Clinamen

Irony: when I google the word "Citizendium" - the new "more authoritative" Internet encyclopedia - the Wikipedia article for Citizendium is the first link on my list. The article is extensive: it has 37 footnotes.

Citizendium founder (and Wikipedia co-founder) Larry Sanger probably isn't surprised by this. In fact, he mentions in a recent interview that Citizendium is not meant to replace Wikipedia:

"The world needs something in addition to Wikipedia. The world needs a better, more reliable free encyclopedia. There is little chance that Wikipedia is going to change the policies that I think are responsible for its lack of authoritativeness."

It's going to be really interesting to watch how this plays out. I'm not sure if Citizendium will get off the ground or not. I'm assuming Sanger has learned some lessons from the failure of Nupedia (the project that preceded Wikipedia), but it's going to take a massive effort to put something out there that draws a great deal of traffic. The press attention can't hurt - Sanger has done a great job of getting the word out.

Meanwhile, Conservapedia is up to 6300 articles. I clicked on the Samuel Morse article to see what kind of stuff they've got over there. Here's the article:

(1791-1872) revolutionized communications by inventing the telegraph and Morse Code. He was also an outstanding portrait artist who founded the National Academy of Design. He was a graduate from Yale College in 1810.

The son of a pastor, Morse built the first first telegraph lines between Baltimore and the U.S. Supreme Court chamber in Washington, D.C. His first message over these lines in 1844 was from the Bible, Numbers 23:23: "What hath God Wrought!"

Samuel F.B. Morse wrote a few years before his death:[1]

"The nearer I approach to the end of my pilgrimage, the clearer is the evidence of the divine origin of the Bible, the grandeur and sublimity of God's remedy for fallen man are more appreciated, and the future is illumined with hope and joy."

[edit] References

1. ↑ http://www.amerisearch.net/index.php?date=2004-04-02&view=View

All but this last quotation are included in the Wikipedia entry for Morse, albeit in a different form. For instance, Wikipedia does not mention that Morse's famous first transmission was from Numbers 23:23. The frustrating thing about Conservapedia is that it seems to be less about a "conservative" source of information and much more about reading religion back into history.