“维基”一创建者拟再创网上百科

Wikipedia founder plans rival

One of the founders of Wikipedia is days away from launching a rival to the collaborative internet encyclopaedia, in an attempt to bring a more orderly approach to organising knowledge online.

Wikipedia - which is available to be written and edited by anyone on the internet - is one of the most visible successes of mass collaboration on the web, with many of its 1.4m articles appearing high in search results.


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However, its openness has also drawn charges of unreliability and left it vulnerable to disputes between people with opposing views, particularly on politically sensitive topics.

The latest venture from Larry Sanger, who helped create Wikipedia in 2001, is intended to bring more order to this creative chaos by drawing on traditional measures of authority. Though still open to submissions from anyone, the power to authorise articles will be given to editors who can prove their expertise, as well as a group of volunteer "constables", charged with keeping the peace between warring interests.

Accusing Wikipedia of failing to control its writers and editors, he said: "The latest articles don't represent a consensus view - they tend to become what the most persistent 'posters' say."

Mr Sanger said he had financial backing from an unidentified foundation for his new venture, while a web hosting company was providing its services free. He said he became frustrated with Wikipedia's failure to build expertise into its editing process and left after its first year.

Since then, the encyclopedia's other founder, Jimmy Wales, has taken some steps to bring more order to the Wikipedia approach, although he has avoided using authority figures such as editors.

Asked in an e-mail exchange how such disagreements should be resolved, Mr Wales replied: "With strong support for individual rights, and respect for reason." His e-mail went on: "It is the fundamental responsibility of every individual to- think-, to- judge-, to-decide-. We must never abdicate that responsibility, not to the collective, not to Britannica, not to Wikipedia, not to anyone."

Mr Sanger said volunteers would be able to become editors of his encyclopedia, called Citizendium, if they can show "minimum levels of qualification, based on real-world measures."

This would be an "imperfect but effective" test based on "degrees, professional society memberships, things like that".

Citizendium will be open "within the next few days" to a limited number of invited editors and members of the public who apply, and will be made generally available by the end of the year, said Mr Sanger.

It is likely to take Citizendium some time to prove whether it can create a better online encyclopedia. It will begin by simply taking over all of the existing entries from Wikipedia, then start the laborious job of having them filtered by expert editors - a job Mr Sanger called "a clean-out of the Augean stables".
“维基”一创建者拟再创网上百科

几天后，“维基百科”(Wikipedia)的创建者之一拉里?桑格(Larry Sanger)将为这个通过协作完成的互联网百科全书推出一个竞争对手，试图为在线知识的整理引入一种更有序的方法。

互联网上的任何人都可以撰写和编辑的“维基百科”，是网上群体协作最引人瞩目的成功案例之一，共收录词条140万个，其中有许多出现在搜索结果居前的位置。

然而，它的开放性也招致了可信度低的指控，而且容易使持对立观点的人士之间产生争执，特别是在具有政治敏感性的问题上。


桑格成立的新公司计划采用传统的权威方法，让这种有创造力的混乱局面变得更有秩序。尽管仍然允许任何人提交信息，但词条的批准权将授予那些能证明自己专业知识的编辑和一群志愿“警官”。志愿“警官”将负责维持敌对各方之间的和平。

桑格在2001年协助创建了“维基百科”，他对“维基百科”不能控制其作者和编辑的做法提出了批评。他表示：“最近收录的词条不能代表多数人观点――而往往是最执着的‘发帖人’的观点。”

桑格表示，某个基金会将向他提供新项目的资金支持，而一家主机托管公司将提供免费服务。他表示，他对“维基百科”不能在编辑过程中引入专业知识感到失望，于是在一年后就离开了“维基百科”。

在他离开后，这部网上百科的另一位创建人吉米?威尔士(Jimmy Wales)采取了一些措施，让“维基百科”编纂变得更为有序，不过他始终回避使用编辑等权威人士。

桑格表示，志愿者也能够成为其百科全书Citizendium的编辑，只要他们能够表明，“按现实世界的尺度衡量，自己享有最起码的资格。”

桑格表示，Citizendium将“在未来几天”向少数特约编辑和提出申请的公众成员开放，并将在今年底前全面开通。

中国解禁维基百科部分内容

Beijing Eases Ban on Wikipedia; Chinese-Language Filter Remains

BEIJING -- After a nearly yearlong ban, Chinese Internet monitors have largely restored access to the English-language site of Wikipedia, the reader-edited online encyclopedia.

