October 9, 2006

Wikipedia – the popular grass-roots encyclopedia – started in Pacific Beach in 2001. That much everyone agrees on.

Depending on your perspective, the birthplace was either a suite within a two-story office building on the corner of Lamont and Hornblend streets or a now-closed Mexican restaurant just around the corner, where Balboa and Grand avenues run together.

There's a little controversy over the origins of Wikipedia, as well as over the future of grass-roots, online encyclopedias.

Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales launched an online encyclopedia project, Nupedia, in the beige-and-gray Lamont Street building. It was Wales' vision to have an encyclopedia written by volunteers. You could count that as the beginning, since Wikipedia grew out of Nupedia.

Wales hired graduate student Larry Sanger as editor in chief of the Nupedia. During the project's excruciatingly slow start, Sanger had dinner at the Balboa Avenue restaurant with a friend. It was there that he was introduced to wiki technology, a type of software that makes possible communal editing of wiki Web pages.

Sanger says it struck him on the spot as a way to open up the writing and editing of the encyclopedia project and get it off the ground. So the restaurant could also be seen as the spawning ground.

Sanger later came up with the name Wikipedia, a second undisputed point in the history of the site.

Wiki technology jump-started the project. As the encyclopedia of pages that anyone could edit prospered, the relationship between Wales and Sanger faltered.

Today there are more than 1.4 million articles in Wikipedia, more than 10 times the number of articles in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Two of those articles – profiles of Sanger and Wales – show how the founders disagree over several things, including how to divide credit for putting the “wiki” in Wikipedia.

Recent developments bring new interest to the site's early history. Sanger, who had been Wikipedia's only employee, left in 2002 after funding dried up. At the time, he said he was done with the encyclopedia business.

But he's come back.

Last month, Sanger launched a “fork” of Wikipedia, a hacker term describing what happens when two groups working on open-source software such as Linux move in divergent directions and the code becomes irreconcilable.

He's pushing Citizendium (www.citizendium.org) as an outgrowth or splinter from Wikipedia. The plan is to start with copies of all the articles on Wikipedia and go forward with credentialed experts for topic areas. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium editors won't be anonymous.

The two men who created Wikipedia have philosophical differences on how to best create an online encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is rooted in the anarchist ethic of the open-source, open-content movements. Wales, who couldn't be reached for this article because he was out of the country, has described himself as “anti-credentialist,” despite having a master's degree in finance and experience teaching college.

As a result of the view by Wales and others, Wikipedia editors don't have to present credentials.

Sanger has a doctorate in philosophy. He believes that credentials have an essential role in the process of publishing accurate information. He and the other founders of Citizendium are working on a system to balance open participation with credentialed editing.

In addition to Sanger and Wales' differences on substantive issues, they have a personality clash.

According to Wales' bio on Wikipedia, he considers himself the site's sole founder and said so in a 2004 Newsweek article. In 2005, he caused a stir when he edited his Wikipedia profile to give himself sole credit for founding the site.

Sanger says Wales was the visionary and the money guy, but that he, not Wales, got the project off the ground.

It's hard to tell how much the personality clash has contributed to Sanger's decision to launch Citizendium. But it's apparently a factor.

A volunteer Wikipedia spokesman said ego clashes likely had little to do with the spinoff. Citizendium was too big an undertaking to be fueled solely by hard feelings, he said.

Sanger won't talk much about his dealings with Wales. He will say that attempts to revise Wikipedia history at his expense reinforced his belief in the need for a splinter project.

“My interest in this project was rekindled by the controversy in 2004, but it is absolutely not a result of it,” Sanger said. “This is not an effort at personal competition.”

While there's new interest in Wikipedia's history, only the earliest phase took place here. After Sanger left, Wales moved operations to Florida, where rents were more affordable.

Personal Technology Editor Jonathan Sidener's column runs every other Monday. His blog is posted at http://utsubscriberperks.signonsandiego.com: (619) 293-1239; jonathan.sidener@uniontrib.com