本文简介：本文为平兄向 EOS sw/eden 的投稿！内容为对 Everipedia 的联合创始人的采访！

Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in January 2001. He set many of the early policies of Wikipedia. He ended up leaving the organization the following year, and has been a critic of it for, among other reasons, its narrow definitions of credible sources, and the fact that so few people ultimately are responsible for the creation and editing of content on Wikipedia.

Larry Sanger 与 Jimmy Wales 在 2001 年1月创办了维基百科。他制定了许多维基百科的早期政策。 但他在第二年便离开了维基百科，并对其有很多批评，如对可信来源的狭义定义 、很少人负责维基百科上内容的创建和编辑。

In the years since, Sanger has been involved in a number of encyclopedia projects, including Citizendium, which he founded in 2006.

从那时候开始，Sanger 陆续参与了很多百科全书类的项目，包括他在 2006 年创办的 Citizendium （大众百科）。

Roughly two years ago, Sanger began to informally advise a new startup called Everipedia, a for-profit wiki-based encyclopedia. Theodor Forselius is a co-founder of the company and its chief executive officer. The core of its content is that of Wikipedia, but it has built more content on top of that base, making it the largest English language encyclopedia. Sanger officially joined the company as chief information officer in December of 2017, lured in part due to the company's commitment to blockchain technology, which was announced on December 6. They indicated it would convert to using blockchain and a cryptocurrency token called IQ to encourage content creation. The IQ tokens are intended to be exchangeable for Bitcoin. Forselius believes this model will create incentives for broader content creation while also fostering access in countries that currently block Wikipedia such as Iran and Turkey.

大约两年前，Sanger 开始非正式地为一家名为 Everipedia 新创业公司提供咨询服务，这是一种以维基百科为基础的百科全书。 Theodor Forselius 是这家公司的联合创始人兼 CEO。虽然 Everipedia 的核心内容是维基百科，但是它基于维基百科之上构建了更多的内容，使它成为最大的英语百科全书。Sanger 在 2017 年12月正式加入该公司担任 CIO，吸引他加入的部分原因是这家公司在12月6号宣布与区块链技术的结合。他们表示，公司将会使用区块链技术并且使用一种加密通证（即 IQ）来激励用户进行内容创建。 IQ 通证可与比特币进行交易兑换。Forselius 相信，这个模型将会激励更广泛的内容创建，同时也能逐渐消除目前屏蔽维基百科的国家的访问难题，如伊朗和土耳其。

I recently spoke with Forselius and Sanger about all of the above and more.

最近，我和 Forselius 以及 Sanger 聊到了以上所有的问题。

Peter High: Theodor, could you talk about the genesis of Everipedia as well as an overview of the business model and the company's mission?

Peter High：Theodor，你能讲讲 Everipedia 的起源以及其商业模式蓝图和贵公司的使命吗？

Theodor Forselius: Everipedia started a little over two years ago as a project between my co-founder Sam Kazemian and myself while he was still studying at UCLA. Originally, we wanted to build a more modern and inclusive version of Wikipedia because we were both editors and huge fans of Wikipedia. However, we felt like there was a lot that was outdated and that we could do better.

Theodor Forselius: Everipedia 在两年前由我和联合创始人 Sam Kazemian 立项，当时他还在加州大学洛杉矶分校（UCLA）读书。最初，我们是想要打造一个更现代， 更包容版本的维基百科，因为我们俩都是维基百科的编辑和死忠粉。但是，我们慢慢觉得它有很多过时，而我们能够做得更好。

For example, their editing interface, talk pages for discussions, citations, their community guidelines and policies were all things that we liked but that we wanted to improve. That is why we started Everipedia.

例如，维基的编辑界面，对话页，引文，社区准则和政策都是我们喜欢的但也想去改进的点。这也是为什么我们创办了 Everipedia 。

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Since then, we have grown to a little over three million unique monthly users and about six million encyclopedia articles, which is one million more than English Wikipedia.

