On 6/18/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
That said, I found it quite interesting how Larry Sanger is now lost from the official narrative of the creation of Wikipedia. History belongs to the victors, I suppose. Although I became one of his most active critics during his tenure, he does not deserve to become a footnote, or worse, forgotten.
This is ironic, given that Wikipedia is often a place where true histories of things are given a fair presentation, even where they differ from the "official corporate history". See [[Monopoly (game)]] (not really invented by Charles Darrow), [[McDonald's]] (not really started by Ray Kroc), and the decades-long battle between [[Skippy peanut butter]] and [[Skippy (comic strip)]] (ignored in the corporate history).
I think Wikipedia itself does a reasonable job at telling both sides of the Sanger/Wales story at the moment. The Wikimedia Foundation, on the other hand, is not neutral on the matter, i.e. it has often referred to Jimmy as Wikipedia's (implicitly sole) founder (in press releases or fund drives).
Erik