Post-Wikipedia
Since Sanger parted ways with Wikipedia in 2002 he has been critical of its accuracy, among other things. In December 2004, Sanger wrote a critical article for the website Kuro5hin, in which he admitted that there had existed "a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project" that had also accounted for his departure. While stating "to appreciate the merits of Wikipedia fully" and to know and support "the mission and broad policy outlines of Wikipedia very well," Sanger expressed that there are serious problems with the project. There was, he wrote, a lack of public perception of credibility, and the project put "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers" into too much prominence; these problems, he maintained, were a feature of the project's "anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise." The article was the subject of much controversy in the blogosphere, and led to some reaction in the news media as well. In September 2009, Sanger mentioned one reason for distancing himself from Wikipedia: "I thought that the project would never have the amount of credibility it could have if it were not somehow more open and welcoming to experts." He pointed out "The other problem was the community had essentially been taken over by trolls to a great extent. That was a real problem, and Jimmy Wales absolutely refused to do anything about it."
Sanger identifies the purpose of the Internet as being equally about communication, as it is about information; Stressing that successful communication needn't be informative, and that good communication is very different than good information. Sanger is careful to point out his criticisms of Wikipedia aren't as much based on its lack of meritocracy, but rather in its credibility as an informational medium. Sanger sees most web 2.0 websites as being built upon communication and socialization, instead of impersonal information resources. As a consequence of this, Sanger sees a continuing demand for more authoritative information sources. Saying: "Even in the field of encyclopedias, while the industry does seem to have taken a blow, some of the heavyweights are still alive and kicking."
Sanger, a philosophy instructor, began work as a lecturer at The Ohio State University, where he taught philosophy until June 2005. His professional interests are epistemology (in particular), early modern philosophy, and ethics. In his spare time, he plays and teaches Irish traditional music on the fiddle in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, and also manages a site about the Donegal fiddle tradition.
In December 2005, Digital Universe Foundation announced that Sanger had been hired as Director of Distributed Content Programs. He would be a key organizer of the Digital Universe Encyclopedia web projects which was launched in early 2006. The Digital Universe encyclopedia plans to recruit recognized experts to write articles, and to check user-submitted articles for accuracy. The first step in this effort is the expert-authored and edited Encyclopedia of Earth, an electronic reference about the Earth.
In April 2006, Sanger published "Text and Collaboration: A personal manifesto for the Text Outline Project" arguing for the importance of what he called "strong collaboration" (that is, collaboration in which people work on the parts they're interested and nobody gets to claim control), the possibility that strong collaboration could be more effective with a less anarchistic set of ground rules than Wikipedia, and the creation of a new Text Outline Project to create The Book of the World, featuring summaries of the arguments of the great philosophers, organized by topic and time, along with summaries of their debates.
The question of accuracy over Wikipedia article content spurred Sanger to unveil plans for a new encyclopedia called Citizendium, the citizen's compendium. At the Wizards of OS conference in September 2006, Sanger announced Citizendium as a fork of Wikipedia. The objectives of the fork were to address various perceived flaws in the Wikipedia system. The main differences would be no anonymous editing: every author/editor would have to be identified by his/her real name, no "top-down" hierarchy of editors: it would aspire to be a "real encyclopedia." More differences are discussed at the Citizendium website in the FAQ. The initial fork was of the English language Wikipedia. Prior to its March 2007 public launch, Citizendium favored an emphasis on its own original articles. On September 27, 2006 Sanger announced that he would take a leave of absence from Digital Universe "in order to set up a fully independent Citizendium Foundation." In 2007 Sanger examined the possibilities for education online. He explained, "Imagine that education were not delivered but organized and managed in a way that were fully digitized, decentralized, self-directed, asynchronous, and at-a-distance." He further stated, "There would be no bureaucracy to enforce anything beyond some very basic rules, and decision-making would be placed almost entirely in the hands of teachers and students." In 2008, Sanger was at Oxford University to debate the proposition that "the internet is the future of knowledge." Sanger agreed that today's wikis and blogs are fundamentally changing the way knowledge is created and distributed.
Read more about this topic: Larry Sanger