of OS conference in Berlin. Citizendium will be a fork of the English Wikipedia – it will start with continuously mirroring all Wikipedia’s articles, then depart from Wikipedia when the community starts developing their own versions. A practice that Wikipedia’s open license allows, of course.
According to Marshall Poe’s Wikipedia article in The Atlantic, Sanger made two great contributions to Wikipedia – “he built it, and he left it. After forging a revolutionary mode of knowledge building, he came to realize – albeit dimly at first – that it was not to his liking.”
So how will Citizendium solve the problems that Sanger has with Wikipedia? One big difference is that all authors will operate under their full names. See the FAQ, and Sanger’s introductory essay for more clarification. (via Netzeitung’s Readers Edition).
