Wikipedia founder launches rival online encyclopaedia

Larry Sanger, one of the founder members of Wikipedia, has launched a competitor to the online encyclopaedia. Citizendium aims to avoid the inconsistency and vandalism of Wikipedia while retaining its democratic ideals, Mr Sanger said.

Volunteer contributors to the new site will be expected to provide their real names, and experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy. Approved articles will receive a green tick to indicate their reliability.

“If there’s going to be a free encyclopaedia, I’d like there to be a better free encyclopaedia,” Mr Sanger, 38, says. “It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving.”

Wikipedia has faced a number of high-profile attacks on its accuracy and reliability, most of which stem from users’ ability to edit articles anonymously. Recently, it also emerged that a Wikipedia editor understood by the site and its users to be a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law, was in fact a 24 year old from Kentucky with no higher educational qualifications.