7 ms·

https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day > Founder Jimbo Wales on a challenge overcome Aren't you forgetting someone,

by amiga386 10mo ago

https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day > Founder Jimbo Wales on a challenge overcome Aren't you forgetting someone, Jimmy? Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger Let's check one of the citations from the History of Wikipedia page: https://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/article/tech-rewind--how-wikipedia--the-free-encyclopedia-came-to-be-15915177 https://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/article... > It was Larry Sanger who chanced upon the critical concept of combining the three fundamental elements of Wikipedia, namely an encyclopedia, a wiki, and essentially unrestricted editorial access to the public during a dinner meeting with an old friend Ben Kovitz in January 2, 2001. Kovitz a computer programmer and introduced Sanger to Ward Cunningham's wiki, a web application which allows collaborative modification, extension or deletion of its content and structure. The name wiki has been derived from the Hawaiian term which meant quick. Sanger feeling that the wiki software would facilitate a good platform for an online encyclopedia web portal, proposed the concept to Wales to be applied to Nupedia. Wales intially skeptic about the idea decided to give it a try later. > The credit for coining the term Wikipedia goes to Larry Sanger. He initially conceived the concept of a wiki-based encyclopedia project only as a means to accelerate Nupedia's slow growth. Larry Sanger served as the "chief organiser" of Wikipedia during its critical first year of growth and created and enforced many of the policies and strategy that made Wikipedia possible during its first formative year. Wikipedia turned out to contain 15,000 articles and upwards to 350 Wikipedians contributing on several topics by the end of 2001. He may not be with the project now, but don't airbrush him out of history.

