If I read an article about evolution, I would prefer to know if PZ Myers wrote it, or some Discovery Institute hack. Some subjects lend themselves to public correction and policing, but others require a level of specific knowledge that a very small pool of people are capable of doing that community monitoring. Credentials and peer review do have a purpose in the later case.

Thanks for the pointer. I’m guessing that it may really come down to the buy-in of librarians and academics. If they’ll vote with their writing/editing feet, and can build a big enough and useful enough encyclopedia then I can imagine that it might work. If they don’t, then it’s less clear how Citizendium can hijack Wikipedia’s momentum.

Fascinating topic for a course.

I’ve written on the question you raise:

http://www.citizendium.org/whyczwillsucceed.html

–Larry Sanger