[Cz-biology] Biology Week at Citizendium next week

[Larry Sanger]

Mail I am about to send out to all the biology publications I can find
online...  :-)

--------------------

Dear editor,

Larry Sanger here, founder of Citizendium and co-founder of Wikipedia.
We're trying to spread the word about an online event, Biology Week, that
will bring biologists from all over the world together to work
collaboratively on encyclopedia articles--in a system that is, in my
opinion, better than the one I created for Wikipedia.

If you have a blog or mailing list, or other regular means of contacting
biologists, biology students, and amateur naturalists, and you can make an
announcement about the event, we would be very grateful indeed.  We want to
spread the word as far as we can.

Regards,
Larry

 

For immediate release 




Wiki Encyclopedia Invites Biologists to a Weeklong Open House 





International Cyberspace - September 19 - Biology Week, an online "open
house" for biologists, biology students, and anyone else interested, begins
September 22 on Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org/), the
next-generation wiki encyclopedia started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry
Sanger. 

During the week, biologists and anyone interested in the topic are invited
test out the Citizendium system. Editors and authors from the project's
Biology Workgroup will be on hand to meet and greet new people on the wiki.
"I strongly believe that the Citizendium system will be appealing to many
scientists and scholars," said Sanger. "Many of them just need to give it a
try. Biology Week is an excuse for biologists to try out the system
together." 

Biology is one of the more active areas in the Citizendium, with nearly
1,000 articles in progress. Unlike the Encyclopedia of Life, the project is
a wiki and benefits from strong collaboration; for an example of the success
of the system, biologists might want to see the article "Life"
(http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Life). 

Dr. Gareth Leng, Professor of Experimental Physiology at the University of
Edinburgh, and Citizendium author and editor, described the project: "Our
role will not be to tell readers what opinions they should hold, but to give
them the means to decide, rationally, for themselves. The role of experts is
critical-not to impose opinions, but to support accuracy in reporting and
citing information." 

The Citizendium, or "citizens' compendium," uses the same software as
Wikipedia. It is a successful public-expert hybrid project to produce a
general reference resource. The community encourages general public
participation, but makes a low-key, guiding role for experts. It also
requires real names and asks contributors to sign a "social contract." 

As a result, the project is vandalism-free and, despite its youth (its
public launch was just 18 months ago), has steadily added over 8,000
articles, many of them of fine quality. 

LINKS: 

*	Citizendium website: http://www.citizendium.org/ 

*	Biology Week homepage:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Biology_Week 

*	"Life" (sample article): http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Life 

PRESS CONTACT INFORMATION: 

Prof. Supten Sarbadhikari (Biology Week coordinator) 

Founding Chair of Biomedical Informatics 

PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research 

Coimbatore, India 

supten at gmail.com 

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Supten_Sarbadhikari 

Dr. Daniel Mietchen (Biology Week coordinator) 

Structural Brain Mapping Group 

Department of Psychiatry 

University of Jena 

daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com 

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen 

Dr. Larry Sanger 

Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium; co-founder of Wikipedia 

Executive Director, WatchKnow <http://www.watchknow.org/>  (to launch soon) 

sanger at citizendium.org 

http://www.larrysanger.org/ 
 

This press release may be found at
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Citizendium_Press_Releases/Sept192008
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