Mike
has shown interest in
Gov't + Politics, City Infrastructure
About Mike Ho
Software manager, user-interface designer, systems analyst, journalist: If there's one theme to my career, it's that knowledge is a broad concept that must be shared broadly.
I spent blissful summers working as an intern for the Grand Island (Neb.) Independent and the Des Moines Register, but ultimately took the IT job that moved me here to the Bay Area.
I've kept a series of journalistic odd jobs along the way, doing freelance work for Linux.com and also taking time out to dig into Assignment Zero, which is how I met Dave.
www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/05/assignment_zero_citizendium
Work Samples
Wiki Innovators Rethink Openness
Martin Luther challenged Catholicism's perceived corruption by nailing his Ninety-five Theses to a church door. Bostonians challenged England's "taxation without representation" by casting crates of tea from a ship. Larry Sanger is challenging Wikipedia's perceived lawlessness by building what he hopes to be an expert-guided online encyclopedia. Sound overblown? Not to Sanger, who recently founded the Citizendium after parting ways with his former colleague, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales. (See Assignment Zero's related article, "Lessons From the Old School.")
The Citizendium, the free encyclopedia that Sanger launched on March 25, may resemble Wikipedia, the Web 2.0 juggernaut containing 1.7 million entries in English alone. Anyone can contribute to either of the competing sites, and they look nearly identical. But pull back the skin of the Citizendium -- whose name is a shortening of "The Citizens' Compendium" -- and you’ll find an operating model that challenges the horizontally-driven free-for-all of Wikipedia (and, indeed, online culture at large). Sanger’s site enforces a ban on anonymous contributions and imposes "gentle expert guidance" to maintain order, intended to counter what he sees as Wikipedia's devotion to amateurism, anonymity and anarchy: a "wild-and-woolly atmosphere." In contrast, Wikipedia head Jimmy Wales believes in a "very open social model," and his Wikipedia lets almost anyone contribute, notwithstanding some basic rules of etiquette and neutrality.
Recently Sanger told the Times of London that Wikipedia "is still quite useful and an amazing phenomenon... [but] also broken beyond repair," despite the fact that Wikipedia is one of the top-ten destinations on the Web. The Pew Internet and American Life project recently released a study citing two Internet research firms that both rank Wikipedia among the top ten Internet sites. Using Wikipedia, the study noted, is more popular than online shopping.
Meanwhile, the Citizendium went beta with 1,200 articles in progress, only nine of which were "approved." A random sampling of the unapproved articles revealed content that was generally inferior to what's available at Wikipedia, although head-to-head article comparisons are unfair to the nascent Citizendium -- for now.
Sanger is convinced he can attract the critical mass of contributors that his project needs. "We're already well on our way," Sanger said via e-mail. "I've got more active people now, I suspect, than Wikipedia had after five months. They're just working on fewer articles -- which isn't a bad thing."
