[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[FT2]

The article [[History of Wikipedia]] has the /encyclopedic/ content on this,
which has been broadly stable since 2007 (revision as at today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Wikipedia&oldid=282677650#Early_roles_of_Wales_and_Sanger).



While drawing attention to a page is a renowned and effective way to
guarantee disruption on that topic, that is how /Wikipedia/ presently
represents the history. Anyone can edit it, if it is not encyclopedically
written.



How you personally, or Jimmy personally, represent it /off wiki/, is your
own off-wiki real world disagreement, and not a matter of editorial
interest. It reflects on the two of you, but that's a personal view and
unencyclopedic OR.



More to the point:



On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Larry Sanger
<sanger-lists at citizendium.org>wrote:

> > The reputation of Wikipedia as an endless source of scandal and
> dishonesty, coupled with this open letter, in which I decided to use
> whatever weight my
> views have in the "court of public opinion" to confront the project's
> leading light.  Deny it if you must, but you have a problem on your hands.



> (Snip) My biggest complaint is
> that Jimmy has lied about me, and a lot of people have believed him.  I am
> determined finally to hold Jimmy Wales to account for it.


I don't agree with your characterization of the encyclopedia as being
universally held, nor even that this would be the widest held view out
there, sorry. I see gradual traction from the "real world" endorsing, not
rejecting it, if a trend must be found.

Your determination to "hold" anyone to anything (account or otherwise) is of
course a matter for yourself and those involved; it's not salient to
Wikipedia editing. Since Jimmy doesn't edit the pages much if at all these
days, and  the Foundation is independent of editorship (as you surely
realize), none of this is relevant to encyclopedia writing. It's all
politics and desires for perceptions and personal matters, to put it
crudely. You say the encyclopedia's credibility and your reputation are at
stake, but the encyclopedia entry is fairly well written and the
reputational issue that is so important to you, is a "real world" dispute
that most editors who write the content have no stake in at all.

Answering your point to Sam Korn: Could I live with being a member of an
encyclopedia whose two founders have both at some point acted poorly or said
things that were ill considered, or sought personal reputation and
aggrandisement? Yes -- because /none/ of that is going to matter a damn when
someone looks up the Carbon atom, or Hamlet, or even the entry of the
history of Wikipedia itself.

I'm not engaged by you or Jimbo, I'm a volunteer writer on a project to
produce an encyclopedia. Take the dispute and so long as the encyclopedic
pages' content is reasonably well written, put the dispute somewhere else
and I promise to ignore it completely.

My personal view on who needs to change their stance in this, and who has
not acted to the highest standard (one or both of you) is formed, but would
not help the projects /encyclopedic content/.


FT2