Sanger: Say No To Wikipedia, Yes To Citizendium, Discussion Groups

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency


Jerusalem ----October 4, 2007 ...... Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger who tells all to stay clear of the disgraced Wikipedia and to embrace a respected Citizendium, an encyclopedia which provides accuracy and accountability, is now directing surfers to towards an old-fashioned discussion list.

Sanger, who left Wikipedia after being worn down by ''the dominance of difficult people, trolls and their enablers'' and an overall ''lack of respect for expertise,'' is well noted for having created Citizendium.

Citizendium describes itself as "an encyclopedia project, and more." They state that they are a different sort of Web 2.0 project. Citizendium, unlike Wikipedia, aims at credibility and quality, not just quantity. Both the general public and experts are encouraged to get involved. Citizendium uses our real names, not pseudonyms. And finally they are proud of being collegial.

Unlike Citizendium, even the most basic facts on Wikipedia can be absurdly inaccurate. Ask John Seigenthaler, one-time assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who pushed to get his clearly false ''biography'' excised. Among other things, it said he ''was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother, Bobby.''

It took Seigenthaler more than four months to get the fake bio removed.

As recent as today Wikipedia continues to illustrate that it serves no other purpose than to generate destructive gossip and rumors. Ian MacKaye, the man behind Fugazi, Minor Threat, Dischord and countless other projects was reported to have died, according to Wikipedia.

A Wikipedia entry started the Internet hoax that MacKaye had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. The people behind the hoax were thorough, including a real hospital (Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital) and have repeatedly changed the Wikipedia entry as well.

Sanger, who now works as editor-in-chief of the Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium: a new, expert-guided, public participatory, real-names-only wiki encyclopedia project states that Citizendium now has over 2,000 articles and are growing nicely!

But that was still not good enough for Sanger. In a letter that Sanger sent out to many of his colleagues , he states: "Dear All, I'd like to invite you to join an old-fashioned discussion list, SharedKnowledge."

Sanger states that: "This unmoderated (or semi-moderated) list will be devoted to well-reasoned,
polite discussion and announcements about the nature of online knowledge production communities. It is open to everyone. I hope it might become a central clearing-house of general information and free, open, yet polite discussion about a cluster of issues that are of great interest to many people, and of growing importance to society at large.

Sanger directs the public to this site stating that he explains the purpose of the list, how to subscribe and unsubscribe, how to post, when will the discussion starts, who should join, core and example questions, relevant and irrelevant Internet communities / websites, other encouraged posts, subjects that will be deemed off-topic, list rules and list Management.

"To give people time to arrive, discussion will start in a few weeks," Sanger told the Israel News Agency. "I'm starting this list for several reasons. First, as a scholar (of sorts) and project organizer, I have an active, practical interest in these topics. Second, as I write and prepare speeches (something I'm doing a lot these days), I would like to have a big group of knowledgeable, like-minded friends to bounce ideas off of. Finally, quite honestly, I miss good old-fashioned discussion lists. Back in the 90s, I ran several, and one of them, ASP-Disc, was really great. I'd like to replicate that sort of lively community. Again, please post this message as widely as possible!"

Recently Sanger wrote that in the last ten years the Internet has deeply disrupted many industries.
"Music downloading sites have revolutionized the music industry and shuttered many physical stores. eBay and Amazon.com and other online retailers have changed the way we shop, especially for harder-to-find items. Free news content online, and aggregators such as Google News, have threatened the profitability of traditional news media. Wikipedia and the new Citizendium have the full attention of reference publishers. The financial industry has been overrun by do-it-yourselfism. The real estate industry is wondering how to respond to the levelling influence of cheap online housing listings, such as Craigslist. And these are only a few examples; virtually no industry has been left untouched by this Internet revolution."

Sanger asks: "Why has the Internet been so broadly disruptive? Consider what the Internet is: a giant digital network. Much information that was previously available only in a “hard copy” is now instantly available over this nearly universal network. That fact alone is enough to explain why free news content online has threatened the profits of the news industry."

The Wikipedia co-founder claims that the Web's ability to aggregate public opinion and knowledge into some form of "collective intelligence" is leading to a new politics of knowledge. According to Sanger, the power to establish what "we all know'" is shifting out of the hands of a small elite group and becoming more of a conversation open to anyone with a Net connection. However, Sanger is also the founder of Citizendium, a competitor to Wikipedia that, according to its Web site, "aims to improve on (the Wikipedia) model by adding 'gentle expert oversight' and requiring contributors to use their real names." In his essay, titled "Who Says We Know: On The New Politics Of Knowledge," Sanger argues that a lack of "expert" oversight leads to unreliable information, something he sees as a major flaw in knowledge egalitarianism.

Lawrence Mark “Larry” Sanger, born July 16, 1968, is co-founder of the free Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia and developed many of its collaborative policies. After his resignation in 2002, he was an early strategist for the expert-authored and edited Encyclopedia of Earth. In the fall of 2006, he proposed a new fork of Wikipedia, called Citizendium. This “citizens’ compendium of everything” is an experimental new “wiki” project which aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names. Sanger received his B. A. in philosophy from Reed College and his Ph. D. in philosophy from Ohio State University.