Snowspinner wrote:
I think the two most telling things about Larry Sanger's criticisms are his unwillingness to contribute volunteer time to Wikipedia, and his seeming belief that Nupedia was the way to go, despite obvious factual evidence to the contrary.
Which is to say, if he was right, I suspect it would have manifested in some actual success for Nupedia.
I think there's no question that you're right about both points, however I also think that it is very important for us to think really carefully about how we can be more expertise-friendly. The thing that annoyed me the most about Larry's essay was that he accused me of a form of anti-expertise that I have always quite strongly denied. He should have known better.
Even so, I think it is fairly clear that we have in the past been too "co-dependent" with trolls. We don't want or need a brutal and random crackdown, and I think we are already strongly drifting in the right direction. The recent arbcom elections suggested to me a community desire for stricter standards of behavior.
--Jimbo