Response from: Cutler J. Cleveland (Check me out!)

I am Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Earth, one the first major initiatives of the Digital Universe. The EoE will cover the environment of the Earth broadly defined, with particular emphasis on the interaction between society and the natural spheres of the Earth. Many of the contributors will have Ph.Ds because they are the experts on many of the relevant topics. However, a Ph.D. is not a universal requirement to be qualified as an �expert.� Topics related to the environment will also cover law, policy, consumer issues, social issues, and ethics, where experts will be drawn from many different quarters, including those outside of academia. I expect a very diverse array of contributors.
How is the EoE different than Wikipedia?
1. Virtually anyone can add, delete, or change content in Wikipedia. In the EoE, this privilige is restricted to individuals judged by their peers to be experts in their fields according to the Encyclopedia's governance policy.
2. Content on Wikipedia usually is determined by the equally-weighted voices of all those who want and choose to contribute. The EoE is part scholarly-democracy and part rigorous-meritocracy. Democratic in the sense that many content and governance decisions are made with input from many diverse scholars. But the EoE is also a rigorous mertiocracy in the sense that important, overaching editorial decisions are made by the Senior Editors and the Topic Editors and applied to each and every article.
3. In Wikipedia there is a view that the involvement of experts is unnecessary. The EoE is based on the premise that input from experts is essential to produce trustworthy information.
4. Authorship in Wikipedia is anonymous. All work in the EoE is attributed to the individual doing it.
5. Changes to Wikipedia articles are viewable by the public instantly. Changes to the EoE are viewable instantly by participants, but article versions must be approved by a Topic Editor prior to being published to the public web site.
6. Erroneous, misleading, medicore, out-of-date, or slanderous material on Wikipedia has gone undetected for months. The restricted access nature of the EoE author's wiki in combination with the content review process significantly reduces the opportunity and means for bad entries to start in the first place, as well as the length of time they could go undetected.
7. There is no overall, coherent organization of articles in Wikipedia. EoE articles are organized according to a logical taxonomy developed by experts.