Larry should be given credit for staying on as a volunteer for a long as he did and for advocating his positions in good faith.
There was a poisonous athmosphere which surrounded Larry as he tried to whip us into shape. Part of the problem is that he was breaking rules (assume good faith, be courteous, avoid personal attacks) at the same time he was enforcing them (no personal research (in my case at least)).
It is not surprising that he lost patience, most of us have at one point or another.
I can remember having real fear that he would manage to put in some authoritarian system that would destroy the openness of the project.
I guess, bottom line, if you think that sort of stuff works, you should go and do it.
But of course it does work, it is called academia and is very well funded, but generally lacks an internet presence. There is no Harvard or Yale or even Oxford encyclopedia. Perhaps there ought to be. But how do you translate the undoubted expertise of $200,000 a year professors into freely accessible knowledge?
It is academia which dropped the ball, we just found it laying out on the highway.
Fred
From: Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:37:44 -0500 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs
Equally curiously, it took you a few years yourself to change from leaving because you weren't getting paid anymore to leaving because of a poisonous social atmosphere.