Citizendium Blog

I just had a question for everyone — has anyone heard that anything like syndicated Web ratings, as described here, was under new or renewed development by anyone?

Yes or no.

If no, why do we keep making them?

For me, the bloom is off the rose.

The Internet affects us psychologically and socially in ways that people like Maggie Jackson and Nicholas Carr — to name just two — have been writing about fascinatingly. (I have written and spoken about the individual impact of the Internet a fair bit as well. See 1, 2, 3, 4.)

Perhaps it will make me even more of a Web 2.0 apostate to say so, but FaceBook, Twitter, Digg, many blogs, and many online forums are becoming increasingly obnoxious to me. I’m sorry to have to say it, but it’s true. Why? For a whole variety of reasons. But before I get into the reasons, let me say that these concerns don’t apply so much to Wikipedia, YouTube (except for YouTube forum discussions, which are obnoxious), or my own two new projects, the Citizendium and WatchKnow (still ramping up). Those actually produce (or usefully organize) quite a bit of interesting content. But as to many others — well, for me personally, things have reached a breaking point.

1. Facelessness

Frequently, we find ourselves in conversation with people we don’t know. We have nothing invested with them socially. When I first started talking to people in this way on mailing lists and USENET, back in 1993 I guess it was, online conversations were a bizarre but compelling game. It was still fascinating that I could speak to people who lived halfway across the world. It was the first time that I had conversed very much with people from Europe or Australia. It was also the first time that I could connect with people with very special interests (in my case, the fiddle tradition of County Donegal, Ireland). The social possibilities seemed rich.

Now they seem woefully impoverished. The stunning diversity of humanity online does not make up for the annoying effects of anonymity and disembodiment — or in one word, facelessness.

It so happens that I “know” fairly well on the order of dozens of people, people each of whom I have, at one time or another, spent many hours conversing and/or working. I’ve met some of these people in real life (IRL), but I would not recognize most of them if I were to pass them on the street. And, when you get down to it, I don’t really know much about these people. We only know about our shared interests — Citizendium, Wikipedia, fiddle music, or what have you.

To be honest, this makes me sad. I think that I should know my Internet acquaintances. I’ve spent so much time with them, I feel that I know them — and yet, I don’t. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but I think there is a small sort of tragedy here. It seems pathetic that we so often meet a powerful and natural need for human companionship by sitting down and interfacing with a computer, usually through the medium of the written word. But really to get to know people, we need to be around them — hear their voices, watch their facial expressions, see how they react to things in your immediate vicinity, and in short “pass time” with them.

Please do not write to say that you have gotten to know all sorts of people intimately through deep conversations about many topics that you could not have discussed face-to-face. Yeah, I know. Me too. I have been doing that for a long time myself, so I know it’s possible. And yet a failure to “interface” in person has seemed to make all the difference to the long-lastingness of the relationships. The people who I have met in person after those long conversations I still count as friends; others, whom I never met in person, I’m sorry to say I’ve forgotten some of their names. (That’s an apropos word here — “interface” — isn’t it? On the Internet, we are faceless; so we don’t really connect, we “interface.”)

2. Groupthink

The second reason Web 2.0 is becoming obnoxious to me is that I really, really hate groupthink. It may sound very strange that the main architect of Wikipedia is an individualist, but I am and always have been. Please don’t misunderstand; I am not, contrary to Andrew Lih and the London Review of Books, an Ayn Rand-following Objectivist, and that’s partly because I detest the way so many of Rand’s followers themselves engaged in groupthink without admitting or even knowing it.

But let’s not get off on that tangent. My present complaint is about the groupthink inherent in the design of so many Web 2.0 websites. It is one thing to aggregate opinions and data that reflects opinions, as Google and Slashdot do. (I think James Surowiecki’s excellent book The Wisdom of Crowds has been largely misappropriated in defense of many of these websites, by the way. Not all online crowds are wise.) It is quite another thing to be part of a community that has a variety of mechanisms that allow us to reward people who agree with us and punish those who disagree with us. Those are the tools of conformity and groupthink. As far as I can tell, the rating of comments in Amazon and YouTube are nearly as interesting as the comments themselves. As a result, we’re stuck with a lot of really overinflated ratings on YouTube (though, again, I really like a lot of the content on YouTube, for all the garbage available there) and a lot of pointless head-nodding in Amazon reviews.

(Amazon punishes user scores when your comments are low-rated, and it’s very hard to give a bad review without your comment being low-reviewed in turn. I’d guess this is because most people who care enough about a product to say anything about it generally have good opinions about it. This artificially inflates ratings — good for Amazon, bad for the end user who wants a more accurate view of the product. This is why I always pay careful attention to the well-written bad reviews.)

What’s really disconcerting is when people like NYU’s Clay Shirky seems to celebrate groupthink. If he doesn’t, I wish he would clarify sometime. In this Britannica Blog post, he said essentially that the instantaneous and always-on nature of Internet communication means that people are rapidly losing the patience and even the ability to take longer, more complex stuff (like Tolstoy) on board. But Shirky and some others don’t just assert that this switch to instant, bite-sized communication is happening, they (unlike Nick Carr) seem to celebrate it. I do not, because such communication represents a powerful engine of groupthink, which is both tedious and (if history is a guide) dangerous. If you want to be an individualist, you have to think deeply, a lot, by yourself. I would argue that you really have to come to grips with the great minds of the past (and present), as well. None of this can be done in any “bite-sized” way. But twitters and most blog posts from most people are at once both navel-gazing and intensely attuned to the tastes of one’s audience (real, imagined, or hoped-for). When we write briefly in a medium that makes reading and replying instantaneous, if we aren’t plugged in to whatever happens to be on other people’s minds these days, they won’t read and they won’t reply. We become irrelevant if we’re not mainstream; and you’re bound not to be, because true individualism rarely runs in the mainstream. Of course, the “success metrics” of blogs (Technorati scores, for example) and other social media only encourages this natural human tendency to conformity. I don’t know how any serious intellectual can observe this trend and not be a little nervous.

The result is that we become more and more Borg-like (and, plumped in our chairs, less Borg-like). Sorry, but I will not be assimilated. I just won’t play. I won’t Twitter. I won’t blog about the latest cool thing. I won’t update my Facebook page…often.

Let’s put it this way. I have complex, ever-changing, idiosyncratic tastes and views. The notion that I ought to be particularly concerned about “what’s percolating in blogs now” (for example) deeply offends my individualism. It’s sad and ridiculous that I should let my free time be eaten up by the concerns of an often faceless group of people — especially one that often behaves like a pack of hyenas — rather than my own personal concerns, or by interfacing with the great “cathedral-like minds” of the past. I’ll genuflect where I please, Shirky.

3. Such a godawful waste of time

The first time we see a shiny new Internet toy, we are all oohs and aahs. But, OK…isn’t it time to stop it with the “Which Star Trek character are you?” quizzes on Facebook? (Yes, yes, I have taken such quizzes. I’m not proud of it.) Why do we play these games? Aren’t they getting tiresome already?

Seriously, to my way of thinking, there are worthwhile Web 2.0 projects — like, of course, the Citizendium and WatchKnow (not launched yet) — but it seems like the vast majority of the websites, and many attractive and popular features within more worthwhile sites, are a waste of time.

Now, if you tell me, “You’re not getting it, this is social media, it’s for socialization,” I reply, “Yes, but what kind of socialization?” Are you seriously telling me that you make or foster meaningful friendships with all the silly tools and communities that exist out there? If you want to socialize, shouldn’t you be having a beer, playing pool, watching a game or movie together, taking a hike together — that sort of thing? No, I am not convinced. The fact that it is popular does not mean that this kind of socialization is a healthy way of socialization. It is a pale shadow of the real thing.

