Larry Sanger
Online knowledge organizer. Co-founder of Wikipedia, Ph.D. Philosophy.
February 7, 2008
Citizendium: A New Vision for Online Knowledge Communities
Speech delivered at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, Feb. 7, 2008, as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series, "Wikipedia - Democratization of Knowledge or Triumph of Amateurs," hosted by Marshall Poe. Contents Familiar territory The problem of quality and…
January 23, 2008
How the Internet Is Changing What We (Think We) Know
A speech for "the locals"--Upper Arlington Public Library, January 23, 2008. This is a more general discussion; the Citizendium is not mentioned once. Information is easy, knowledge is difficult There is a mind-boggling amount of information online. And this is a wonderful thing. I’m serious about…
December 1, 2007
An explanation of the Citizendium license
Preliminary notes (please read): Purpose: this long essay explains in depth why we have chosen CC-by-sa as the license for our own original collaborative content. Summary: this probably isn't an easy read. You can skip ahead to the license decision, and here is asummary of the reasoning behind……
October 30, 2007
The Citizendium one year on: a strong start and an amazing future
Contents: Debunking some myths What we have demonstrated in our first year Our new initiatives Short-term plans Longer-term plans The coming explosion of growth Essential reading in bold above. A possibility you may not have considered It's been exactly one year since work on the…
September 28, 2007
The New Politics of Knowledge
Speech delivered at the Jefferson Society, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, November 9, 2007, and at the Institute of European Affairs, Dublin, Ireland, September 28, 2007, as the inaugural talk for the IEA's "Our Digital Futures" program. I want to begin by asking a question that…
June 7, 2007
What Strong Collaboration Means for Scholarly Publishing
Keynote delivered at the Annual Meeting, Society for Scholarly Publishing, "Imagining the Future: Scholarly Communication 2.0," San Francisco, California, June 7, 2007. When I was asked to speak to you, the Society for Scholarly Publishing, I have to admit that I found this puzzling, because I…
March 1, 2007
Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed
This essay argues that the Citizendium is feasible. The wiki is in public view, or will be within a few days. You can join now. 1. So far, so good. The Citizendium pilot project wiki got under way privately at the start of last November. In the intervening months, we have steadily grown…
September 9, 2006
Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)
1. Thinkers of the world, start imagining. According to one source, there are over one billion (a thousand million) people on the Internet. That means there must be tens of millions of intellectuals online--I mean educated, thinking people who read about science or ideas regularly. Tens of…
June 9, 2006
The Role of Content Brokers in the Era of Free Content
Draft June 9, 2006; very lightly revised, October 2006 I. The problem of funding content Ever since entering the open content arena in 2000, I have thought about, and been asked (repeatedly) about, how to pay for free content. This is a pressing problem for professional content creators, because of…
December 31, 2004
Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism
Wikipedia has started to hit the big time. Accordingly, several critical articles have come out, including "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia" by a former editor-in-chief of Britannica and a very widely-syndicated AP article that was given such titles as "When Information Access Is So Easy,…