Wikipedia "broken beyond repair"

Far from being a "force for good", according to the UK's education minister Alan Johnson, Wikipedia is unreliable and "broken beyond repair", co-founder Larry Sanger said.

The Times reported Sanger's remarks in the wake of a speech Johnson made to teachers yesterday. Johnson said Wikipedia allows people to access info which formerly would require expensive subscriptions to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and the like.

But Sanger said the community was "often dysfunctional", the content was unreliable and it had serious management problems.

Mind you, Sanger has something of an axe to grind as he's just launched his own encyclopaedia, citizendium.org, which will be monitored by boffins.