The Citizendium

The Citizendium

I personally think that the Citizendium idea sounds really neat, and can't wait to see how well it works in practice.

However, I believe there are major downsides to the Citizendium model: there are lots of Wikipedia articles that would never get created by "experts". For example, wikipedia has many articles analyzing "Simpsons" episodes in exhaustive detail. Who would be considered an "expert" for this type of article???

Wikipedia is filled with wonderful articles created by enthusiasts of things that have no recognized experts! Furthermore, in many technological fields the experts have no incentive to create and maintain free content. For example, I recently created the article "Lugged steel" on a method of bicycle frame construction. This article includes many links to resources for amateur bicycle frame builders. If an expert had written this article, I doubt those links would be there. Nearly all the true experts on steel frame building do it for a living, and many jealously guard their methods and tools!

It would be like asking Microsoft to write an article on C compilers... then wondering why there's no mention of GCC. Or asking Larry Ellison to write an article on database software, then wondering why there's no mention of MySQL. How will Citizendium ensure that it finds experts who don't have a vested interest in presenting the topic one way or another?