If competing for a place on Digg’s front page is of little value qua socialization — and on anybody’s account it has little value in terms of getting knowledge or wisdom — then sit down and tell me soberly: what the hell is it good for?

I know a reply to this will go something like this: you’re whistling in the wind. You’re a luddite. You’re trying to stop the tide. Complaining about Web 2.0 today is like complaining about television in 1960. To which I reply: I know that Web 2.0 is here to say; I helped build it and I know exactly the source of its staying power. I wrote in 2004 that sites like Wikipedia are natural institutions. But every human institution is imperfect, and some have far more flaws than others. Prostitution, for example.

Wasting our free time in faceless groupthink, staring at a screen instead of jostling shoulders or holding hands — is that where we in post-industrial societies are going? Is it where we want to be going? If you’re a kid, is that what you want society to be like when you grow up? If you’re a parent, is that what you want for your kids?

And if not, how can we use our boundless creativity to find a solution?

In an informative update, Seth Finkelstein has summed up the fallout to my Open Letter to Jimmy Wales. Among other things, Florence Devouard, former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, is quoted as saying, “I know it will only be a small satisfaction, but I wanted to mention that in the French speaking user guide book I recently co-wrote with Guillaume Paumier, you are recognised as a co-founder.”

Yes, that is a small satisfaction, thank you, Florence. It would be nice if the Board of Trustees were to issue a statement reiterating its original 2004 position on the foundership issue. It would also be nice to read a public statement that it no longer considers Jimmy Wales to be a reliable source when it comes to matters of the early history of Wikipedia. I won’t hold my breath.

Here are a bunch of updates on the fall-out to my open letter to Jimmy Wales.

UPDATE: Jimmy Wales has personally deleted this letter from his user talk page, with the explanation, “Decline to participate, sorry.” Well, I didn’t really expect Jimmy to “participate.” What could he possibly say? I’ll re-add the open letter on his page, and make that clear.

UPDATE 2: I restored the open letter to Jimmy Wales’ user talk page, prepending this:

Note: the following letter has been deleted, restored, and then deleted again. Let me clarify something. Jimmy’s participation in a public debate is not necessary. But I do want to assert a right to place this open letter on his user talk page — he is, after all, the project’s leading light. Besides, it is unseemly to delete an earnest, legitimate, and justified complaint. Openness to this sort of public criticism seems to be a requirement of any leader of such an open project devoted to freedom of speech and transparency. I have some very legitimate complaints about how Jimmy has treated me and my role in Wikipedia, and I wish to be heard — even if no response is offered.

UPDATE 3: there’s now a revert war going on, with some people deleting the letter and others restoring it. Well, I won’t restore it any further myself.

UPDATE 4: after more revert warring, I posted this:

It seems clear that Jimmy and his assistants will not permit my open letter to him to appear here. While I think this violates my rights, and the transparency and freedom of speech that ought to be part of an open project, I can recognize a lost cause when I see one. Therefore, I’ll simply link to a copy of the letter. I can only hope that will be acceptable to those in authority here. –User:Larry Sanger

UPDATE 5: I just noticed that Jimmy Wales deleted not only my open letter, he also deleted an earlier discussion section, titled “It’s a serious question, so let’s stop this fussing.” Here is the relevant part of the exchange:

Jimbo, under established precedent of users being able to re-add edits from banned users if they are willing to take responsibility for said edit, may I please ask the following question, one which has been added and removed from here countless times, causing more “drama” than the actual question.

Jimbo, could you please explain why in August 2002, you introduced yourself as “co-founder” of Wikipedia; but in May 2007, you declared yourself the “sole founder” of Wikipedia?

Many thanks GTD 12:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a typo.–User:Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure you want to go with that answer, Jimmy? It doesn’t sound very credible.

