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I’ve written before about Citizendium, the  Citizens’ Compendium, but it wasn’t quite ready for prime time.  As of March 25, 2007, the compendium says it is working on 1,000 articles. 

Billed as an experimental new wiki project started by Larry Sanger, 38, that aims to be an improved competitor to Wikipedia, Citizendium adds “gentle expert oversight” and requires contributors to use their real name rather than a pseudonym which is acceptable to Wikipedia.  Sanger cliams to be a founder of Wikipedia — a point disputed by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales.

Created to offer a more “reliable” (read accurate) free encyclopedia, Sanger hopes Citizendium will become a strong competitor to Wikipedia through its professionalism and credibility.

“If there’s going to be a free encyclopedia, I’d like there to be a better free encyclopedia,” says Sanger in a Seattle P-I article.  “It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing…, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving.”

Citizendium has been operating in a limited manner that ends with this week’s official launch.  Its volunteer base numbers roughly 900 authors and 200 editors.  Because of massive press coverage of their recent launch, they write that you can expect intermittent service problems this week.