Larry Sanger

“ A complete encyclopedia of the sort described above would greatly aid such self-education projects--in ways that the Internet at present, as well as traditional (paper) libraries, do not. Self-study, for most people anyway, is all about pursuing knowledge haphazardly--at will, not bound by pre-set curricula and schedules. A project like Wikipedia is obviously, to anyone familiar with it, appealing to those with roaming interests. ”

“ Finally, the encyclopedia could be used to represent the cutting edge of research and thereby assist in codifying and reporting on new research. While this has more to do with research than education (except graduate education) , it is worth mentioning in this context that a superlatively huge, publicly-editable, and free encyclopedia could become a sort of hub of scholarship, with summaries of and links to articles on cutting-edge topics. Online encyclopedias are not paper--they can be expanded indefinitely. ”

“ Another aspect of the encyclopedias that would have the latter effect is that, by 2020, articles on most topics might have been written and rewritten and polished so many times that they will be models of clarity, neutrality, and usefulness for those who need introductions to their topics. Often, I think, what turns people off to learning is bad writing and bias. ”

“ Finally, it is important to note that Nupedia and Wikipedia, at least, have a nonbias policy, which will ensure that students have at least one reliable source of nonpartisan information that respects their ability to make up their minds for themselves. When educational systems are not committed to a neutral presentation of facts and theory, such articles are all the more valuable to students who are studying in such systems. ”

“ Creating it will require a lot of very hard work, coordinating the efforts of a lot of people with very different ideas. There are many ways in which it could go wrong, and we'll be very lucky if goes right. ”