French publishing group sets up rival to Wikipedia

France has long battled against the Anglophone cultural invasion and now it has thrown down a virtual gauntlet. Larousse, the French encyclopaedia created more than 150 years ago, is launching its own – it would say improved – version of Wikipedia.

Its first, free-access, online encyclopaedia will have the same contributor function but, to try to surmount the inherent problem of unreliability of articles, which can be modified by anyone at any time, Larousse has introduced some constraints.

Users who want to contribute have to sign up and their names will then appear on the article they submit. Unlike on Wikipedia, anonymous contributions are not allowed, and once written, contributions become protected.

Alongside the user-written pieces, Larousse will be making available 150,000 articles from its universal encyclopaedia, plus 10,000 images. Larousse is promising more in the future, along with the inclusion later this year of hundreds of video clips from channels such as National Geographic.

The Wikipedia "community" is made up of nearly 390,000 volunteer contributors and it is those that Larousse sees as one of the vital ingredients in Wikipedia's success story. It is hoping to rival this with its own online community and is drawing on its long-established print reputation to encourage people to join in.

"By becoming a contributor to Larousse, you become associated with a publisher of prestige, recognised for the seriousness and reliability of its content," says Isabelle Jeuge-Maynart, the Larousse's managing director. "Respect for an author is central to our concept. That should reassure... experts who are at the moment hesitant to publish their work on the internet."

As for Wikipedia, it appears to be moving in the reverse direction. A print version of the encyclopaedia, featuring 250,000 of its 10 million online articles, is due to be published in September by the German media group Bertelsmann.

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