从那以后，我们的月活跃用户数达到了300多万，百科全书的内容约为600万篇，比英语维基百科多出了100万。

We decided to implement blockchain technology because we are a for-profit startup, not a non-profit like Wikipedia, so we had to find ways to monetize. Originally, we partnered with companies and we started running adds on the site. However, it didn't feel right saying that we were better than Wikipedia while we were running ads, so we started looking at other monetization models. Wikipedia's model of running massive donation banners did not feel like an innovative solution either. We started looking at other venues of monetization and my co-founder Sam came up with the idea of tokenizing the entire knowledge base and decentralizing it. That way, there is no central entity that needs to run ads to be able to monetize because the whole system will be completely peer-to-peer.

我们决定实施区块链技术，是因为我们是一家盈利性创业公司，而不是像维基百科一样非盈利的，所以我们必须找到赚钱的方法。最初，我们和一些公司合作在网站上添加一些广告。然而，当我们在做广告的时候我们标榜着自己比维基百科更好，这明显说不过去，所以我们开始寻找其他的商业模式。维基百科投放大量捐赠横幅的模式也并不是一种创新的解决方案。我们继续寻找其他的盈利场景，后来我的联合创始人 Sam 提出了一个主意：对整个知识库进行通证化以及去中心化。这样的话，就没有中心化的实体需要靠投放广告来盈利，因为整个系统将是完全的点对点。

High: Larry, in 2001 you co-founded Wikipedia. As of a few months ago, you joined Everipedia as the Chief Information Officer. Could you share your thoughts about the differences between the two businesses?

High：Larry，在2001年你联合创办了维基百科。而就在几个月前，你加入了Everipedia，担任首席信息官。你能分享一下你对这两家公司的不同看法吗？

Larry Sanger: The co-founders of the company contacted me and told me that Everipedia was moving to blockchain, which is a major difference in its own right. This shift to the blockchain got me interested because the blockchain enables something that I have been wanting to do for a long time.

Larry Sanger：当时公司的联合创始人联系我，并跟我说 Everipedia正在转向区块链，这本身就是一个很大的不同。 这种向区块链的转变吸引了我，因为区块链能够实现我长久以来一直想做的事情。

One of the biggest differences from a policy standpoint is that Everipedia does not restrict topics. Wikipedia allows only topics that are sufficiently notable. There must be plenty of what Wikipedia considers to be credible sources. There also is not any way for Wikipedia staff to recognize an individual as being one of the sources of information, such as the person that an article is about. Wikipedia does not have any way for those people to be used as sources, but Everipedia has a mechanism for this. Eliminating restrictions on topics changes the nature of the project, so that is a big difference.

从政治的角度来看，最大的不同就是：Everipedia 并不限制主题。 维基百科只允许那些足够吸引人的主题。维基百科认为有很多可信的来源，但维基百科的工作人员无法将个人识别为信息来源之一， 例如与文章相关的人。维基百科没有办法将这些人用作资源，但 Everipedia 有一个机制能够解决这个问题。消除对主题的限制改变了项目的性质，所以这是一个很大的区别。

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The other big difference is that Everipedia is moving to the blockchain. What this means is that we will have pointers to all the contents on Everipedia from a blockchain to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS is like a more sophisticated type of peer-to-peer file sharing. Among the things this will allow its users to be compensated and to take ownership to be able to quantify the amount of governance authority they have depending on how much work they put in. 、

另一个大的不同就是 Everipedia 正在转向区块链。这意味着我们拥有了 Everipedia 从区块链上到星际文件系统（IPFS）上的所有内容的指针。IPFS 是一个更精细的点对点文件共享系统。这些因素的结合，允许其用户获得补偿，并获得所有权，以便能够量化他们所拥有的治理权限，而这取决于他们投入了多少工作量。

These are two of the major differences, but there are a lot of smaller ones as well.

这是两个主要的区别，但也有很多小的差异。

High: Some of the differences in the ways in which Everipedia’s content is edited run contrary to the philosophies that you had baked into the foundations of Wikipedia. How have your learnings and the experience of Wikipedia led you to agree with the stance that is taken by Everipedia?

