Citizendium, and a subsidiary initiative which I cooked for it, Eduzendium, got Wired’s eye. The article gives Citizendium a mixed review, thumbs up, thumbs down, but overall positive… On a funny note, the article was produced by Assignment Zero, an initiative I commented about on this blog. In my note I pointed to the fact that although the initiative was covered by NY Times, there was no content on the site to judge its value by. This attracted its founder’s repartee that I do not see the content because it wasn’t there yet. Now that I see it, I believe it… And it looks quite interesting, too.
 Assignment Zero First Take: Wiki Innovators Rethink Openness –
Of course, Wikipedia’s challenges do not ensure the Citizendium’s success. And Sanger’s site does not want for detractors. One of the more often cited critiques is by NYU professor and writer – and Wikimedia advisory board member — Clay Shirky on his Many2Many blog. Experts, he wrote, aren’t special, and adding them to the mix won’t result in a better wiki. Furthermore, motivating these experts will be a Sisyphean task that “will probably prove quickly fatal.”
Nicholas Carr, author of the RoughType blog, says he has “ some sympathy for Sanger” in wanting a high-quality product but that “he’s just adding rules that will turn potential contributors off.†He adds, “Maybe it has a chance, but the odds are against it.”
One of those rules is the Citizendium’s real-name policy: You have to identify yourself with your real name to write any content. Jérôme Delacroix, a member of the Citizendium’s executive committee, says that this requirement makes it “likely that people will take more responsibility” for their content. Enforcement and verification of the real-name policy falls to the “constables.”
To survive, the Citizendium will need enough of both contributors and contributions. Helping out on both fronts is Eduzendium. Sorin Matei, an associate professor of communication at Purdue, proposed Eduzendium, a new program to partner with doctoral programs and graduate seminars to let students get academic credit for Citizendium articles. Eduzendium “offers [students] the opportunity to take their work to another, more socially consequential level,” he says. If Eduzendium works well at Purdue, Matei hopes to extend the program to other universities. But its success is just as questionable as Citizendium’s. University of British Columbia zoology professor Rosemary Redfield says,”I like the idea a lot…. But most faculty teaching [graduate] seminars will be reluctant to take a chance on such a new venture.”