Take Wikipedia, require people to use their real names, add an editorial process and open governance, and you get Citizentium. It's got 6500 articles and two days from now it's celebrating one year since the official launch.

Citizendium aims to become a reliable online encyclopedia, on par with estabilished knowledge sources like the Encyclopædia Britannica and Larousse. In order to achieve that, an editorial process is in place, with experts in each field approving articles for publishing (unlike Wikipedia, where most articles are open to edit by anyone). Project governance is also interesting: contributors to Citizendium, called Citizens, participate in a democratic process, with elections, a legislative body, and a judicial/policing system. Citizendium aims to be a meritocracy.

I joined about one year ago when I heard about it, contributed a little bit, and then slacked off. But I stayed on the announcement mailing list, to keep a tab on the project; it seems to be picking up speed. I knew that I would eventually want to come back, it was just a matter of time. That time has come. :) I'm planning to work on the computers section: the web, some programming languages, maybe a bit on Debian, we'll see.

I've learned some interesting stuff while reading Citizendium's announcement mailing list. It's very low-volume (no more than a mail a day) and most of the messages are written by Larry Sanger. He's a philosophy professor, co-founder of Wikipedia; he's also the jump-starter, cheerleader and spokesman of the project. He is very good at what he's doing: he motivates people, spreads the word, pitches in where needed, contributes a lot of prose to the project in various forms, and has a generally positive and optimistic attitude that's contagious. He's a good case study of what a single person can do to promote an idea.

Interesting bit: on Wikipedia's page on Citizendium there's no bitterness or ugliness, despite the fact that the two projects are competing, kudos for that. Also, CZ:We_aren't_Wikipedia and Wikipedia:We_aren't_Citizendium. :)