mr_mitm 10mo ago
It's a very touchy subject for Wales. It caused him to walk out of an interview after 48 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswRbWyt_pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswRbWyt_pg
- xemoka 10mo ago
  Oh. Wow. I had no idea Jimmy Wales was like that. Enlightening.
  - rvnx 10mo ago
    Wikipedia is literally a spin-off of a porn company. From that point on, where it came from or who founded it is not so important. The question is how it acts today. It is a highly-political organization supporting lot of “progressive” ideas, California-style. So if you like reading politically biased media it may be for you. If you are seeking for a global view you better ask different LLMs for arguments and counter-arguments on a subject. EDIT: a couple downvotes denying the influence of specific “Wikipedia ideology” and politics. Take a chance to edit articles and you will see how tedious it is. There is also a lot of legal censorship. Celebrities putting pressure on removing info, or lobbies, or say things that are illegal or very frowned upon (for example questioning homosexuality, or the impact of certain wars). Sometime it is legality, ideology, politics, funding, pressure, etc. This is why you need to use different sources.
    - jamespo 10mo ago
      Yes LLMs that don't disclose sources are much better.
      - rvnx 10mo ago
        LLMs have their issues too. In everyday life, you cannot read 20 books about a topic about everything you are curious about, but you can ask 5 subject-experts (“the LLMs”) in 20 seconds some of them who are going to check on some news websites (most are also biased) Then you can ask for summaries of pros and cons, and make your own opinions. Are they hallucinating ? Could be. Are they lying ? Could be. Have they been trained on what their masters said to say ? Could be. But multiplying the amount of LLMs reduce the risk. For example, if you ask DeepSeek, Gemini, Grok, Claude, GLM-4.7 or some models that have no guardrails, what they think about XXX, then perhaps there are interesting insights.
        jamespo 10mo ago
        This may shock you, but wikipedia provides multiple sources, it even links to them. Where do you think the LLMs are getting their data from?
- joering2 10mo ago
  Wow, thanks for the video actually. For a long time I felt he was complete jerk but I felt it was maybe biased propaganda. The mere fact he couldn't answer a basic question and explain for all those who don't know, but rather stormed out like a 4 year old child, only proves what I felt about him prior.
  - rand846633 10mo ago
    Your comment is a great example of someone deciding on a conclusion first, then backfilling a justification using minimal evidence—in this case, a single data point—to validate an existing suspicion or bias. With that standard, you can make virtually any public or semi-public figure look bad if you’re willing to cherry-pick a small enough slice of information.
    - joering2 10mo ago
      > cherry-pick a small enough slice of information [...] For a long time [...]
- gwbas1c 10mo ago
  Without context, it looks like the interviewer was a jerk and ambushed him. I've seen plenty of stalling like that on major news programs, and the interviewer always knows to move on (and possibly edit something in to provide context.) --- That being said, "who started what" and "who had what idea" are silly topics to obsesses about. It always come down to who put the long-term work in. I think Wales was "in the right" to walk off; or at least say something like "I can't tell the story accurately, so please move on to a different question."
  - UebVar 10mo ago
    The interview started with the most mundane question "Who are you?", and the very first sentence of Wales is either a lie or misleading. The journalists asks for clarification (thats a journalists job, btw), and in his second sentence of the interview Wales insults the journalist. I'm pretty sure who is the jerk here. It also was Wales who bought up the topic, not the journalist. If he considers it a stupid topic he does not want to talk about, why is it the very first thing he talks about?
    - hallole 10mo ago
      "So, who are you?" "Stupid question." What an interview! I had never seen this clip before, it's really something. Facts and context are important for sure, but as someone who isn't clued in on the Sanger drama, Wales could not possibly have made himself look worse. And in under a minute! As you said, the interviewer is in the right, carrying out the job of interviewing, by pushing Wales as he did. To call him a "jerk" is silly, I think.
    - jacobolus 10mo ago
      Sanger was originally hired to edit Nupedia, a web encyclopedia project with a strict peer review process, and only worked for Wales for about a year. Wikipedia was started as a side project (with Sanger contributing to the concept and some early organizing), but Wikipedia quickly became much more successful while Nupedia basically never got off the ground. My impression is that Sanger wanted to impose his own vision on Wikipedia, but couldn't because the community of volunteer editors disagreed, and when Wales stopped paying him as a full time Nupedia editor (Wales's company was tight on cash at that time), he stopped any involvement. This was long before most of the actual work of Wikipedia happened, and that should have been the end of the story. But ever since, Sanger has been trash talking Wikipedia as a project and community ("broken beyond repair") and trying to undermine it. A few years later he started a competing project (which was predictably a total failure). For two decades he has been promoting himself as "cofounder of Wikipedia". Interviewer after interviewer asks the same lazy questions about the subject, without ever adding any new insight. (You can see that Sanger's ghost is chasing Wikipedia even into this discussion.) It's beating a dead horse, and entirely off the topic of what the interview was supposed to be about. Answering the question clearly and accurately takes a lot of time and finesse, which is wasted on the interviewer and most of the audience. Wales clearly screwed up in that interview, but it's not hard to see where he's coming from, psychologically.
