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,_U…
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_QualityManagementInF…
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:
http://www.eoearth.org/stats
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