  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a "citizens' compendium of everything," is an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance. It has begun life as a "gradual fork" of Wikipedia. But it has taken on a life of its own and will, perhaps, become the flagship of a new set of responsibly-managed free knowledge projects. We will avoid calling it an "encyclopedia," because there will probably always be articles in the resource that have not been vouched for in any sense—and because the sheer size of the resource actually changes the nature of the beast.