No, it wasn’t a typo. I recall you referring to yourself as “co-founder” a number times. I remember being ”distinctly annoyed” when, in 2004, you started referring to yourself as ”the” (singular) founder of Wikipedia. If we were to scour other archives from late 2001, 2002, and 2003, I’m sure we would find other instances–to say nothing of the first three official press releases. –User:Larry Sanger (talk) 15:43, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

When deleting this exchange, Jimmy wrote, “declining participation in this debate - not interested, sorry”. And yet, as you can see above, he did participate in it. He apparently changed his mind after I arrived on the scene. These sorts of embarrassing edits have a way of being removed permanently from Wikipedia page histories, so here is a WebCite copy.

UPDATE 6: it is very instructive to watch how Wikipedia’s administrators are reacting to the whole to-do (WebCite copy). No comment necessary.

UPDATE 7: it’s also instructive to watch how rank-and-file Wikipedians are reacting on Jimmy’s page.

UPDATE 8 (April 9): what do you know — the moderators of WikiEN-L let the open letter through. So now the general Wikipedia community should be apprised of it. No replies to it yet. While I think Wikipedians are willing to complain openly, they aren’t so willing to confront him. I suppose they still think that would amount to insurrection.

UPDATE 9: a discussion of the letter has started on WikiEN-L. As is to be expected, the discussion is not about the contents of the letter, but about the appropriateness of my speaking out. I’ve posted one response and will probably do a few more.

UPDATE 10: Jimmy Wales now offers this reply (permanent copy):

I am not fixated on it at all, thank you. Indeed, lots of people seem to want me to talk about it, but I’m not interested. I am being portrayed by some as believing things that I do not, and holding positions that I do not. As I have said many times, I think the entire “controversy” is silly and that Mr. Sanger is too often given too little credit for his work. (Note well that it is well known, though, that Tim Shell was the person who invented the notion of talk pages. Anyone else claiming credit for that now should be pushed hard.) There are a thousand other inventions by a hundred other lesser known early contributors, and a debate about semantics seems a bit absurd to me. Larry didn’t make Wikipedia, and neither did I. It was made by the community, and lots of people played interesting roles.–Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:43, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I’m sorry to have to say that this is just misdirection. By beginning, “I am not fixated on it at all,” Wales is implying that the issue is simply about whether to apply the word “co-founder” to me and himself or not. As I explained in my letter, that is not the only issue, or even the main issue, with which I am confronting him. The main issue is Jimmy Wales’ repeated false statements about me and my involvement.

By the way, Wales also deleted even a link to the open letter here (permanent copy), along with the discussion that followed. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be confronted in detail. He just says blandly, “Indeed, lots of people seem to want me to talk about it, but I’m not interested. I am being portrayed by some as believing things that I do not, and holding positions that I do not.”

UPDATE 11: an interesting discussion is going on on Jimmy Wales’ user talk page (permanent copy). I’m actually surprised it hasn’t been removed yet, considering how everything else that is unpalatable or embarrassing has been removed.

UPDATE 12 (April 10): as expected, Jimmy Wales has once again removed discussions that are embarrassing to him. Here is what the page looked like immediately before being deleted by Wales.

UPDATE 13: on WikiEN-L, after a few sympathetic messages, a whole crop of self-appointed silencers made a whole series of ridiculously fallacious arguments that I had no right to discuss my concerns on the list. They also took the opportunity to unfairly malign CZ, of course in an attempt to intimidate me into silence. Well, I wasn’t intimidated. But I could see that I couldn’t continue on without causing even more of an uproar. If the moderators were not willing to correct the aforementioned silencers, I could see that my continued presence would just generate heat and no light. I did have this to say: “my impression is that half or more of the people who have weighed in [i.e., Wikipedians on the wiki as well as on WikiEN-L] have said, among other things, ‘I think Larry has a legitimate complaint.’” So, there’s that.

Next stop: Foundation-L. Probably tomorrow, if they let me on the list.

