I do. He's made his point. He doesn't like Larry. Good for him. I'll leave that for Larry to respond to. Again, Larry can respond to that. Perhaps you didn't see Jimbo's message. The things Larry says critically about Wikipedia aren't "attacks". They aren't intended maliciously. The whole Wikipedia-l Attack Squad just loves to portray people in such caricatural ways - I remember when I was portrayed over and over as a snot-nosed little kid who liked to spam people and scream and shout and attack people personally. You guys make Larry into a greedy, despicable man who has hated Wikipedia all along but stuck with it because it was profitable, and since then has done everything in his power to bring about its destruction. According to you guys, he also walks around telling people how he started Wikipedia, and cackling maniacally at the end of every other sentence. This has got to stop. (the other) Mark -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

On 4/20/05 12:12 AM, "Mark Williamson" <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'd love to see references for the above claims (inferences?). I think you might be distorting what other people have said.

On 4/21/05 3:28 AM, "Mark Williamson" <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: Okay--you've got a gmail account. Would you do the search?

On 4/21/05 10:01 AM, "Alphax" <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: According to Mark W., if you search for "sanger" or "larry", you should find people calling or implying that Sanger is a "greedy, despicable man who has hated Wikipedia all along but stuck with it because it was profitable, and since then has done everything in his power to bring about its destruction." I'm interested in seeing if the above claim is accurate.

Since, of course, Delirium's e-mail had nothing to do with that. -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

Mark Williamson wrote: Thanks, Mark, but I'm not back. I just joined the list to correct Jimmy on that one point. I don't know who Phil Sandifer is, I don't know what he's been saying, and frankly I don't care. Phil, whoever he is, may carry on! The truth will out, eventually. I am disappointed if I still have such vocal detractors among Wikipedians (that, by the way, would be another one of my coinages--for that matter, I set up this list), but frankly, I'm not surprised, either. *cackle, cackle* :-) --Larry

Mathias Schindler wrote: All contributions to *Open Sources 2.0* will be open content/free. I'm not sure what license, precisely; the same one used by *Open Sources*, perhaps, but I never bothered to find out. --Larry

Andrew Lih wrote: Opinions about this may differ. It's to some degree a matter of terminology, and I don't particularly care about it one way or the other. I have no desire to see an ongoing storyline of a feud, it's not helpful to anyone. Larry wrote: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine..." and that's exactly right, though of course I use the term "free" rather than "open". Larry wrote: "Jimmy then started a specialized policy page he called 'Neutral Point of View'" and goes on to explain that he feels that the term became popular because it was used "by Wikipedians wanting to seem hip" -- failing, I think, to recognize the special innovation that NPOV is (as a social concept of co-operation which avoids some philosophical dilemmas posed by such concepts as 'biased'), instead assuming that this is just a cute phrase of hipsters. Larry might be right or wrong about his disapproval of NPOV of course. But he agrees that the idea for the freely licensed collaborative encyclopedia open to contributions by ordinary people was mine, and that NPOV was my idea, and that the investment was mine. That's enough for me. Other people can decide what makes a founder. I hired Larry to assist with my vision, and he did so competently. We argued constantly during the era of Nupedia, with me pressing for more openness, and he pressing for more academic standards -- and I let him win those arguments because _knowing what we knew then_, he was drawing the correct conclusions. Knowing what we know now, of course, his design for Nupedia was a failure. But that's easy to criticize in retrospect -- Larry deserves credit for it despite the failure because we did _not_ know what we know now. I think people are unfortunately eager to see a war where there isn't one -- at least not from my side. Larry deserves credit for his work, and no less. --Jimbo

On Wednesday 20 April 2005 02:31, Andrew Lih wrote: The term is what it is, though in coming to understand it, and now explain it, it is off. Though, it is off in a useful way, it provides a nice sedgeway into what it *is*. (e.g., "A chickpea is neither a chick nor a pea. Discuss.") Neither is appropriate; rather, without slipping into relativism it abstracts to a meta level of representing what people think they know (i.e., a consensus theory of truth) rather than what is (i.e., a strict objectivist stance.) http://reagle.org/joseph/2004/agree/wikip-agree.html#heading8 [[[ A misunderstood notion about Wikipedia is that much contention arises from its Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) policy (Wikipedia 2004wnp): that debates arise from this seemingly impossible requirement to remain objectively neutral. Yet, the NPOV policy is quite the opposite and instead recognizes the multitude of viewpoints and provides an epistemic stance in which they all can be recognized as instances of human knowledge – right or wrong. The NPOV policy seeks to achieve the "fair" representation of all sides of the dispute such that all can feel well represented. Articles should explain without advocating, characterize without engaging, and honor the intellectual independence of the readers by refraining from dogmatism. Hence, the clear goal of providing an encyclopedia of all human knowledge explicitly avoids many entanglements. ... Consequently, while the perception is that NPOV is the source of much debate, it may act rather as a heat shield: reducing conflict and otherwise channeling outstanding arguments in the productive context of the primary goal of developing an encyclopedia that is representative of many viewpoints. ... It is important to note that this stance does have important ethical implications. The policy of only reporting on what it is well-known has significant implications for minority views. This is acknowledged and debated within the Wikipedia community and the present norm is that Wikipedia should be fairly representative and proportional to the phenomenon it seeks to capture. ]]]

To Andrew Lih: Andrew, let me throw this back at you: who has ever proven that all of the bulleted items *were* essential to the success of Wikipedia? Why assume without argument that they were? Making unwarranted assumptions is the enemy of critical thinking and problem solving. --Larry

Jimmy wrote: What does "propose" mean, then? I suppose you mean he mentioned such an idea to you. Well, so what? That didn't lead to the creation of Wikipedia, did it? You're implying that it did. But it didn't. I mention *all sorts* of ideas to other people, and other people have mentioned zillions of ideas to me. This doesn't make any such person, somehow, "the first person to propose" the idea, in the sense of being creditable with formulating the project that actually came into being. And why, again, Jimmy, did you take four years to mention this, if it's worth mentioning at all? Why did you never tell me, or Wikipedians, before? Why is it worth mentioning just now? But to say that Jeremy Rosenfeld was "the first person to propose" a wiki encyclopedia is precisely to imply, isn't it, that he played the seminal causal role in founding Wikipedia--which is just false. It isn't just "another perspective." The social concept of co-operation was always my idea of the purpose of the neutrality policy, as well. That was quite explicit in Nupedia's policy statement, drafted by me, as well as the longer statement of Wikipedia's policy on the NPOV page, which I drafted. I disagree with the exact formulation of the words, "the neutral point of view." I personally advocated everything else about the policy, more strenuously than anyone else did; and if I had not done so, Wikipedia might not now be committed to its neutrality policy. You don't need to apologize, condescendingly, for upsetting me, Jimmy; obviously, that's just a further insult, as it puts attention on the fact that I am upset. Sure I am. Kind of you to observe that. If I were to say, "Jimmy really had nothing to do with Wikipedia. When I asked him to, he compliantly set up a wiki, and I proceeded to do virtually everything to get the project started and set it up to become a success; he was on the sidelines most of the time; and, of course, he paid me"--you would be upset, too, I suspect. But I do not say this, out of respect. I am upset, and also disappointed and severely disillusioned. But if for anything, you need to apologize for implying something false, which, if passed around much, would create entirely the wrong impression among your many admirers in the Wikimedia community: "The original idea for a wiki for Wikipedia was not proposed by Larry, but by Jeremy Rosenfeld." That's an apology that I would find valuable. I see that someone has already made use of your declaration to say something completely wrong on my Wikipedia user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger I expect that your perfectly innocent comment will now be repeated, with perfect innocence, to journalists. Then this and other such historical revisionism on your part will help ensure that I will in the future be portrayed as (1) not the person who came up with the idea of Wikipedia, (2) merely and singlehandedly responsible for the "miserable failure" that was Nupedia, and who was fired because it was a failure, (3) on Wikipedia, merely an employee taking orders and not really responsible for any of the policy of the project, (4) opposed to an open project altogether, and (5) opposed to neutrality. That, at least, is how it seems some of my detractors want me to be portrayed, even though my memoir shows every part of it to be outrageously false. And after this, instead of treating me as a person with a legitimate, well-founded complaint, I imagine that you will respond by implying that I am "upset," and that you "apologize that I am upset." That's mighty big of you, Jimmy. --Larry The memoir's location again: http://features.slashdot.org/features/05/04/18/164213.shtml http://features.slashdot.org/features/05/04/19/1746205.shtml

lmsanger(a)sbcglobal.net wrote: Since you may not be familiar with general practice here, I should point out that this sort of credit-assignment isn't what we spend most of our time doing. In fact, until you came out of nowhere years after the fact talking about your seminal role in Wikipedia, I don't recall a single discussion taking place on this mailing list about who should get credit in "founding" Wikipedia. Frankly, we have more important things to worry about (such as actually creating an encyclopedia). For what it's worth, my view on it is that who gets the credit is pretty meaningless. As can be seen by the fact that many people suggested it, the idea of a wiki-based encyclopedia by the time Wikipedia was started was becoming fairly obvious, so eventually someone had to start it. If you were the first one to actually bite the bullet and do so, great, but I don't particularly care. Look, you have not been a part of the Wikipedia community since early 2002, and now you reappear three years later talking about your importance in the "founding" of Wikipedia, pimping a book, and writing screeds about what's wrong with it while at the same time not actually participating in any of the policy discussions, and indeed explicitly saying you "don't have time" to actually discuss any of the issues [1]. Even your brief reappearance here is apparently entirely to defend your claimed credit, not to actually discuss how to improve Wikipedia, an endeavor in which you claim to be interested. If your view is that you're some sort of god-king who can write screeds that then get implemented without dirtying your hands with the business of discussing the best course of action with us common folk, then I think you're mistaken. If you're just trying to pump up sales for your book or get some sort of a tenure-track position, well, carry on. -Mark [1] http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/12/30/142458/25/194#194 -- "I don't have time to reply to the many comments on this forum."

