On 7 August 2015 at 10:52, James Alexander <jalexander@wikimedia.org> wrote:
For the record, since it's an enormous pet peeve of mine ;). We don't need to get in a huge conversation here, I'm happy to talk off list or in person, but want to say it for the record.

Founder.... founder not co-founder :). There is no doubt that Larry and some of our critics have been successful at getting it in enough reliable sources that you will see co-founder frequently but I would really prefer that WE as the foundation not give into it. Larry did a lot of work for WP but that's what he did it as, work, he was an employee who left as we didn't have the money to pay him and always expressed how it was Jimmy's encyclopedia, Jimmy's website. He never really believed in what we were doing at Wikipedia, He believed in an expert run and scrutinized project. That project never worked out in nupedia and it never worked out when he tried to capitalize on his Wikipedia history to start up multiple different projects that wouldn't have open editing and would have expert "control".

I don't want to denigrate the work he did, it wasn't nothing, but it wasn't as co-founder and (in the end) I think we should make sure we continue to use the proper term when referring to someone who (despite a large number of <s>misteps</s> times I disagreed) did an amazing job at not only helping to create and nurture what this project became but ceding the power as it became necessary.

​+1; "co-founder" is ​both cumbersome and inaccurate.

J.
--
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforrester@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester