Citizendium Blog

Wikipedia was a first draft.  I expect that, increasingly, the Citizendium will be regarded as the next draft.

Most readers of this blog have probably seen the recent article about Wikipedia in the Times of London by now (”Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply“).  The article reports on Wikipedia’s apparently sharp decline in participation.  (Eric Goldman must be crowing.)

First, I’ll say exactly what you’d expect me to say, and which I have said many times before: disaffected Wikipedians are welcome in the Citizendium community.  If in fact participation in Wikipedia is declining so severely that the quality of its articles deteriorates significantly, then I hope former Wikipedians will remember (or learn) that they can join us.  They can join simply if they are willing to work under their own real names, under the gentle guidance of experts in an open, bottom-up system, and under the Citizendium charter that is even now being drafted.

Second, let me share something with you: I think the Citizendium has an excellent chance to become the dominant reference resource in the long run.  I came to this view during CZ’s first year.  And yes, it probably still sounds silly.  As soon as it had become established that experts and non-experts could work side-by-side in a fully open, bottom-up, largely pleasant system, as CZ’s is — in other words, when I saw that CZ was a going concern — it became clear to me that there would be no reason for CZ to fold over the long term.  Therefore, it would probably continue growing its stores of high-quality content.  With more high-quality content would come more credibility and more traffic.  After a while, we would reach a tipping point.  I admit I was off about when we would reach our tipping point, but I still think it’s likely that we will reach one.  It’s only a matter of time.  The original arguments for the Citizendium model are sound, and our original demonstration that this novel way of organizing a wiki community is also sound.  So now it’s just a matter of time and patience.  Of course, in today’s hyper-accelerated society, adverting to “time and patience” might sound silly; but it does not to the wiser heads among us, because they know from experience what time and patience can bring.  The point is that CZ is a natural home for those who want to create a better encyclopedia and who have been put off from the Wikipedia experiment.  Wikipedia was a first draft.  I expect that, increasingly, the Citizendium will be regarded as the next draft.

Third, I am not going to prognosticate, unlike Eric Goldman.  Of course it’s possible that Wikipedia will find a way to move to an even stronger position.  But I will criticize.  For now, it is clearly running afoul of exactly the problems I identified in the project early on — and which I encouraged Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia community at large to fix, and which precipitated my own departure.  The pigeons are coming home to roost.  The Wikipedia experiment has deeply suffered as a result of its radical embrace of the most extreme egalitarian and anarchistic principles — which have made the community, as such principles always will do, descend into mob rule and a failed state, so to speak.  As I explained in a recent paper (”The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia“), “Wikipedia’s success is not best explained by its radical egalitarianism, its rejection of expert involvement, but instead by its freedom, openness, and bottom-up management, all of which are consistent with a low-key role for experts.”  Because it has rejected constitutional rule, real identities, and any, even modest, official role for subject-matter experts, the project may have finally run afoul of the limits of its own deeply-ingrained, self-imposed, constitutional flaws.

And need I say this?  I think I must: CZ’s growth rate has been only modest because most of our potential contributors have instead put their efforts into Wikipedia.  But if it is becoming increasingly obnoxious to edit Wikipedia, then there must be an increasingly untapped source of volunteer labor for working on an encyclopedia.  I think that, if they look into what we’re doing, ex-Wikipedians will find that they can help make CZ into what they hoped Wikipedia would become.  They can pursue the same noble goals — but they’ll have a much better chance of doing it right this time.

So here’s a little message to the Wikipedians: sure, it takes a few minutes to sign up to CZ, and yes, you have to use your own real name.  But CZ is still open and bottom-up, and contrary to what you may think you know, there aren’t editors approving your edits or telling you what to do.  Our community is also 100% saner than Wikipedia’s.  Perhaps it’s time for a second look.

Putting aside all criticism, I do have this bit of advice.  The Wikimedia Foundation ought to post a few snapshot copies of Wikipedia from the last few years, warts and all.  If Wikipedia’s quality declines, at least the world will still have some “not too bad” Wikipedia articles to view.  I have always maintained that Wikipedia is tremendously useful, and it would be a shame if there were not some “canonical” versions of the resource that we could consult.

[By the way, I haven't worked directly on the CZ wiki for a while.  But I'm still being consulted and helping move things along as needed behind the scenes.  CZ is mostly off the ground, in my opinion, and it won't be completely off the ground qua online constitutional republic until I get out of the way.  I am a serial non-profit knowledge organizer, and my latest such project is WatchKnow.org.  Expect me to start other things, too.]

Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to a younger age?

Yesterday I turned 41, and I got a zillion “happy birthdays” in various locations, more than I got on my 40th birthday, which I thought was very strange. I finally did some poking around online and figured out why. I was mentioned, again, by Garrison Keillor, this time on “The Writer’s Almanac” (brief MP3). To have your birthday marked by Garrison Keillor — and why should anybody notice anybody’s 41st birthday? — is a bizarre experience.

Unfortunately, Citizendium and WatchKnow aren’t mentioned. I’m afraid I haven’t worked much at all on the former, because I’ve been spending almost all my time lately on the latter. We’re up to 3,600 educational videos for kids, put into a wiki-style directory. We’re deliberately flying under the radar now, because we want to make a big first impression — launch should be early this fall. Expect some really cool, and innovative, new software. I don’t know if it will be “the next big thing.” Considering how everybody’s trying to make the next big thing, it seems unlikely. But I do hope it will be really useful to school kids, teachers, and parents. That’s the aim.

