Glottopedia

Glottopedia is an on-line encylopedia project for linguistics, the study of language. The site is a wiki like Wikipedia, meaning that anyone with a free account can edit its pages, which numbered about 2,000 by September 2008. Glottopedia aims to provide more specialist articles than wikis such as Citizendium, covering often highly technical terms that could not be easily discussed outside the academic community. Glottopedia also aims to provide biographies on linguists themselves, regardless of position or notability.

Glottopedia was formed in May 2007 out of a merge of two earlier linguistics wikis, and is hosted at the University of Trier in Germany. Reflecting this, the site is also available in German, and pages in Chinese also feature. Its editors-in-chief are Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) and Sven Naumann (Trier). Glottopedia articles are released under a creative commons licence, permitting others to remix and adapt the work.

As on Citizendium, all contributors must provide their real name and credentials, but unlike Citizendium at present there appears to be no mechanism for verifying these details. Additionally, contributors should be academic linguists or students; Citizendium, in contrast, permits users of any professional or amateur background. Users may create an account themselves and get started immediately, without any Citizendium-style application approval system. In these respects, Glottopedia's system is more like Wikipedia's.

See also

• Wiki
• Linguistics