CZ:Why Citizendium?

Why work on the Citizendium?

• 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 of charge. People will always be able to read this high-quality information without paying or registering. That's tremendously valuable to the world.
• CZ is also free as in freedom. We use the CC-by-sa license, which means that our content is not bound to any one group of people; our content can enjoy life under different management if necessary. And it's legally guaranteed always to be free!
• 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.