Josh Catone has an interesting article comparing Wikipedia and Citizendium, with Josh coming out in favour of Wikipedia!

Citizendium is an online encyclopedia, similar to Wikipedia (indeed founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia) but where it differs is in its requirement for contributors to use their real names and on its use of ‘experts’ as editors.

From Citizendium:

As a rule of thumb, editors in traditionally “academic” fields will require the qualifications typically needed for a tenure-track academic position in the field, while editors in more “professional” fields require the usual terminal professional degree in the field plus significant experience and publishing

Coincidentally, I was on the TodayFM‘s The Last Word last week speaking about Wikipedia and Citizendium with presenter Matt Cooper and Larry Sanger.

Unfortunately it was a short piece and I didn’t get to ask Larry the question I wanted to:

Larry what processes do Citizendium have in place to ensure that your editors/contributors are not, for example, convicted murderers in an institute for the criminally insane?

Had Larry come back with a stock answer about how all contributors will be vetted and no-one will be allowed add to the encyclopedia with that kind of background I would have pounced. William Minor, one of the single most prolific contributors to the first Oxford English Dictionary (>10,000 contributions) was a convicted murderer, later diagnosed with schizophrenia, who at the time of his contributions was incarcerated in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.

The English language would have been worse had it not been for the contributions of this man (who had no qualifications in etymology whatsoever).

Of course, if Larry had said “We welcome contributions from the criminally insane Tom” my clever plan was out the window!