Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

All right all you Wikipedia-naysayers, those of you who say "it can’t be worthy because anyone can edit anything and there’s no accountability."  Time to put up or shut up.  Wikipedia’s founder is beginning a new online encyclopedia of everything: Citizendium.org.  It is like Wikipedia in every way except one: people are accountable for what they write.  To apply for an invitation to be a contributor, go to: http://citizendium.org/cfa.html. From the site’s own description of the new endeavor:

The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a "citizens’ compendium of
everything," will be an experimental new wiki project that combines
public participation with gentle expert guidance.  It 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 "encyclopedia," because
there will probably always be articles in the resource that have not
been vouched for in any sense.
      

We believe a fork is necessary, and justified, both to allow
regular people a place to work under the direction of experts, and in
which personal accountability–including the use of real names–is
expected.  In short, we want to create a responsible community and a
good global citizen

I have requested my invitation, and I hope a good many librarians follow suit.  After all, we’re quite good at that whole research and fact-verification thing that they’re looking for.  Let’s let ourselves shine.