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.

A special issue of the highly-regarded journal of social epistemology, Episteme, has just appeared. The journal is edited by one of the most important living epistemologists, Alvin Goldman, but this issue was co-edited by University of Arizona philosophy professor Don Fallis and me (Don more than me). Anyway, here is the issue.

I have an article in the issue, called “The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia.” Here is the abstract:

Wikipedia has challenged traditional notions about the roles of experts in the Internet Age. Section 1 sets up a paradox. Wikipedia is a striking popular success, and yet its success can be attributed to the fact that it is wide open and bottom-up. How can such a successful knowledge project disdain expertise? Section 2 discusses the thesis that if Wikipedia could be shown by an excellent survey of experts to be fantastically reliable, then experts would not need to be granted positions of special authority. But, among other problems, this thesis is self-stultifying. Section 3 explores a couple ways in which egalitarian online communities might challenge the occupational roles or the epistemic leadership roles of experts. There is little support for the notion that the distinctive occupations that require expertise are being undermined. It is also implausible that Wikipedia and its like might take over the epistemic leadership roles of experts. Section 4 argues that a main reason that Wikipedia’s articles are as good as they are is that they are edited by knowledgeable people to whom deference is paid, although voluntarily. But some Wikipedia articles suffer because so many aggressive people drive off people more knowledgeable than they are; so there is no reason to think that Wikipedia’s articles will continually improve. Moreover, Wikipedia’s commitment to anonymity further drives off good contributors. Generally, some decisionmaking role for experts is not just consistent with online knowledge communities being open and bottom-up, it is recommended as well.

Here is a direct link to the PDF. Not sure how long this will be up; I’ll post a copy on larrysanger.org eventually.

It’s a work of academic philosophy, but that didn’t stop Slashdot from commenting. (I gotta wonder…what percentage of the commenters bothered to RTFA?)

The other articles are interesting — check them out!

I had never seen ProCon.org until a few hours ago. Having looked over it, I’m surprised that I didn’t know about it before.

ProCon.org is a cluster of issues-oriented websites written and maintained by a staff of hired writers (bright young researchers fresh out of college, from the looks of it), all under the management of a non-profit group with a $700,000 yearly budget. For example, here is their Euthanasia homepage. There are homepages about many other hot-button issues, including “Should marijuana be a medical option?” and “Should prostitution be legal?” and “Is sexual orientation determined at birth?”

The general concept seems, on my first glance, to be very interesting and solid, and the results have the earmarks of being well-executed. There are several standard resources, such as a “1-minute overview,” “Top 10 Pros and Cons,” etc. These would appear to be very valuable resources for students and researchers, although I would suspend judgment on that until I had read through a few of these in great detail, and gotten some expert opinions, which I haven’t done. In addition, there is a wonderfully refreshing full (and well-organized!) disclosure of information about the organization itself (and see this and this and this).

But the most interesting aspect of the site may be its voluminous collection of pro-and-con issues pages. They are organized around groups of topics, and within each topic there are one or more questions. There is a separate page about each question. On the question page, there are two columns, listing “pro” and “con,” and in the columns, quotations from various named sources. Each source is exhaustively described.

The whole project looks wonderful, from the point of view both of a researcher and of someone who loves neutrality in educational resources. My compliments also to whoever designed the site and its software. It is remarkably well-laid-out.

I’m writing about ProCon because I think it is fascinating in several ways. In one way, it represents a wholesale rejection of the idea of community editing, which in this day and age is fascinating. I am impressed by what happened when somebody decided simply to pay a dozen researchers to create free, reliable (apparently), open (in the sense of “full disclosure”), and neutral content. Could Wikipedia have assembled this website? I’m laughing. How about CZ? Well, maybe! But probably not, because this sort of highly organized content, with specific, agreed-upon rules (such as the five-tier “credibility ranking” system) would be rather hard to execute by the herded cats of CZ (much less Wikipedia). Why do I say that? Because I have tried to organize complex content types and complex projects within my various online projects. I’ve occasionally succeeded (as with subpages, sort of), but it is very hit-or-miss (again…as with subpages). Besides, I can also tell you from similar experience that a lot of the work that has gone into ProCon.org is “gruntwork,” and not the sort of work that people sign up to do as an online volunteer.

I am also impressed by the apparent care and thought that went into making the resource as a whole both neutral and open. They seem to have really thought out just what you would have to do in order to create a neutral debate site, and have gone far above and beyond the approach that most newspapers or encyclopedias take. Among other things, I am glad that they both let partisans state their own views as forcefully as possible, and give amazingly full information about the partisans and their affiliations. In short, I am heartened that — it seems — there might be somebody out there who believes as much as I do in the possibility and beneficiality of neutrality. Of course, I am aware that there might be some people who are not convinced on this point. I know that a lot of people detest all attempts at neutrality and insist that it is in principle impossible. (But I think they are confused.) So I open the question up to you: is ProCon.org neutral? Does it illustrate ideals that the likes of CZ and Wikipedia should be following?

(By the way, I have no connections at all, that I know of, with ProCon.org.)