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Wikipedia Founder plans Competing Project

In 2001, Larry Sanger helped creating the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Now, at the conference "Wizards of OS" in Berlin, he presented a competing project: The "Citizendium" is to be more reliable and correct than its great role model.

The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a success: Only five years ago, Jimmy Wales and Lartry Sanger set up the website that every Internet user could contribute to - in the illusory hope that the website would turn into an encyclopedia. This illusion has for the most part come true: Today, Wikipedia is among the 20 most visited websites on the Internet. More than five million articles in over a hundred languages have already been accumulated by unpaid volunteers.

But that isn't enough for Larry Sanger. He sees Wikipedia only as a prototype of what could be accomplished. "I am still a great fan of Wikipedia," Sanger ensures, "but at some point one has to have the courage to start a new project." He criticizes Wikipedia because in his eyes, the project is too focused on amateurism, leaving no room for experts. Sanger knows what he is talking about: He was the first editor-in-chief of Wikipedia but left the project after disputes.

Dispute Over Contents

In the recent months, the question of quality of the Wikipedia articles has come under discussion more and more: Indeed, the volunteer project was considered only marginally worse than the old Encyclopedia Britannica in a comparison in the science magazine "Nature" at the end of last year. But in the recent months, Wikipedia leader Jimmy Wales complained about the quality of its content more and more often.

Among the reasons were several mishaps. Last year, a jokester created a scandal when he implied the esteemed US journalist John Seigenthaler as being involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy - for several months, the lie could be read in Wikipedia, undiscovered. Similarly, Wikipedia made the headlines on several occasions during US election campaigns: US politicians tried to denigrate their opponents in their Wikipedia articles, or to make their own biographies look better.

A Race Against Wikipedia

Wales is trying to counteract these developments. In the past months he has been increasedly campaigning for the involvement of scientists in the encyclopedia. But these efforts have stagnated. For months, Wales has been announcing the creation of "stable" article versions which should be more reliable than normal articles. The implementation is still not there. At the end of this year, initial experiments are set to start in the German Wikipedia.

Sanger acts optimistic about reaching the goal earlier than his former employer: "I will show them how to do this," Sanger said in Berlin.

Experts Instead of Amateurs

The main difference to Wikipedia: There will be no anonymous contributions in the new project. Every participant is expected to sign up with their real name - in Wikipedia one usually does not even have to sign up to help writing articles.

Another difference: Sanger wants to spend more time campaigning for experts in his online encyclopedia and give them more authority. Qualified editors are to decide authoritatively on open questions while in Wikipedia, some discussions and disputes last for months or even years.

"You don't need a PhD to be accepted as an expert in Citizendium," Sanger says. On the other hand, the title alone does not suffice to attain the privileged Expert status. Whoever wants to apply for an Expert position in the Citizendium needs to present a resume on his user page. But people will be able to write articles even without special qualifications.

Funding Still Unclear

It is still unclear how exactly the project aims to obtain funding. Sanger is counting on potent sponsors. Years ago he had been hired for US millionaire Joe Firmage's "Digital Universe" project which also aims to compete against Wikipedia with an encyclopedia built by experts. But according to Sanger, the 200 authors there have accumulated only 1,000 articles - far from being serious competition for Wikipedia.

For his new project, expected to go online by the end of this month, Sanger wants to use Wikipedia content. Since all Wikipedia articles are under a free license, everyone can use the work in their own projects for free. The only condition: The results in turn have to be released under the same license, and the original authors have to be mentioned. Sanger plans to support this.

Little Enthusiasm at Wikipedia

Sanger can not expect too much approval from the Wikipedians. Martin Haase, board member of the association Wikimedia Germany, was not very enthusiastic about Sangers' project proposal. "If he thinks Wikipedia does not work he can try to do it better if he wants. But I don't think his project is going to work."