To speed up the production of articles, two members of the Nupedia team, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, had the idea of allowing anybody to edit entries, using "wiki" technology.

Meanwhile, Baidu's China-based user-generated encyclopedia, which it launched in 2006, has 2.1 million articles.

Silly rows about encyclopaedia entries are not just distracting. They also damage outside perceptions of the region and thus its chances of integration into the rest of Europe.