CZ:The Author Role

Welcome to the Citizendium beta!

This page is currently being gutted! See CZ:Getting Started for relevant links.

Why work on the Citizendium?

We conclude with some motivational points.

• CZ is fun! Creating articles together and watching them grow to maturity is fulfilling and just plain fun.
• CZ is educational. How can you not learn if you're collaborating with experts on encyclopedia articles? It's an unusual opportunity to learn that is hard to find anywhere else.
• CZ is free. People will be able to read this high-quality information free of charge. That's tremendously valuable to the world.
• CZ is gently guided by experts. In time, we will have an enormous body of expert approved articles. Again, that's tremendously valuable to the world. Frankly, the world desperately needs more reliable information from the Internet.
• CZ is nonprofit and participant-governed--and thus independent and neutral. The information you find here will not be influenced by corporate or governmental interests. We are totally committed to acting as a "neutral playing field" for the world's information resources.
• CZ is growing and making progress on all fronts. If we succeed well with the encyclopedia, we will start other expert-guided, collaborative, free information projects. This is exciting and worthwhile.
• CZ could change the world in at least two ways:
  • First, by pioneering a new way to use wikis, we are giving the world a new model of what can be done with this versatile system of content creation. What will happen if the world has more expert-guided collaborative projects?
  • Second, and more importantly, a full-fledged Citizendium encyclopedia with millions of expert-approved articles would bring reliable knowledge to the world, and, in a small way, would help "enlighten" the world. Imagine what education and research would be like with a really successful CZ.

These are all great reasons to get involved. So let's roll up our sleeves and get to work!