- shevy-java 10mo ago
  IMO Wales has been sitting on that chair for too long. He should retire. It would also be better for Wikipedia to not have any "public face". I don't want fake-heroes; I want accurate, objective content.
  - phatfish 10mo ago
    I think he plays a good role as a lightning rod for all the MAGA morons to attack, rather than going after contributors. It's better that Musk has a tantrum at Jimmy rather than doxing some poor editor on X. Sad that he has to play that role, but this is where we are at the moment.
    - rand846633 10mo ago
      Fair. Not sure if I agree or not, but an interesting perspective for sure. Would love to hear exactly why and how your comment is triggering people her..
- anal_reactor 10mo ago
  Pffft hahaha. Looks like interviewer was inexperienced AND hit a touchy subject. It's like trying to have a casual conversation about dating with someone who's secretly gay.
  - rand846633 10mo ago
    It’s the style of the interviewer. It works really well for Tilo in many cases at least. He is good as confusing and making you so uncomfortable that loos your media training. He does things that are questionable in normal life but meant more great fact finding. As we see, this does not always work. He has more or less made a career of bing a bit to close and a bit too unpleasant to the people who agree tho be interviewed. What context may also have been lost is that the interview format is self described as somewhat naive and simple. I think the “who are you” question is his standard opening move. The interview series literally advertises to be for the “disinterested” sure you can hate it but you cannot feel tricked…
GaryBluto 10mo ago
I'd say his lack of acknowledgment of Larry Sanger is actually quite useful, as it is a perfect and irrefutable example that Wikipedia has no qualms with omitting information and twisting the truth to serve a narrative.
- amiga386 10mo ago
  Wikimedia, maybe, but Wikipedia itself acknowledges it in the lead paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia > Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales > Most notably, he co-founded Wikipedia Wikipedia shows integrity even when its co-founder does not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Co-founder_status_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Co-founder_status_... > In late 2005, Wales edited his biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.[53][54] Sanger commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because, in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out."[20][55] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company's products.[16][20] Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content,[20] he apologized for editing his biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.[20][55]
  - ryan_lane 10mo ago
    Jimmy Wales isn't Wikimedia. He's the co-founder of Wikipedia, and an honorary board member. He doesn't serve any official capacity.
    - amiga386 10mo ago
      I'm not saying Jimmy Wales is Wikimedia. This promotional website is created by the Wikimedia Foundation (it says so in the About page), and "has no qualms with omitting information" (GGP's claim), as it fails to mention that Jimmy Wales is co-founder of Wikipedia alongside Larry Sanger. By contrast, Wikipedia does not omit this fact.
reddalo 10mo ago
>He may not be with the project now, but don't airbrush him out of history. I don't want to defend Jimbo Wales (he's very touchy about the subject), but to be honest, even if he's a founder, Larry Sanger didn't contribute much to what Wikipedia today is.
- dlubarov 10mo ago
  Larry Singer was essentially running Wikipedia in the early days though, until he was laid off, so in some sense we could think of him as a co-founder who was ousted. It's true that he didn't contribute much (as an unpaid volunteer) after that though.
- vee-kay 10mo ago
  If someone builds a free knowledge-repository platform and makes it available for worldwide use, and if that platform takes off to become commonly used globally, then I think some credit is due to such founder and innovator.
shuntress 10mo ago
[flagged]
- trackflak 10mo ago
  [dead]
- amiga386 10mo ago
  Clearly there's no love lost between the two co-founders, but if either of them had been missing, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is today. Larry may have left the project, but sticks his oar in frequently, see for example the Nine Theses he posted to Wikipedia last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Nine_Theses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Nine_Theses Neither Larry nor Jimbo "are" Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editors are Wikipedia, and if they collectively agree with any of Larry's policy ideas, they'll adopt them in time. I used to glibly agree with what you said, because back in the early 2000s it was primarily the right-wing nutters being fed a diet of Fox News bullshit that were deranged from reality... "reality has a liberal bias", right? Remember the crackpot Conservapedia? But these days I find plenty of equal opportunity derangement from terrible news sources chasing clicks, promoting FOMO, anxiety and keeping their readers/viewers addicted. No political flavour of bullshit belongs on Wikipedia.
