The falling out of Wikipedia founders Jimmy Wales and LARRY SANGER (born 1968) has become the stuff of legend — or an endless cycle of flames and manifestos, which is the form legend takes in the information age. But unlike the tales of other failed duos in the Internet pantheon, the story of Sanger and Wales hinges on matters of philosophical interest. At first blush, Wales’s version of Wikipedia — encyclopedism for everyone — would seem the broader vision. Sanger, who left Wikipedia (if one ever can truly leave it) to found a specialist-moderated encyclopedia called Citizendium, harbors a notion that seem more moderate: experts working together with the rest of us; knowledge proposing, but curiosity disposing. Upon closer examination, however, it’s the latter idea that’s more utopian. For expertise will always exist, alongside more practical and proletarian needs, passions, and curiosities. Sanger’s confederation of dunces and dons is a truly radical vision: less Diderot redux than a re-enlightening of the Enlightenment. — Matthew Battles