Following an expression of disenchantment with the free online encyclopaedia, Larry Sanger, Wikipedia's lesser known co-founder, has recently launched Citizendium, a beta site to rival the revolutionary wiki he created with Jimmy Wales in 2001. Sanger's frustration comes as no surprise to anyone who has encountered a Wikipedia errors or misinformation; an inevitable compromise when allowing anyone to act as content editor. Sanger's new project, which launches this Autumn, reintroduces to the web what many have always thought inevitable in a wiki structure: the two-tier wiki. This format proposes to employ a set of expert editors and moderators to re-edit the content placed on Citizendium, a measure which is clearly calculated to answer the rising din surrounding Wikipedia's occasional inaccuracies.
A visit to the Citizendium website in its current incarnation shows a site which is at pains to distinguish itself from Wikipedia. It states:
"[Citizendium] 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 'encyclopaedia' because there will always be articles in the resource that have not been vouched for in any sense."
Certainly, these not-so-sly digs are not without basis: the blundering inaccuracies and factual errors that plague Wikipedia are emblematic of what people hate most about wikis and, to some extent, demonstrate what some may disparage as the internet's fundamental inability to replace more traditional forms of information and knowledge. By proposing the two-tier wiki concept, Sanger is answering a crucial need in the global information market by proposing to offer free, edited, user-generated content.
The benefits of using Citizendium as a viable alternative to Wikipedia seem obvious, as those looking for content which has been checked by a vetted editor represent a large and growing group of web users. But although the web is clearly big enough for two (or more!) wikis, and while many users will definitely opt to use Citizendium's site-edited content in preference to Wikipedia's occasionally more free-wheeling articles, its initial progress is likely to be slow. At present, people are welcome to apply for participation within the project in any capacity, but Citizendium is not yet open to general viewing due to bandwidth restrictions. Secondly, while it probably will not be difficult for Sanger's project to build up an army of dedicated users, it will take years for its database to resemble anything like Wikipedia's present arsenal of content which, despite containing some high-profile mistakes, is still unrivalled in its diversity of information and the size of its global user-community.
Furthermore, as Citizendium gradually builds itself up its user concentration may be isolated to America and Britain until it builds up its non-English subsidiaries. It will also be interesting to see how Citizendium's relationship with the internet industry develops in China. As outlined in a previous bigmouthmedia article, the Chinese government currently censors information which reaches its public - such as results from search engines. But last week, Wikipedia was finally unblocked by the Chinese authorities, allowing users to access vast swathes of its Chinese content. Will Citizendium incur the wrath of the Chinese authorities and have to undergo the censorship process as well? If so, it will be far behind Wikipedia in the massive Chinese market in years to come. However, its two-tier nature may be its saviour in this respect, potentially representing to the authorities a more Google-like relationship with Chinese censors, regardless of whether or not Sanger decides to follow the same path of acquiescence.
But evidently, this is all pure speculation. Whether you love or hate wikis - and a great number of people from around the world have professed a great love for Wikipedia - their role in providing free global access to information harnesses the power of the internet in exactly the way it was meant to. Certainly, from an SEO perspective, the ability of wikis to rank for keywords in search engines means that they are an invaluable tool, and Citizendium will clearly provide another vast database of information across which Google's ever-active spiders may scuttle.