UPDATE 14: I decided to post a response to Jimmy’s answer (above, UPDATE 10), which is all that he left after deleting everything else — including a link to the open letter to him. Here is my response:

Jimmy, have the decency to let me say one thing in response to the above. In the open letter itself, I quote a Hot Press answer from you, in which you said, “I feel that Larry’s work is often under-appreciated. He really did a lot in the first year to think through editorial policy. … I would actually love to have it on the record that I said: I think Larry’s work should be more appreciated. He’s a really brilliant guy.” Here is my answer to that: “This sounds like a fine sentiment. But how could it be sincere? What better way to ensure that I am ‘under-appreciated’ than to contradict your own first three press releases and tell the Boston Globe, just two years later, that it’s ‘preposterous’ that I am called co-founder?”

Please, everyone–I’d like to ask you please to leave this between me and Jimmy. He’ll just delete the discussion, along with my response, if you pile on. If you want to continue the discussion you’re welcome to come to the blog.

Most hopes aren’t high that he, or one of his minions, will resist being able to delete it (or ), so it will probably be gone soon.

I have posted an open letter to Jimmy Wales on his Wikipedia “user talk” page. (NOTE: link won’t work. Deleted. See below.)

NOTE: consider this letter GFDL. Feel free to post it far and wide.

UPDATES: I’ve moved quite a few updates about this here. Jimmy Wales deleted this letter personally, as well as a brief exchange in which he and I both participated.

Jimmy, I don’t know a better place than this for an open letter to you [i.e., than on your user talk page on Wikipedia]. I recently read the Hot Press interview with you. The lies and distortions it contains are, for me, the last straw, especially after this came to light, in which you described yourself as “co-founder” in 2002.

I’ve reached out to you on a couple of occasions to coordinate our “versions” — well, my version and your fanciful inventions — about how Wikipedia got started. Last year I read about a speech in which you represented me as being more or less opposed to Wikipedia from the start — despite it being my own baby, really — and I wrote to you saying that if you keep this up, I will speak out. Well, I’m finally speaking out.

In Wikipedia’s first three years, it was clear to everyone working on it that not only had I named the project, I came up with and promoted the idea of making a wiki encyclopedia, wrote the first policy pages and many more policy pages in the following year, led the project, and enforced many rules that are now taken for granted. I came up with a lot of stuff that is regarded as standard operating procedure. For instance, I argued that talk should go on talk pages and got people into that habit. Similarly, after meta-discussion started taking up so much of Wikipedia’s time and energy, I shepherded talk about the project to meta.wikipedia.org — and after that, to Wikipedia-L and WikiEN-L. I insisted that we were working on an encyclopedia, not on the many other things one can use a wiki for. I came up with the name “Wikipedian” and other Wikipedia jargon. I had devised a neutrality policy for Nupedia, and I elaborated it in a form that stood for several years on Wikipedia. I did a lot of explaining and evangelizing for Wikipedia — what it is about, why we are here, and so forth — for example, in Wikipedia:Our Replies to Our Critics and a couple of well-known posts on kuro5hin.org like this one and this. I also recall introducing many specific policy details, the evidence for which is in archives (such as on archive.org) and no doubt in the memories of some of the more active early Wikipedians.

These are only some examples of ways in which I led the project in its first 14 months; after I left, there was a lot of soul-searching in the project about what would happen now that it was “leaderless” (see the quotations linked from this page). When I was involved in the project, I was regarded as its chief organizer. As you can still see in the archives, I called myself “Chief Instigator” and “Chief Organizer” and the like (not editor).

I also want to correct you on something that tends to harm me: your repeated insinuations that I was “fired.” In the Hot Press interview, you said I left Wikipedia because you “didn’t want to pay him any more.” You know — and so does everyone else who worked at Bomis, Inc., around a dozen people — that at the end of 2001, you had to go back to Bomis’ original 4-5 employees, because of the tech market bust, when Bomis suddenly lost a million-dollar ad deal. Tim Shell told me I was the last person to be laid off. He told me — the day I arrived back from my honeymoon, as I recall — that I should probably start looking for new work, because of the market. I was made to believe, and always did until a few years ago when you started implying otherwise, that I had been laid off just like all the other Bomis employees.

