Wikipedia 'broken beyond repair' says co-founder

By Iain Thomson on Apr 13, 2007 1:13 PM
Filed under Software

The co-founder of Wikipedia has said the site is ‘broken beyond repair' and criticised its supporters...

Larry Sanger, co-foundered of Wikipedia spoke out after the UK Education Secretary Alan Johnson praised Wikipedia at the annual conference of the National Association of Schoolteachers and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), saying it opened up knowledge that was previously unavailable to those who could not get access to copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

“I’m afraid that Mr Johnson does not realise the many problems afflicting Wikipedia, from serious management problems, to an often dysfunctional community, to frequently unreliable content, and to a whole series of scandals,” Sanger said.

“While Wikipedia is still quite useful and an amazing phenomenon, I have come to the view that it is also broken beyond repair.”

Larry Sanger, who co-foundered the site with James Wales, speaking two weeks after he started up a rival online information source Citizendium.

The new site it claimed to have articles checked and contributed by accredited academics and specialists, but will also accept publicly-written articles, once they have been checked.

Last month a Wikipedia editor who claimed to be a theology professor at an American college was later found to be a 24-year-old college drop out.