The Story of Citizendium - The Lost Battle against Wikipedia

אורן פרז (פורסם לראשונה בבלוגו 'Regulatory Paradoxes')

Citizendium was established by Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia because he felt there should be a greater role for credentialed experts (http://en.citizendium.org/). This reflects some of the greatest critiques against Wikipedia - that the knowledge it produces is unreliable - compared against sources such as Britannica.

But Citizendium has failed producing only a fraction of the content generated by Wikipedia and attracting very little attention. Citizendium is not alone - other examples of failed competing projects are Veropedia and Knol (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/214906310.shtml).

These failures also highlight the basic puzzle of the Wikipedia project - isn’t Wikipedia an “impossible good”, which - given its strong public good nature - could have never evolved (due to collective action problems). The success of Wikipedia seems to lie in the ingenious combination of technology (Web+Wiki) and social innovation (the structure of the Wiki community, e.g., the discussion room and the rules governing editing privileges). The competitors have not been able to provide a better package. In addition Wikipedia now enjoys a network advantage which makes it very difficult for any competitor to enter the market – even competitors (e.g., Knol) that are supported by other giant (google, http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20and%20Knol).

Still the question remains - to what extent can we trust Wikipedia and whether its peer-production model can be transferred to other domains facing collective action barriers?

Giles, J. (2005). Internet encyclopedias go head to head.
Nature, 438, 900–901

Karpf, D. (2011). Open Source Political Community Development: A Five-Stage Adoption Process. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 8(3), 323-345, 329.