  - shuntress 10mo ago
    His nine theses are basically a how-to guide for replacing democratic consensus with culture war bullshit. He clearly wants to bend the process to match his perception of the world rather than update his understanding of the world to match the facts. The process Wikipedia uses to produce articles that present facts with without editorializing has clearly worked fairly well. Obviously we have a more difficult time reaching consensus on contentious topics but in general the system works quite well.
    - mightyham 10mo ago
      I don't understand how you could read the nine theses essays and think they are anything but reasonable. Even if you disagree with his politics, the results of his suggestions would almost certainly make Wikipedia more pluralistic, welcoming and neutral.
oytis 10mo ago
Wikipedia itself says Larry Sanger "co-founded" Wikipedia, but I don't quite understand why. If you get into the details, he was Wales' employee at the time, and made initial version of Wikipedia while being paid as such. So I'm tentatively with Wales on that ATM.
- amiga386 10mo ago
  Employing someone doesn't let you pass off their achievements as your own. If Wales had anyone else, or had gone it alone, it's unlikely Wikipedia would be what it is today.
  - oytis 10mo ago
    > Employing someone doesn't let you pass off their achievements as your own. Doesn't it? That's basically how tech companies work. You can tell he's written an initial version of Wikipedia, but founder is emphatically not an employee.
    - amiga386 10mo ago
      That's not how fame and credit for some novel thing is shared. The minds of two people were vital to its success, and we don't fold that into one because of business structure.
  - glaslong 10mo ago
    Please tell the founders of various companies I've developed novel things for that my name should be at the top with theirs :p
- gowld 10mo ago
  "founder" is a weasel word that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
gowld 10mo ago
Does the OP site give anyone credit for anything, except crediting Jimmy Wales and "volunteers"? A monument to vanity.
bawolff 10mo ago
I think Wikipedia is the only place where an early employee who left relatively quickly would be considered a "co-founder". If this was a tech company i dont think Larry would be considered a co-founder. I think the thing is a soar subject because Wikipedia essentially rejected all of Sangar's ideas, but he's still kind of riding on its coattails.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  A founder only has to be there for the beginning. "Early employee" and "left relatively quickly" would not disqualify him. I know little about Sanger but he wouldn't be the first person to have been written out. Elon Musk's partner in early PayPal suffered that fate.
ryan_lane 10mo ago
> Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps? Who left extremely early on in the project, went to create a poorly conceived and failed competitor, then spent the next 23ish years shitting on Wikipedia? Why does he deserve any credit?
- amiga386 10mo ago
  Because he co-founded it, duh. Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him. This website purports to tell us how Wikipedia came to be, 25 years ago. Why not tell it honestly?
  - ryan_lane 10mo ago
    > Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him. I think if you asked anyone in that situation, they probably wouldn't call them their dad, so yeah, this is indeed a good example. Larry Sanger is effectively an abusive parent who did their best to try to ensure Wikipedia didn't survive. Him being there for the birth doesn't mean much.
    - amiga386 10mo ago
      Indeed, but no matter how much you don't want your dad to be your dad, he is your dad, which was also my point. Without Sanger, Wikipedia: - wouldn't be called "Wikipedia" - wouldn't be editable without first opening an account - wouldn't have NPOV as a fundamental policy In short, it wouldn't be Wikipedia. The community he incubated grew and took Wikipedia onwards to what it is today, even if he disagrees with that direction and plugs his own massively less popular encyclopedia.
      - ryan_lane 9mo ago
        > no matter how much you don't want your dad to be your dad, he is your dad Someone biologically being your parent, doesn't mean you're required to call them your dad. The claims around whether these things would be true or not are questionable. We don't know whether these things were solely his decision or not, or if others were involved in the process. We don't know that his early involvement lead to the success of the project or not. I added HTTPS infrastructure to wikimedia foundation sites. Even if I weren't there, that would have eventually happened, though potentially much later. I moved wikimedia from svn to git, for development, and maybe that never would have happened and some other source control system would have been used, but would that have led to failure of the project? Almost certainly not. You're giving this person far too much credit, especially as they've spent decades trying to destroy something they "created".
1970-01-01 10mo ago
If you're looking for something interesting, check out https://www.citizendium.com https://www.citizendium.com It's his newer baby. Clearly it's a clone of Wikipedia, without the content of course. If Wikipedia ever goes wrong, it's nice to know that we have an alternative.

mr_mitm 10mo ago

It's a very touchy subject for Wales. It caused him to walk out of an interview after 48 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswRbWyt_pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswRbWyt_pg

xemoka 10mo ago
Oh. Wow. I had no idea Jimmy Wales was like that. Enlightening.
- rvnx 10mo ago
  Wikipedia is literally a spin-off of a porn company. From that point on, where it came from or who founded it is not so important. The question is how it acts today. It is a highly-political organization supporting lot of “progressive” ideas, California-style. So if you like reading politically biased media it may be for you. If you are seeking for a global view you better ask different LLMs for arguments and counter-arguments on a subject. EDIT: a couple downvotes denying the influence of specific “Wikipedia ideology” and politics. Take a chance to edit articles and you will see how tedious it is. There is also a lot of legal censorship. Celebrities putting pressure on removing info, or lobbies, or say things that are illegal or very frowned upon (for example questioning homosexuality, or the impact of certain wars). Sometime it is legality, ideology, politics, funding, pressure, etc. This is why you need to use different sources.
  - jamespo 10mo ago
    Yes LLMs that don't disclose sources are much better.
    - rvnx 10mo ago
      LLMs have their issues too. In everyday life, you cannot read 20 books about a topic about everything you are curious about, but you can ask 5 subject-experts (“the LLMs”) in 20 seconds some of them who are going to check on some news websites (most are also biased) Then you can ask for summaries of pros and cons, and make your own opinions. Are they hallucinating ? Could be. Are they lying ? Could be. Have they been trained on what their masters said to say ? Could be. But multiplying the amount of LLMs reduce the risk. For example, if you ask DeepSeek, Gemini, Grok, Claude, GLM-4.7 or some models that have no guardrails, what they think about XXX, then perhaps there are interesting insights.
      - jamespo 10mo ago
        This may shock you, but wikipedia provides multiple sources, it even links to them. Where do you think the LLMs are getting their data from?
joering2 10mo ago
Wow, thanks for the video actually. For a long time I felt he was complete jerk but I felt it was maybe biased propaganda. The mere fact he couldn't answer a basic question and explain for all those who don't know, but rather stormed out like a 4 year old child, only proves what I felt about him prior.
- rand846633 10mo ago
  Your comment is a great example of someone deciding on a conclusion first, then backfilling a justification using minimal evidence—in this case, a single data point—to validate an existing suspicion or bias. With that standard, you can make virtually any public or semi-public figure look bad if you’re willing to cherry-pick a small enough slice of information.
  - joering2 10mo ago
    > cherry-pick a small enough slice of information [...] For a long time [...]
gwbas1c 10mo ago
Without context, it looks like the interviewer was a jerk and ambushed him. I've seen plenty of stalling like that on major news programs, and the interviewer always knows to move on (and possibly edit something in to provide context.) --- That being said, "who started what" and "who had what idea" are silly topics to obsesses about. It always come down to who put the long-term work in. I think Wales was "in the right" to walk off; or at least say something like "I can't tell the story accurately, so please move on to a different question."
- UebVar 10mo ago
  The interview started with the most mundane question "Who are you?", and the very first sentence of Wales is either a lie or misleading. The journalists asks for clarification (thats a journalists job, btw), and in his second sentence of the interview Wales insults the journalist. I'm pretty sure who is the jerk here. It also was Wales who bought up the topic, not the journalist. If he considers it a stupid topic he does not want to talk about, why is it the very first thing he talks about?
  - hallole 10mo ago
    "So, who are you?" "Stupid question." What an interview! I had never seen this clip before, it's really something. Facts and context are important for sure, but as someone who isn't clued in on the Sanger drama, Wales could not possibly have made himself look worse. And in under a minute! As you said, the interviewer is in the right, carrying out the job of interviewing, by pushing Wales as he did. To call him a "jerk" is silly, I think.
  - jacobolus 10mo ago
    Sanger was originally hired to edit Nupedia, a web encyclopedia project with a strict peer review process, and only worked for Wales for about a year. Wikipedia was started as a side project (with Sanger contributing to the concept and some early organizing), but Wikipedia quickly became much more successful while Nupedia basically never got off the ground. My impression is that Sanger wanted to impose his own vision on Wikipedia, but couldn't because the community of volunteer editors disagreed, and when Wales stopped paying him as a full time Nupedia editor (Wales's company was tight on cash at that time), he stopped any involvement. This was long before most of the actual work of Wikipedia happened, and that should have been the end of the story. But ever since, Sanger has been trash talking Wikipedia as a project and community ("broken beyond repair") and trying to undermine it. A few years later he started a competing project (which was predictably a total failure). For two decades he has been promoting himself as "cofounder of Wikipedia". Interviewer after interviewer asks the same lazy questions about the subject, without ever adding any new insight. (You can see that Sanger's ghost is chasing Wikipedia even into this discussion.) It's beating a dead horse, and entirely off the topic of what the interview was supposed to be about. Answering the question clearly and accurately takes a lot of time and finesse, which is wasted on the interviewer and most of the audience. Wales clearly screwed up in that interview, but it's not hard to see where he's coming from, psychologically.
shevy-java 10mo ago
IMO Wales has been sitting on that chair for too long. He should retire. It would also be better for Wikipedia to not have any "public face". I don't want fake-heroes; I want accurate, objective content.
- phatfish 10mo ago
  I think he plays a good role as a lightning rod for all the MAGA morons to attack, rather than going after contributors. It's better that Musk has a tantrum at Jimmy rather than doxing some poor editor on X. Sad that he has to play that role, but this is where we are at the moment.
  - rand846633 10mo ago
    Fair. Not sure if I agree or not, but an interesting perspective for sure. Would love to hear exactly why and how your comment is triggering people her..
anal_reactor 10mo ago
Pffft hahaha. Looks like interviewer was inexperienced AND hit a touchy subject. It's like trying to have a casual conversation about dating with someone who's secretly gay.
- rand846633 10mo ago
  It’s the style of the interviewer. It works really well for Tilo in many cases at least. He is good as confusing and making you so uncomfortable that loos your media training. He does things that are questionable in normal life but meant more great fact finding. As we see, this does not always work. He has more or less made a career of bing a bit to close and a bit too unpleasant to the people who agree tho be interviewed. What context may also have been lost is that the interview format is self described as somewhat naive and simple. I think the “who are you” question is his standard opening move. The interview series literally advertises to be for the “disinterested” sure you can hate it but you cannot feel tricked…

