Citizendium

On my other blog I write posts about a wide range of subjects. Often, I put links to online encylopaedia entries within the text. At the moment there's really only one useful candidate. When Citizendium.org was launched earlier this year I wanted to support the project by linking to their articles instead. I imagined they would import most of their content from the other, long-established wiki encyclopedia — at least as a starting point.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. They've chosen to restrict their content to newly created material. Citizendium's article count was still only 3000 at the beginning of October 2007. Nevertheless, over the past few months I've checked their alphabetical list of articles each time I wanted to link to background information about a topic. It's a time consuming thing to do, because finding a relevant entry on the best known wiki encyclopedia takes just moments. Only on rare occasions have I found a suitable Citizendium alternative.

Last week, my efforts were thwarted because the alphabetical links on Citizendium's directory of "Live" articles stopped working (the same for the "next 400" link). It's still broken today. How long does it take them to notice and fix a problem like that?

The reason I wanted to support the project was because their declared aims, which you can find on the Main Page, seem to address the shortcomings of the other wiki encyclopedia:

• We aim at credibility and quality, not just quantity.
• We offer gentle expert oversight.
• We use our real names, not pseudonyms.
• We're collegial.

I'm not so sure about the last point. It says "We're collegial." What does that mean? An ivory-tower worldview? Does it mean they want to discourage non-graduates from signing up? I'll check back on their progress in a few months time, but meanwhile I'll stick with the usual source.