But the shift may just be a sign that China's online censors have discovered more sophisticated ways to filter material -- essentially blocking Web content page-by-page rather than cutting off access to entire Web sites. In addition, access to Wikipedia's Chinese-language site remains blocked.

Michael Snow, spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation, the St. Petersburg, Florida, nonprofit organization that publishes Wikipedia, said that the partial lifting of the ban should help encourage contributions to the online encyclopedia.

"It's been recovering over time in spite of the block, but I think having open access is always better from our point of view," said Mr. Snow. "We'd like to have it completely opened so that the Chinese-language Wikipedia is completely accessible as well."


Wikipedia's Chinese-language site has about 90,000 articles, compared with more than 1.4 million entries available on the English-language Wikipedia.

Wikimedia says the foundation has been seeking advice from personal contacts in China to get a better understanding of why the blocks were in place and how they could negotiate to have them removed. However, the government has said very little on the matter. Wikipedia's China-based contributors also have lobbied their Internet-service providers for more information as well.

Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a widely read Web site about media and advertising in China, said the easing of the ban could signal an overall change in the government's policies.

"There are decisions being made that are reversing the tendency to block things, and that's positive," he said.

The most recent Wikipedia ban, which began in October 2005, was the longest experienced by the site in China. The ban was never officially announced, and Web surfers and researchers have been left to guess about what prompted the block. Some speculate an article about anticorruption protests in China ran afoul of monitors.

Experts believe that Chinese authorities used a method known as a "packet-dropping scheme," which blocks all content from specified computer addresses, to cut off access to Wikipedia, which is ranked as the 15th most popular site on the Web by Alexa Internet Inc. of San Francisco.

Tim Starling, a Wikimedia system administrator, said it now seems that a different content-filtering method is being used. Some parts of the Web site are accessible while others, such as pages written in Chinese and links to articles about the army's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, are blocked.

"This is a very good thing to give Chinese more access to all kinds of information and let the people judge by themselves which is right and which is wrong," said Hector Lee, 28 years old, a Chinese Wikipedia user in Beijing.

Mr. Goldkorn said he is optimistic that the move to ease access isn't temporary. "It seems almost evident that there is some intelligence being applied to the decision of what to block and what to unblock," he said.
中国解禁维基百科部分内容

在经过近一年的封锁后，中国互联网监管部门基本恢复了维基百科(Wikipedia)英文网站的访问。维基百科是由读者编辑的网上百科全书。

但这种变化可能只是说明中国的网上内容审查已找到了更精确地过滤内容的方法，也就是按照网页封锁网上内容，而不必禁止访问整个网站。此外，维基百科的中文网站仍然不能访问。

负责出版维基百科的非营利组织维基百科基金会(Wikimedia Foundation)的发言人迈克尔?斯诺(Michael Snow)说，部分解禁应有助于向这部网上百科全书提供更多的内容。

斯诺说，尽管还有封锁，但已可访问部分内容，不过在我们看来，能够公开访问该网站会更好。我们希望能够完全开放，让中文维基百科也能够自由访问。

维基百科的中文网站共有约90,000篇文章，而英文维基百科则有140多万个条目。

维基百科称，该基金会一直在与中国私下接触了解封锁的原因以及如何能够解除封锁。不过，政府对此事很少表态。维基百科在中国的内容提供者也在游说互联网服务提供商向他们透露更多信息。

Danwei.org的编辑杰里米?戈德考恩(Jeremy Goldkorn)说，解禁可能意味着政府总体政策的改变。Danwei.org是一个有关中国媒体和广告的网站。

他说，正在做出的一些决定改变了封锁网站的趋势，这是积极的变化。

维基百科最近一次遭到封锁是从2005年10月开始，这也是历次封锁中最长的一次。封锁从不正式宣布，网民和研究人员只是私下猜测个中原因。有人认为是一篇有关中国反腐败示威的文章激怒了审查者。

专家认为，中国有关部门采取了一种叫做“分组丢弃机制”(packet-dropping scheme)的方法阻止访问维基百科。在Alexa Internet Inc.的网络流量排名中，维基百科位居第十五位。

维基百科系统管理员蒂姆?斯塔林(Tim Starling)说，现在看来中国正在使用不同的内容过滤方法。网站的一些内容可以访问，而一些用中文撰写的网页和同中国有关的内容则无法访问。

维基百科中国用户Hector Lee说，能让中国人更多地了解各种信息，让他们自己判断对错是一件好事。

戈德考恩说，他乐观地认为，这次解除封锁的做法并不是权宜之计。他说，看来这次有关方面在封锁哪些内容、不封锁哪些内容的问题上动了些脑筋。

Loretta Chao