Larry Sanger in the News
You may know the name Jimmy Wales as the founder of Wikipedia, but Larry Sanger was the person instrumental in starting the nascent online encyclopedia project. These days he’s working on a new Digital Universe project that also aims to create a sum of all human knowledge too with a more controlled model, and he’s been busy.
He recently wrote on Kuro5hin about the new project.
what I’m going to suggest next is going to be even more unpopular: that the best, future methods of collaboration online will combine the openness of projects like Wikipedia with expert oversight. I favor open meritocracies. That’s what I explain and argue for here, even if many people rake me over the coals for propounding this radical idea.
There has been a long standing tension between the ex-chief of Wikipedia and the current community. I admit that even I have contributed to the back-and-forth. But I had the privilege of spending a day talking about the project with Larry last year when he visited Asia, and there is certianly a lot of ideas worth merit in the Digital Universe project. He points out the differences he has with Wiki-like projects:
My take on the future of collaboratively-developed content is importantly different from that which prevails on Wikipedia, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and most of the Blogosphere that comments on this stuff–i.e., the websites and Internet projects that most closely tracks developments in online collaboration. I boldly submit that my take is not only different, it is more mature and better-developed than the prevailing view of online collaboration, according to which, as far as I can tell, collaboration is best done when anarchy prevails, anonymity is expected, and hard-won expertise is at best ignored and at worst an object of sophomoric contempt. Not only do I have these philosophical or policy disagreements, I think that focus on tools like wikis, to the exclusion of projects and their special requirements, has led to widespread indifference to whole classes of potential new kinds or systems of collaboration. At any rate, I think and hope that those who theorize about online collaboration will find something new and worth thinking about here.
The whole essay is at his site. Having multiple entities trying out different models for online collaboration and participation should be encouraged. Even though it is hot technology now, we should not be ruled by the “tyranny of wiki-fundamentalism.”
