Wiki War
March 27, 2007 Posted by Tara in : News , trackback,
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The free online encyclopedia and Web 2.0 phenom Wikipedia now has some competition with this week’s launch of Citizendium. Larry Sanger, alleged co-creator of Wikipedia, has launched the new site which is similar to its predecessor and is an answer to many of the problems that Wikipedia readers and contributors face: vandalism, content inconsistencies and serial overwriting.
Both encyclopedias use the MediaWiki software, enabling users to freely and easily edit web content using any browser. Part of the draw of Wikipedia is that by pulling in such a wide range of users to the same venue, you can find the entire biography of JFK in the same place where you can find out what happened this week on MTV’s Realworld/Road Rules Challenge. But this mesh of contributors also leaves Wikipedia open to postings with fradulent content; moreover, legitimate contributors are hesitant to post when their articles can be written over instantly by just about anyone (Bergstein, Seattle PI, 3/26/2007).
What differentiates Citizendium from Wikipedia is that contributors writing for Citizendium must submit biographies and true identities, unlike Wikipedia where screennames and psuedonyms are abundant. Larry Sanger, founder of Citizendium thinks that “You don’t have to choose between content and accountability. We can, in fact, be open to all sorts of participants but still hold people to higher standards of content and behavior as a community.”
To me it seems impossible to verify contributors completely, 100% of the time. Even internet sites with extremely high security standards and identity sensitive information such as eBay and Paypal are subject to fraud. Many of us have been victims of password phishing at one time or another on various sites, with much more at stake than the credibility of our article on the mating habits of the California Gray Whale.
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Comments»
Tara,
Interesting ending to a very informative article. After reading this I am inclined to check out Citizendium - and you can rest assure that I will be looking for articles on the mating habits of the California Gray Whale.
Nice work, I’m anxious to read/learn more by reading future posts by you.
I have always wondered where the information provided on Wikipedia came from - thank you for the informative article, I will be checking the new site (Citizendium) out.
Good article, and I like the bit of Tara humor at the end. Keep it up
I look forward to more posts.