GaryBluto 10mo ago

I'd say his lack of acknowledgment of Larry Sanger is actually quite useful, as it is a perfect and irrefutable example that Wikipedia has no qualms with omitting information and twisting the truth to serve a narrative.

amiga386 10mo ago
Wikimedia, maybe, but Wikipedia itself acknowledges it in the lead paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia > Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales > Most notably, he co-founded Wikipedia Wikipedia shows integrity even when its co-founder does not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Co-founder_status_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Co-founder_status_... > In late 2005, Wales edited his biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.[53][54] Sanger commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because, in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out."[20][55] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company's products.[16][20] Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content,[20] he apologized for editing his biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.[20][55]
- ryan_lane 10mo ago
  Jimmy Wales isn't Wikimedia. He's the co-founder of Wikipedia, and an honorary board member. He doesn't serve any official capacity.
  - amiga386 10mo ago
    I'm not saying Jimmy Wales is Wikimedia. This promotional website is created by the Wikimedia Foundation (it says so in the About page), and "has no qualms with omitting information" (GGP's claim), as it fails to mention that Jimmy Wales is co-founder of Wikipedia alongside Larry Sanger. By contrast, Wikipedia does not omit this fact.

reddalo 10mo ago

>He may not be with the project now, but don't airbrush him out of history. I don't want to defend Jimbo Wales (he's very touchy about the subject), but to be honest, even if he's a founder, Larry Sanger didn't contribute much to what Wikipedia today is.

dlubarov 10mo ago
Larry Singer was essentially running Wikipedia in the early days though, until he was laid off, so in some sense we could think of him as a co-founder who was ousted. It's true that he didn't contribute much (as an unpaid volunteer) after that though.
vee-kay 10mo ago
If someone builds a free knowledge-repository platform and makes it available for worldwide use, and if that platform takes off to become commonly used globally, then I think some credit is due to such founder and innovator.

shuntress 10mo ago

[flagged]

trackflak 10mo ago
[dead]
amiga386 10mo ago
Clearly there's no love lost between the two co-founders, but if either of them had been missing, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is today. Larry may have left the project, but sticks his oar in frequently, see for example the Nine Theses he posted to Wikipedia last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Nine_Theses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Nine_Theses Neither Larry nor Jimbo "are" Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editors are Wikipedia, and if they collectively agree with any of Larry's policy ideas, they'll adopt them in time. I used to glibly agree with what you said, because back in the early 2000s it was primarily the right-wing nutters being fed a diet of Fox News bullshit that were deranged from reality... "reality has a liberal bias", right? Remember the crackpot Conservapedia? But these days I find plenty of equal opportunity derangement from terrible news sources chasing clicks, promoting FOMO, anxiety and keeping their readers/viewers addicted. No political flavour of bullshit belongs on Wikipedia.
- shuntress 10mo ago
  His nine theses are basically a how-to guide for replacing democratic consensus with culture war bullshit. He clearly wants to bend the process to match his perception of the world rather than update his understanding of the world to match the facts. The process Wikipedia uses to produce articles that present facts with without editorializing has clearly worked fairly well. Obviously we have a more difficult time reaching consensus on contentious topics but in general the system works quite well.
  - mightyham 10mo ago
    I don't understand how you could read the nine theses essays and think they are anything but reasonable. Even if you disagree with his politics, the results of his suggestions would almost certainly make Wikipedia more pluralistic, welcoming and neutral.