On 4/20/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote: Thanks, Rowan. I found this very helpful. -- Rich Holton [[W:en:User:Rholton]]

On 4/20/05 9:01 PM, "lmsanger(a)sbcglobal.net" <lmsanger(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: Gotta love Larry. One bit of historical footnoting--while Larry may have had reservations about the term NPOV, he did work to codify it, writing a (in my opinion) hard-to-parse, discursive formulation of the "neutral point of view" policy, which I tried to help clarify, but which he took umbrage at. He was getting a bit personal by the end. This is the type of dialogue which Larry and I engaged in soon before he left the project: Me: "LMS: I'm not trying to act as a check on your rampant authority." LMS: "Like hell you aren't. It's your purpose in life on Wikipedia. It's what you live for." One thing he didn't note in his history is that "Is Wikipedia an experiment in anarchy?" was written as a direct response to what he perceived as my destructive behavior (to wit: "But I'm going to write an essay that goes to what I see as being the heart of the matter behind Cunctator's repeated disruptions of Wikipedia."). For some reason (and I think we see this again now) LMS perceived arguments against his actions as attacks on his person. He strongly believed I had a vendetta against him, even though I repeatedly said I didn't. And I don't. Some useful history on the personality/decision-tree conflicts can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/Bias_Talk

Rowan Collins wrote: Just to be clear, I'm not making any sort of claim or definition about that at all. I've just reported on an interesting bit of historical trivia. Precisely. --Jimbo

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

Jimmy wrote: Jimmy, I'm calm enough, just very disillusioned. The above is disingenuous, because you wrote: This implies that a Jeremy Rosenfeld actually caused the precursor of Wikipedia to come into existence on January 3 or 4. In fact, the idea came out of my head; if Jeremy Rosenfeld told you anything, that had no causal influence on the development of Wikipedia, which would not have happened had I not had the idea. You certainly never gave *me* the idea, and you never mentioned that anyone had ever even told you about the existence of wikis before January 3. So when you now write "The original idea for a wiki for Wikipedia was not proposed by Larry," you are not "just adding an interesting bit of historical trivia"; you are saying something false, which does a considerable disservice to me. Indeed, it makes a liar out of me and out of the Wikipedia history page as it has existed since 2001. If Jeremy Rosenfeld's telling you anything had any effect on the situation, which I have to doubt given the fact that you've never mentioned it until now, it was that it made you well disposed to agree to set up a wiki for me to start working on and organizing, which we certainly would have pursued after I had made the proposal--after all, it was easy to set up and I was excited about it, so you could scarcely refuse. But it was I who made the proposal which led to Wikipedia, and I who organized the whole thing. I even named the damned thing. You *know* all this, Jimmy. You also wrote, very misleadingly: Of course I have always supported a neutrality policy. Jimmy, how can you imply otherwise? This is all very disillusioning. If anything, I had to persuade *you* to support the neutrality policy. (I know, anyway, that I had to persuade Tim.) You neglected to quote the preceding paragraphs, which make it perfectly clear that it is the wording, the phrase, "the neutral point of view," that I object to. The *policy* is one that I supported and indeed insisted on, more strongly than anyone, for both Nupedia and Wikipedia. You fail to quote the part that explains that there was a nonbias policy on Wikipedia for some time before you happened to set up the "NPOV" page. You also fail to quote the part that explains why I object to the phrasing "the neutral point of view." Also, this needs some explanation: We did not "argue constantly" during the era of Nupedia. We negotiated to a mutually satisfactory solution. Then, we *agreed* that the Nupedia project--which was not designed by me alone, but, like Wikipedia, with the help of the users--was way too slow and not open enough. Moreover, we *agreed* (no argument here) that a new system needed to be set up. I solved the problem by getting the idea for Wikipedia and getting it started, under the broad set of policy guidelines under which it still operates. I also deserve credit for that, Jimmy, and I had been given credit, until recently. That's one of the reasons I wrote my memoir in the first place, where all of this is explained. This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach, really. Literally. I had a Pepcid when I got up this morning. --Larry

--- lmsanger(a)sbcglobal.net wrote: Hi Larry - As one of the few people left that was here while you were still around on Wikipedia, I�d just like to say that I think your contribution to the project during its first year was invaluable - vital even. As I said shortly after you posted your letter of resignation, I feel that you were the main person that held things together long enough for the community to be strong and oriented enough to take care of things on its own. That fact is, IMO, vastly more important than who did or did not think of the idea of Wikipedia first. At the time of your resignation you didn�t seem be as optimistic about Wikipedia�s future as I was, however, saying that more paid editors like yourself would be needed to make sure the project would not go awry (IIRC). regard I - and I suspect many others - have for what you did. -- mav __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com