High：Everipedia 的内容编辑方式与维基百科的理念有一些不同。鉴于你在维基百科的学问和经验，你是如何让自己认可 Everipedia 所采取的思路的呢？

Sanger: When I first started talking to the co-founders, which was just after they got started about two years ago, I was skeptical of the idea of opening the topics to absolutely anything. The more that I worked in the system, the more impressed I have become. It motivates people to participate in a way that does not happen on Wikipedia anymore.

Sanger：当我第一次跟联合创始人讨论的时候，那时候他们已经创立公司2年了，我对开放任意的主题这个想法表示怀疑。但当我越深入地使用这个系统，我越被折服。它激励人们参与其中，而这种方式在维基百科上是无法实现的。

I am the guy who wrote the Ignore All Rules rule for Wikipedia, which might surprise you if you know anything about my history with Wikipedia. Since I started Citizendium back in 2006 – which was another wiki-based encyclopedia that made a special rule for expert editors – the common impression is that I am all about making sure that information is checked before it is posted and that only experts are involved. Those were never my views. I believe that the quality of information is extremely important, but there are a lot of other things that need to happen.

《忽视所有规则》这条规则是我为维基百科写的，如果你知道我与维基百科的所有过往你肯定会很惊讶。自从我在2006年创办了Citizendium （大众百科）——这是另一个基于维基百科的百科全书，为专业编辑制定了一个特别的规则——人们的普遍印象是，我的目的是确保信息在发布之前被检查，只有专家能参与其中。这些都不是我的观点。我相信信息的质量是非常重要的，但是还有很多其他的事情需要发生。

For an encyclopedia to be successful, a lot more people need to feel empowered to get involved. Right now, Wikipedia has something like 10,000 voting editors. These people have edited enough that they can vote in elections. 10,000 people out of hundreds of millions if not billions of regular users is a huge missed opportunity. It seems to me that we could be engaging a lot more people.

为了让百科全书能够成功，需要让更多的人感觉到被授权去参与其中。现在，维基百科有10,000个投票编辑。这些人是因为已经编辑了足够多的内容才资格在选举中投票。从数亿或者数十亿普通用户中挑选出10,000个人，那将是一个巨大的错失的机会。在我看来，我们可以吸引更多的人。

High: Everipedia has more English language articles than Wikipedia already. How has that happened? Given the amount of content as well as the duration of Wikipedia’s existence, how has Everipedia had the opportunity to expand so rapidly?

High：Everipedia 已经拥有比维基百科更多的英文文章了。这是如何做到的？鉴于维基百科内容的数量和存在的时间，Everipedia 是如何有机会快速扩张的呢？

Sanger: It is not as hard as it sounds because Everipedia is built on the shoulders of Wikipedia. We have been building and updating the five million English language articles from Wikipedia, and our staff have been adding articles in various ways. There are a lot of handwritten articles which we are constantly putting out there but also, a huge number of articles written by volunteers. The volunteer community has heated up since we started talking publicly about the launch in December.

Sanger：它并不像听起来那么难，因为 Everipedia 是建立在维基百科的“肩膀”上的。我们已经基于维基百科之上建立并更新了500万篇英语文章，我们的员工也在以各种方式添加文章。我们不仅经常在那里发表很多手写的文章，还有大量的志愿者写的文章。自从我们开始公开谈论12月的发布以来，志愿者社区已经慢慢更加活跃起来。

High: You mentioned that although you have been involved with the business for a couple of years, you joined officially only late last year. One of the reasons why you were so excited was the use of blockchain. Why was that such an exciting development for you? What is the value you expect to derive from using blockchain?

High：你提到，虽然你已经参与了好几年的相关业务，但你在去年年底才正式加入。你如此兴奋的原因之一是使用了区块链。为什么这对你来说是一个令人兴奋的发展？你期望从使用区块链中获得什么价值？

Sanger: I happened to know Mahbod Moghadam, one of the co-founders, who was trying to get me involved in France. Around the same time, I had this idea that solved a problem with regards to online encyclopedias that I had been wrestling with for 15 years. The problem is “How do you motivate boatloads of people to work all on the same project and to get them working side by side with experts? How do you motivate the experts to get involved?”