oytis 10mo ago

Wikipedia itself says Larry Sanger "co-founded" Wikipedia, but I don't quite understand why. If you get into the details, he was Wales' employee at the time, and made initial version of Wikipedia while being paid as such. So I'm tentatively with Wales on that ATM.

amiga386 10mo ago
Employing someone doesn't let you pass off their achievements as your own. If Wales had anyone else, or had gone it alone, it's unlikely Wikipedia would be what it is today.
- oytis 10mo ago
  > Employing someone doesn't let you pass off their achievements as your own. Doesn't it? That's basically how tech companies work. You can tell he's written an initial version of Wikipedia, but founder is emphatically not an employee.
  - amiga386 10mo ago
    That's not how fame and credit for some novel thing is shared. The minds of two people were vital to its success, and we don't fold that into one because of business structure.
- glaslong 10mo ago
  Please tell the founders of various companies I've developed novel things for that my name should be at the top with theirs :p
gowld 10mo ago
"founder" is a weasel word that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

gowld 10mo ago

Does the OP site give anyone credit for anything, except crediting Jimmy Wales and "volunteers"? A monument to vanity.

bawolff 10mo ago

I think Wikipedia is the only place where an early employee who left relatively quickly would be considered a "co-founder". If this was a tech company i dont think Larry would be considered a co-founder. I think the thing is a soar subject because Wikipedia essentially rejected all of Sangar's ideas, but he's still kind of riding on its coattails.

nephihaha 10mo ago
A founder only has to be there for the beginning. "Early employee" and "left relatively quickly" would not disqualify him. I know little about Sanger but he wouldn't be the first person to have been written out. Elon Musk's partner in early PayPal suffered that fate.

ryan_lane 10mo ago

> Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps? Who left extremely early on in the project, went to create a poorly conceived and failed competitor, then spent the next 23ish years shitting on Wikipedia? Why does he deserve any credit?

amiga386 10mo ago
Because he co-founded it, duh. Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him. This website purports to tell us how Wikipedia came to be, 25 years ago. Why not tell it honestly?
- ryan_lane 10mo ago
  > Even if your father abandons your family on your second birthday, to start another family, he's still your dad, no matter how much you hate him. I think if you asked anyone in that situation, they probably wouldn't call them their dad, so yeah, this is indeed a good example. Larry Sanger is effectively an abusive parent who did their best to try to ensure Wikipedia didn't survive. Him being there for the birth doesn't mean much.
  - amiga386 10mo ago
    Indeed, but no matter how much you don't want your dad to be your dad, he is your dad, which was also my point. Without Sanger, Wikipedia: - wouldn't be called "Wikipedia" - wouldn't be editable without first opening an account - wouldn't have NPOV as a fundamental policy In short, it wouldn't be Wikipedia. The community he incubated grew and took Wikipedia onwards to what it is today, even if he disagrees with that direction and plugs his own massively less popular encyclopedia.
    - ryan_lane 9mo ago
      > no matter how much you don't want your dad to be your dad, he is your dad Someone biologically being your parent, doesn't mean you're required to call them your dad. The claims around whether these things would be true or not are questionable. We don't know whether these things were solely his decision or not, or if others were involved in the process. We don't know that his early involvement lead to the success of the project or not. I added HTTPS infrastructure to wikimedia foundation sites. Even if I weren't there, that would have eventually happened, though potentially much later. I moved wikimedia from svn to git, for development, and maybe that never would have happened and some other source control system would have been used, but would that have led to failure of the project? Almost certainly not. You're giving this person far too much credit, especially as they've spent decades trying to destroy something they "created".

1970-01-01 10mo ago

If you're looking for something interesting, check out https://www.citizendium.com https://www.citizendium.com It's his newer baby. Clearly it's a clone of Wikipedia, without the content of course. If Wikipedia ever goes wrong, it's nice to know that we have an alternative.