A passel of recent mentions
There’s a rather positive description of the Citizendium, and especially Eduzendium, in an April 28 article in Inside Higher Ed. Eduzendium co-ordinator Sorin Matei is quoted. The project is compared to Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, and Knol. The question is: which system is best for scholars? Well — let a thousand flowers bloom and we’ll see in 5-10 years which are prettiest.
CZ is also positively mentioned in a well-reviewed new book by Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
As many people have pointed out and discovered, Encyclopedia Britannica has been made free for bloggers and wiki writers. (Here’s a take on that from a Citizendium editor — John Dennehy, who is also behind a CUNY experiment with Eduzendium that seems to have gone pretty well. Do we have microbes? We’re absolutely disease-ridden.)
The notorious Valleywag blog reported that the Wikimedia Foundation is “gerrymandering” its board, and as my name came up, I appeared on the scene, Voldemort-like (at least to read the post). It seems that the Wikimedia Foundation has reserved a seat for a “Community Founder.” Hmm. As Valleywag says, “Here’s an amusing thought: Why not have Larry Sanger, whom some say has a better claim to founding Wikipedia than Wales, bid for the spot in December, when Wales’s term expires?”
Yeeah. Well, I’ll be busy. Very, very busy. We’re going to announce a major new educational content project in the next month or two, and between that, the encyclopedia project, and other stuff, my plate is full. Besides, Wikipedia will be small, disreputable, and unimportant compared to CZ in a few more years. Uh, ![]()