Sanger：我碰巧认识了Mahbod Moghadam，他是联合创始人之一，他试图让我参与到法国的活动中来。大约在同一时间，我有了解决关于在线百科全书的问题的想法，这个问题困扰了我15年了。这个问题就是“ 你如何去激励更广泛的人在同一个项目上工作，并让他们与专家协同工作？ ”你如何激励专家参与进来？”

If there were one or just a few competing websites that catalog knowledge in a credible way, then we would see a lot more participation. Additionally, we could do much better in terms of the quality of articles. Wikipedia articles are frequently outdated now. It is becoming more and more difficult for people to participate. The regulators tend to scare the new people off in various ways.

如果有一个或几个相互竞争的网站以一种可信的方式对知识进行分类，那么我们将会看到更多的参与。此外，我们可以在文章的质量方面做得更好。维基百科的文章现在已经过时了。人们参与的难度越来越大。监管机构倾向于以各种方式吓退这些新员工。

I had the idea we need to create a clearinghouse of encyclopedia articles. What I would like to see is a page with, for example, all the articles about the French philosopher Descartes on it. I can imagine there is probably a dozen encyclopedia articles available. Some of them might be behind paywalls. I can imagine that if people were properly motivated, we could have a bunch of readings of those articles. Then the top-rated article could be relied upon as a good source of information about the topic.

我有一个想法，我们需要创建一个百科全书文章的清算所。我想看到的是页面是这样的：例如，上面有关于法国哲学家笛卡尔的所有文章。我可以想象，可能有十几个百科全书的文章可用。其中的一些文章可能会排在付费墙后面（即有些链接广告通过付费置顶）。我可以想象，如果人们有适当的激励，我们可以对这些文章进行一些解读。然后，最受欢迎的文章可以作为这个话题的一个很好的信息来源。

If that sort of thing existed, then people could directly link to new articles which they host anywhere. It could be truly decentralized. I pitched Theodor, Sam, and Travis (the co-founders) this idea because I did not have anyone to work on it and I wanted to work with some people. They were hard at work building the basic infrastructure of Everipedia so we went our separate ways. Last September, Sam contacted me and said, "We were thinking of putting Everipedia on the blockchain."

如果这种方式可以实现，那么人们可以直接链接到任何地方的新文章。它能够是真正的去中心化。我向 Theodor ，Sam，和 Travis（联合创始人）讲解这个想法，因为我没有人手来做这件事，所以我想和一些人一起完成这份任务。但是当时他们正在努力建设 Everipedia 的基础设施，所以我们分道扬镳了。去年9月，Sam 联系了我，说：“我们正在考虑把 Everipedia 放在区块链上。”

I had followed blockchain a little but not in-depth. I knew it was something interesting and that I should investigate it more, but I never did. Once Sam explained their initial plan I could immediately see how this technology could implement the idea that I had. Moreover, the co-founders were enthusiastically on board with implementing the idea. The first step which the co-founders are working on now is putting the contents of Everipedia on the blockchain.

我对区块链略有关注，但并不深入。我知道它是很有意思的事物值得我多研究深入，但我就是从来没有践行。一旦 Sam 解释了他们初始计划，我就立即意识到这项技术将会如何实现我的想法。此外，两位联合创始人也热情地参与了这一想法的实施。联合创始人目前正在做的第一步是将 Everipedia 的内容放到区块链上。

This entails putting all Everipedia on the blockchain, which is exciting because it means people can start working on Everipedia articles and be compensated for doing so. People complain about cryptocurrencies being based on nothing. The contents of Wikipedia and Everipedia are not nothing. It is very credible as a source of value

这就需要将所有的 Everipedia 都放到区块链上，这很令人兴奋，因为这意味着人们可以开始使用 Everipedia 的文章，并因此得到补偿。人们抱怨加密货币没有与实体结合，但维基百科和 Everipedia 的内容是我们的加密货币的基础。作为一个价值来源，它是非常可信的。