In those first three years, Wikipedia did three press releases, in which we are both given credit as founders of the project. I drafted the first press release in January 2002; you read and approved it before posting it on the wires. Moreover, you must have read the many early news articles that called us both founders. You could have complained then — when you were CEO of the company that paid my paycheck. But you didn’t. In fact, you called yourself “co-founder” from time to time. Evidence of this has surfaced in the form of this post to xodp in which you begin, “Hello, let me introduce myself. I’m Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia, the open content encyclopedias.” While your company supplied the funding and you supplied some guidance, I supplied the main leadership of the early project. This is why Wikipedia’s second press release also called me “founder,” in 2003 — just after I broke permanently with you and the Wikipedia community — and the Wikimedia Foundation’s first press release described me the same way, in early 2004.

I had nothing to do with the second and third press releases, and, as Bomis CEO and Wikimedia Chair, you approved all three. But now read what you told Hot Press recently. The interviewer asked: “Sanger said that proof of his being co-founder is on the initial press releases. Are you saying that he basically just put himself down as co-founder on these press releases?” You answered “Yes.” How could I “put myself down as co-founder” in 2003 and 2004, when I wasn’t even part of the organization? This is an attempt to buff your reputation while making me look like a liar — but your simple “Yes” answer can be refuted with a few URLs; you were a contact on all three press releases.

Beginning in 2004, you began leaving me out of the story of Wikipedia’s origin. You began implying, to reporters, that you had done a lot of the sort of work that, in fact, you hired me to do. You have even implied that I was opposed to various ideas that were crucial to Wikipedia’s popular success — when those were, for all intents and purposes, my own ideas. A good example is Daniel Pink’s article for Wired Magazine — in which you implied that I had little or nothing to do with Wikipedia.

You still do this. You told the Hot Press interviewer, “Larry was never comfortable with the open-editing model of Wikipedia and he very early on wanted to start locking things down and giving certain people special authority — you know, recruit experts to supervise certain areas of the encyclopaedia and things like that.” This is a lie. I was perfectly comfortable with the “open-editing model of Wikipedia.” After all, that was my idea. I did not want to “start locking things down” — or to “recruit experts to supervise certain areas of the encyclopaedia.” I challenge anyone to find any evidence in the archive that I did any such thing. For my early attitude toward expert involvement, see this column, written a year after the project started. Besides, your claim doesn’t make sense. Even after a year, I was hoping that a revitalized Nupedia would work in tandem with Wikipedia as its vetting service. Though you increasingly disliked Nupedia as Wikipedia’s star rose, it was always my assumption that you felt the same way about at least the potential of the two projects working together.

It was one thing, in 2004, to leave me out of the story of Wikipedia. It was another to assert in 2005, (1) for the very first time, that somebody else had the idea for the project, contrary to what had been on the books since 2001, or (2) that I am not co-founder of the project. But in both cases, people scanning the Wikipedia-L mailing list archives found old mails in which you contradicted yourself. One embarrassing mail has you giving me credit — as, of course, I always had been given credit — for the idea of Wikipedia, and another embarrassing mail surfaced just a few days ago in which you called yourself “co-founder” of Wikipedia.

I find your behavior since 2004 transparently self-serving, considering that this rewriting of history began in 2004, just as Wikia.com was getting started, and you started promoting your reputation as the brains behind Wikipedia. There is a long “paper trail” establishing virtually all of my claims about Wikipedia, and which refute your various attempts to rewrite history.

I have not publicly confronted you about this before, to this extent. Public controversies are emotionally wrenching and time-consuming. I know I might be (verbally) attacked more viciously than ever by your fans and Wikipedia’s. (To them, I just point out that Wikipedia is bigger than Jimmy Wales.) I have mainly limited myself to answering reporters’ questions — keeping my more harshly-worded statements off the record — and to this page on my personal site. Occasionally I couldn’t help objecting to some particularly outrageous claim, but I never went all out.

