Web Noise: Too Much Fuss Over Wikipedia vs. Citizendium

Citizendium is the Next Big Project being undertaken by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. Essentially, Citizendium is designed to be identical in scope and detail to Wikipedia. Citizendium will be distinct however, because it will only accept contributions from people who have been vetted and approved by a committee of moderators referred to as "Constables". C|NET's Josh Lowensohn ranted recently that Citizendium is elitist. I disagree.

The old Laugh In line, "Look THAT up in your Funk & Wagnall's!", garnered big yuks for years because, a) it sounded slightly rude, and b) the Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedia was always known as a fully peer-reviewed, unimpeachable source of accurate information. While Wikipedia remains a marvelously useful resource, problems with opinion and assumptive facts offered in place of accurate and authoritatively supported facts appear in far too many entries and citations. Of course every encyclopedia ever published contains demonstrable errors, but Wikipedia by nature offers a significantly higher number and percentage. So a similarly community driven web encyclopedia project that is designed to be as comprehensive as Wikipedia but with a much higher percentage of authoritative, peer-reviewed facts, entries and citations can in my view be nothing less than the final nail in the coffin of conventional encyclopedias (Microsoft Encarta excepted). Go Larry!