Wikipedia is pretty good at what it’s designed to do.  Which is:  be a free online encyclopedia which can be contributed to, and edited by, anyone.  Since its inception, it’s amassed about 5.5 million articles in more than 250 languages.  

But there’s a potential problem.  Wikipedia contributors are anonymous for the most part, and as we’ve seen in other corners of the Web, anonymity can lead to trouble.  

For instance, if Wikipedia has an article about you, I can go in and add something completely false:  “So and so was arrested multiple times for cat juggling”.  Or I can edit an article about my band, changing my claimed album sales from 25,000 to 250,000.  Usually these kinds of hijinks are spotted and corrected quickly, but not always: recently, a made-up entry about someone being a murderer remained for 100 days, and incidents like these have prompted some school officials to tell students that using source material from Wikipedia for school work is not the best idea.  

One of Wikipedia’s founders, Larry Sanger, has what he thinks is a better idea.  Citizendium is just like Wikipedia, but with a couple of differences.  Contributors have to use their real names, and they must post a biography with links to verifiable information such as school affiliation or papers they’ve published.  People who want to edit articles have to prove their expertise first.  And there are “constables” who are responsible for keeping troublemakers under control, or out of Citizendium completely, among other things.  

Overall, Citizendium aims to be a more polite, civil and dependable version of Wikipedia.  Will it work? Stay tuned.  

Read more at Ars Technica.