[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[Brian]

Honestly, it's important enough that the Foundation should take an objective
look at the facts and make a statement about Wikipedia's history.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Larry Sanger
<sanger-lists at citizendium.org>wrote:

> All,
>
> Earlier today, I had no joy in trying to post this "open letter to Jimmy
> Wales" on Jimmy's own user talk page: the man himself deleted it.  That is
> not the sort of behavior I would have expected of the head of an allegedly
> open, transparent community devoted to free speech.  I would like
> Wikipedians in general to be apprised of my concerns.  I believe they are
> serious and well-justified, and they should not be dismissed without a
> careful hearing.  I do not ask that Jimmy Wales reply here on this list.
> But I do ask that "the powers that be"--including the Wikipedia community,
> the Wikimedia Board, and the media--hold Jimmy responsible for his very
> shabby behavior toward me.
>
> Let me be clear.  This is not just an attempt to "tell my side of the
> story."  It is me confronting Jimmy Wales publicly for lying about my
> involvement in the project after many private requests to stop.  You might
> disagree with me about many things, but we need not disagree about the
> facts
> as they can be found in various Internet archives, nor about the necessity
> of keeping our leaders honest.
>
> A readable copy, with some updates, can be found here:
>
> http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/08/an-open-letter-to-jimmy-wales-copy/
>
>
> http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/08/updates-re-open-letter-to-jimmy-wales
> /
>
> The letter itself follows.
>
> --Larry Sanger
>
> ===============
>
> 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
> <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xodp/message/1720> 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  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Our_Replies_to_Our_Critics%22>
> Wikipedia:Our Replies to Our Critics and a couple of well-known posts on
> kuro5hin.org  <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/25/103136/121> like
> this
> one and  <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/9/24/43858/2479> 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  <http://www.larrysanger.org/roleinwp.html> 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
> <
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%27s_first_press_relea
> se> 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
> <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xodp/message/1720> 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
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/January_2002> a
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/January_2003> few
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/February_2004>
> 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
> <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html> 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
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deferring_to_the_experts> 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
> <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-April/021452.html>
> the very first time, that
> <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-April/021446.html>
> somebody else had the idea for the project, contrary to
> <
> http://web.archive.org/web/20010406101346/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_
> FAQ> 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.
> <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000671.html
> >
> One embarrassing mail has you giving me credit - as, of course, I always
> had
> been given credit - for the idea of Wikipedia, and
> <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xodp/message/1720> 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
> <http://www.larrysanger.org/roleinwp.html> 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,  <http://www.citizendium.org/>
> Citizendium.org and now also  <http://www.watchknow.org/> 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
> <
> http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/2828/wikipedia-founder-looks-out-number
> -1> remove the fact that I am a co-founder, or
> <http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Jimbo_Found_Out> 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
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/February_2004>
> 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
> <
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Press_releases/February
> _2004&action=history> 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
> <http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213&tid=95>
> 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 at citizendium.org)
>
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