Hi,
after being announced several times, the "Encyclopedia of Earth" (EoE) has surfaced at http://www.eoearth.org/. It is published by the Digital Universe Foundation and it is part of the Earthportal project.
It currently consists of 363 articles (according to the "All Articles" list at http://www.eoearth.org/articles).
The EoE seems to be the only special topic encyclopedia that does not cover its own topic itself. There is an article about the http://www.eoearth.org/article/Crude_Oil_Windfall_Profit_Tax_Act_of_1980,_Un... but nothing about Earth (...yet).
The content is licensed under CC-BY-SA, so it is free (as in freedom) but not compatible with the GFDL at present.
I have not counted how many articles are modified versions of text that has already appeared somewhere else:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Meter
"This article is taken wholly from, or contains information that was originally published by, the National Institue of Standards and Technology. Topic editors and authors for the Encyclopedia of Earth may have edited its content or added new information. The use of information from National Institue of Standards and Technology should not be construed as support for or endorsement by that organization for any new information added by EoE personnel, or for any editing of the original content."
In Berlin, I spoke with Larry Sanger from the Digital Universe Foundation. He said (if I remember correctly) that the EoE people have already "written" (maybe including as in cut&pasted from the NIST) over 1000 articles.
You can listen to Larry's answer at http://phalacrocorax.informatik.hu-berlin.de/fr/06_13h_QualityManagementInFr...
90:05 Larry: "The Encyclopedia of Earth is under development. They have over a thousand articles in the wiki but at present it is a semi-closed wiki."
More stats here:
Published Articles 364 Updated in last week 139 Updated in last month 364 Published Topics 53 All Contributors 276 Published Contributors 106 Published Authors 83 Published Topic Editors 30 Published Copyeditors 8 Last Published 22-Sep-2006 20:05:13 UTC (9 minutes ago)
Mathias