Never heard about it before but google just launched Knol, a site that could overtake Wikipedia. The big difference: Knol allows only known authors to create entries in areas of their expertise. Other members can make comments and suggestions, but control of the contents are held firmly by the author.

This is in stark contrast with Wikipedia who, as you probably know, allows anyone even anonymous people (and even bots for that matter) to create and edit entries to contain whatever "facts" they want. Sounds like a very interesting idea and as a matter of fact very similar to something Fedquip has described before.

I think it'll be a great first resource to hit instead of Wikipedia, assuming someone has written about your topic of desire of course.