Citizendium Blog

The well-known librarian newsletter, Cites and Insights, has mentioned the Citizendium, as it has several times in the past. It had the following interesting comment:

Why do we love monopolies so?
That’s a question that comes to mind when discussing Wikipedia alternatives and in quite a few other areas. I’ve sometimes asked why librarians seem to love monopolies so much, but it’s not just librarians.

So, for example, when Citizendium started up, it faced a huge amount of fairly vicious commentary,
and you could trace much of the viciousness to it not being Wikipedia. Didn’t matter whether it might offer an interesting alternative: it could potentially threaten The Great Source of All Wisdom.

How many of you vary your default search engine so you look somewhere other than Google? How
many of you would seriously consider an alternative general-purpose web search engine?

The article goes on to quote me discussing Knol and Medpedia, and then has a whole separate article called “Catching Up with Citizendium.” (How refreshing to encounter a writer who is fastidious about how to capitalize article titles!) I’ll have to comment on the article later, if I can get some time. It is very long, interesting, idiosyncratic, and detailed — but, I’m afraid, not entirely fair.

My Dad, Gerry Sanger, is a retired marine biologist and has been taking people out on the Prince William Sound, as part of his business, Sound Eco Adventures. The Sound is a truly beautiful place — as we often say, it would be a treasured national park if it were in any other state, but since it’s in Alaska, it’s just a national forest with some marine parks thrown in. It so happens I personally know the western Sound pretty well, having visited it since I was eight or so, and having worked there for my Dad for I think eight summers. But my Dad is a true expert about the Sound, its wildlife, and the interpretation thereof.

Anyway, a passenger posted this video to YouTube in which a humpback whale cow and calf come literally within a few feet of the boat. This is amazing to watch on video and even more amazing to experience, but it isn’t that uncommon of an experience on my Dad’s boat, the Sound Access, actually. The whales are clearly curious about the boat, and have gotten used to it somewhat.