I thought that the evidence against your claims about me would shame you into changing your behavior. But, five years since you started misrepresenting my role in the founding of Wikipedia, you’re still at it.

I have been content to watch you reap the rewards of the project I started for you, largely without comment. You (with Tim Shell and Michael Davis, the Bomis partners) did, after all, sponsor the project. After leaving Wikipedia, I went back to academia and, after that, worked for a succession of nonprofit projects — these days, Citizendium.org and now also WatchKnow.org. I have not tried to cash in on my own reputation. I have been approached by a number of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and publishers and have always told them that I have my own plans. If I had wanted to cash in myself, I wouldn’t have moved away from Silicon Valley back to Ohio, as I did, in order to lower my costs in supporting the non-profit projects which I’ve made my life’s work.

The Hot Press interview is the straw that broke this camel’s back. I resent being the victim of another person’s self-serving lies. Besides, I don’t want to set a poor example in my failure to defend myself.

Please don’t say I’m making mountains out of molehills. When you go out of your way to edit Wikipedia articles to remove the fact that I am a co-founder, or ask others to do so, I don’t call that correcting “very simple errors,” as you told Hot Press. What angers me is not any one error, but the accumulated weight of your lies about me — I’ve mentioned only a few of them here.

Finally, you might protest that you have said, several times, that I am not credited enough. For example, you told Hot Press:

I feel that Larry’s work is often under-appreciated. He really did a lot in the first year to think through editorial policy. … I would actually love to have it on the record that I said: I think Larry’s work should be more appreciated. He’s a really brilliant guy.

This sounds like a fine sentiment. But how could it be sincere? What better way to ensure that I am “under-appreciated” than to contradict your own first three press releases and tell the Boston Globe, just two years later, that it’s “preposterous” that I am called co-founder?

I have two further requests, not of you, but of those who deal with you: the Wikimedia Foundation and reporters.

First, I ask the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation to reiterate the Foundation’s original position (as expressed in its first press release) that we are both, in fact, founders of Wikipedia. (I note that the author of the recent history of Wikipedia, Andrew “fuzheado” Lih, was among the authors and contacts for this press release.) If the Foundation is unwilling, I request an explanation why its corporate view has changed. Is it simply because Jimmy Wales has made his wishes known and you enforce them?

Second, I request any reporter who interviews you about the early history of Wikipedia and Nupedia to interview me as well, so I can correct anything misleading. They should know that there are many details in my 2005 memoir of Nupedia and Wikipedia, and my story has never varied. I would also appreciate it if a reporter were to inquire about my request, above, to the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation.

— Larry Sanger (sanger@citizendium.org)

(Here is a WebCite copy of the post made a few minutes after posting, and a copy of the revision history of the page.)

I have usually bitten my tongue in the four or five years since Jimmy Wales stopped crediting me as co-founder of Wikipedia. There are many things I have not said, or that I could say more pointedly, but which I did not. This is partly because I don’t like a scandal, but mostly it’s because I was raised to be modest, and to press my advantage always seemed in bad taste to me (even if it’s de rigeur for so many). But I will no longer mince words when Jimmy Wales continues to lie and misrepresent to the media — as he has done in a recent Hot Press interview the contents of which I’ve seen — about my role. It is deeply disappointing that Wales continues on shamelessly as he has been doing, after this long, and in spite of the shockingly poor match between his claims and the living record available online. The interview I mentioned, along with the recent rediscovery of a comment in which Wales called himself “co-founder” of Wikipedia in 2002, are really the straw that broke this camel’s back.

