Larry Sanger co-founded Wikipedia but no longer associates with it due to its regress into establishment lies and propaganda.
Wikipedia is utter rubbish.
For example, my Wikipedia page (which I didn’t create) has partial truths mixed with misleading claims. When I tried to correct it, my edits were reverted, and I was hilariously warned to stop ‘vandalising the page’.
Larry versus Wikipedia
He argues that Wikipedia shapes public opinion and has become a tool promoting establishment narratives, thus stifling knowledge.
He isn’t wrong.
It’s become a cesspit of ideological biases.
Thankfully, Wikipedia has an article on whether or not Wikipedia has ideological biases and Wikipedia has determined that Wikipedia does not have ideological biases.
Larry adds that Wikipedia’s centralised structure restricts information to a single perspective per topic, which neatly aligns with Big Tech’s influence in curating content.
What happened?
Basically, a few things:
- lack of professional editorial oversight,
- manipulation by businesses and intelligence agencies,
- inconsistent removal of defamatory material,
- arbitrary rejection of credible sources and acceptance of unreliable ones,
- protection of articles to prevent removal of incorrect information,
- potential for ‘edit wars’ and biased editing by anonymous users or groups,
- reliance on Wikipedia for quick information due to high search engine rankings, and
- centralised control that allows for a single narrative.
Wikipedia is a mess.
Stop using it.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates
The Encyclosphere
To counteract this, Larry has introduced the Encyclosphere project, aimed at aggregating content from various free encyclopedias into a unified, distributed database.
Basically, an encyclopedia of encyclopedias.
Which makes a lot more sense than Wikipedia.
It enhances the accessibility of encyclopedic information, mirroring the diversity of the blogosphere (including, for example, my own website), thereby encouraging readers to form opinions based on multiple sources of knowledge.
For instance, the Encyclosphere might include multiple pages about me, such as from Wikipedia as well as from my own website.
Conversation
Larry envisions this collaborative effort as a way to decentralise knowledge, ensuring that a multitude of viewpoints are available.
This, he believes, is essential for preserving free speech and preventing the monopolisation of knowledge by any single entity (such as Wikipedia), thus fostering a far more open knowledge ecosystem.
Knowledge is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
