[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs

[wiki pedista]

Hi all,

I want to start by saying that I have not read
Sanger's memories yet, just the thread on this list.
So, what I say here comes only from this list and my
(hopefully not so failing) memory.

I came to Wikipedia sometime on January 2001, and that
would make me the only non-founder wikipedian still
around.
While I don't know  anything of Larry and Jimbo's
interaction
outside the wiki, in Wikipedia itself Larry seemed
to run the 
show, and either created or developed many (maybe
most)
of the conventions that we still follow. The direct
work
of Jimbo (again, just from what I remember I saw in
the wiki) was much smaller, which makes sense
considering he
had somebody hired to do the job of running an
encyclopedia, and the job was being
well done. Larry  wrote at least once a week what I
remember as "encyclicals" for wikipedia, documents
that
delved in detail in some aspect of policy, and that
then
sparked discussion about that policy or proposed
policy
in particular. At first the term that Larry used for
himself was "Editor in chief of Nupedia and main
instigator of Wikipedia", as he worked approximately
as just another wikipedian, but generating much more
policy and correcting much that the rest, nudging the
project into a direction, that has mainly been
followed ever since.

It was interesting to see The Cunctator again on the
list just to remember Larry's supposed paranoia about
him. I'm not Larry, and I felt the same way about his
attitude respect to him. The fact
that there was a main authority in Wikipedia (though
asserted that authority very slowly along his year
long tenure), was apparently offensive to some, among
them the Cunctator. Jimbo himself was thinking that
maybe a "central" authority would not be necessary
I remember a couple of lines, I don't know if they
are in the list of were part of some long erased page
on Wikipedia, where Jimbo said 'maybe Wikipedia can
run without a paid editor' to which Larry answered,
either in the page on in an email 'Larry breaks into
a cold sweet' (Jimbo's words may not be exact, Larry's
I'm pretty sure they are). This was a few months
before Larry's position was left unfunded. 

The Cunctator was not the only Larry's nemesis, just
the main one, in the last couple of months of Larry's
paid tenure there were several conflict with other
users,like one that wanted to "archive" in his
personal page some vandalism offensive to Larry on
main page, and after Larry erased it accused him of
censorship (that stupid accusation was later
resurfaced between the "reasons" for the Spanish
fork).

Talking about the Spanish fork, Larrys letter
announcing he was no longer an employee was the spark
for it, but that is another long story. 

In the few months that Larry stayed in the project
as a volunteer, the sport of Larry-bashing did not
decrease its popularity. Even when he was no longer
employed, he continued to be the center of negative
attention of people who disliked authority, or just
him, so I do not blame him at all for leaving
Wikipedia completely after a couple of months.

About Larry not coming to discuss policy with us in
the list, or in the wiki, is perfectly understandable,
as there were Larry-bashers waiting in the wings (and
I repeat, at least in my opinion that was not mere
paranoia). Larry had also the idea of a "Sifter" that
would use Wikipedia articles, but selected by
"experts" of Nupedian definition and posted in a
different side. I don't know why exactly the project
died, but Jimbo's opinion of it, though never
expressed, could be read from a post in which he said
(not mentionin the sifter, I must point out) that we
deserved to make a stable version of wikipedia
ourselves, not leaving that to outsiders. I suspect he
was thinking about Larry's proposed experts (I repeat,
this last thing is just speculation from my part).

I think that Larry deserves a lot of credit for what
Wikipedia is. We trust "the community" to take the
right editorial decisions, but the idea of that
community  has about wikipedia was shaped mainly by
Larry. One of the things that makes wikipedia great
is that, despite its freedom and apparent chaos,
there is an idea of what wikipedia should be and there
is the will to enforce it, even if it means partial
unpopularity by those we would like this to be  
even more chaotic. Larry was our first enforcer, and,
like an old movie sheriff, probably fell for that
reason...

AstroNomer 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com