So, in addition to giving a pointed interview and blow-by-blow reply to the same writer who interviewed Wales, I’ve added a note to the “My role in Wikipedia” page on my personal website. Here it is, a note about the word “founder”:

I believe “founder” is used in two closely-related ways, depending on whether the thing founded is either a business enterprise, on the one hand, or a community project, movement, etc., on the other hand. In a business context, frequently, the founders of an enterprise are its original funders or sponsors. In a community context, however, the founders are those who had the most personal influence in getting a community started. So, for example, we might say the French government was a “founder” of the United States in the business sense, while Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin were among the community founders.

So, on the one hand, we can say that Bomis, Inc. was the founder of Wikipedia in the “business sense.” Strictly speaking, the “business founder” of Wikipedia was not Jimmy Wales individually, since it was Bomis that paid the bills for Wikipedia (including my paycheck), and Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis were, to the best of my knowledge, equal partners and co-owners of Bomis, Inc.

On the other hand — and I am sorry to have to say this myself, because I know it sounds so immodest coming from my own mouth, but after the events of recent years I just want the truth stated clearly — I have a much stronger claim than Jimmy Wales has to being a founder of Wikipedia in the community sense. As you can see from the evidence above, and as I think most people who were there will attest, I was far more active than he was in the first 14 months of the project, and my influence on the community, in terms of organizational work, general policy, and important decisions was far greater than his. For anyone wondering what I could possibly mean by this, I would point to my memoir for clarification. I’d also like to point out that Jimmy Wales has written no similar memoir, because he really did not do that very much in the community to write about. If he ever does write a memoir of the events of the first 14 months of Wikipedia, he knows I will be on hand to keep him honest.

Finally, I submit that, since Wikipedia is best known and most useful not as a “business enterprise” but as a free resource and worldwide non-profit community, the most relevant sense of foundership is not the business sense but the community sense.

Someone sent me a link to a post in the Yahoo! Group called xodp, Message #1720, Tue Aug 6, 2002 11:33 am:

Hello, let me introduce myself.

I’m Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia, the open content encyclopedias.

“Co-founder,” straight from the horse’s mouth — not The New York Times, not a 2003 Wikipedia press release, not me.

The well-known librarian newsletter, Cites and Insights, has mentioned the Citizendium, as it has several times in the past. It had the following interesting comment:

Why do we love monopolies so?
That’s a question that comes to mind when discussing Wikipedia alternatives and in quite a few other areas. I’ve sometimes asked why librarians seem to love monopolies so much, but it’s not just librarians.

So, for example, when Citizendium started up, it faced a huge amount of fairly vicious commentary,
and you could trace much of the viciousness to it not being Wikipedia. Didn’t matter whether it might offer an interesting alternative: it could potentially threaten The Great Source of All Wisdom.

How many of you vary your default search engine so you look somewhere other than Google? How
many of you would seriously consider an alternative general-purpose web search engine?

The article goes on to quote me discussing Knol and Medpedia, and then has a whole separate article called “Catching Up with Citizendium.” (How refreshing to encounter a writer who is fastidious about how to capitalize article titles!) I’ll have to comment on the article later, if I can get some time. It is very long, interesting, idiosyncratic, and detailed — but, I’m afraid, not entirely fair.

My Dad, Gerry Sanger, is a retired marine biologist and has been taking people out on the Prince William Sound, as part of his business, Sound Eco Adventures. The Sound is a truly beautiful place — as we often say, it would be a treasured national park if it were in any other state, but since it’s in Alaska, it’s just a national forest with some marine parks thrown in. It so happens I personally know the western Sound pretty well, having visited it since I was eight or so, and having worked there for my Dad for I think eight summers. But my Dad is a true expert about the Sound, its wildlife, and the interpretation thereof.

Anyway, a passenger posted this video to YouTube in which a humpback whale cow and calf come literally within a few feet of the boat. This is amazing to watch on video and even more amazing to experience, but it isn’t that uncommon of an experience on my Dad’s boat, the Sound Access, actually. The whales are clearly curious about the boat, and have gotten used to it somewhat.