[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>   
>> Pot meet kettle.
>> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Talk%3AHomeopathy%2FDraft&diff=100448194&oldid=100448185
>>     
>
> A lot of people have the sort of double standard I discussed in my 
> WP:SAUCE essay:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sauce_for_the_goose_is_(not)_sa
> uce_for_the_gander
>
> You guys are right, and you're wrong.  Sanger seems to be factually 
> correct in his assertion of co-foundership given that Jimbo himself 
> put matters that way until inexplicably changing his mind later.  
> However, when he insists on a "right" to state his point here, he 
> starts sounding like various crackpots who insist on their "right" to 
> rant everywhere they want to, even on private property.  On the other 
> hand, it isn't very healthy for this project to take an attitude of 
> "if you can't argue logically against that guy's point, just call him 
> a troll and ban him!"  A wide degree of free speech in meta-
> discussion is in keeping with the aims of the project, which is the 
> point I made (or dead horse I kept beating...) during the BADSITES 
> wars.
>
>
>   


I think *this* is something that needs to be addressed.
Larry's shrill effrontery does not, but if people are confused
to the degree that they think his views have merit, that
clearly needs to be clarified.

What has been muddied in all this is the question of
*what* precisely does Sanger claim to have co-founded.

Personally my view is that if we are talking about taking
credit for starting a quick and dirty scratchpad for
creating material from which experts can cull "the good
stuff" for Nupedia; I am not interested who gets the
credit. That I think is a discredited approach - though
perhaps Veropedia will in the future prove even that
temporary judgment to not have been ultimately
unassailable; in which case the original conception
of wikipedia as a mere scratchpad will have been
somewhat vindicated.

What would *really* interest me, and what I consider
to be the seminal moment - even the foundational moment -
in creating the wikipedia we all know; is when somebody
made the conceptual breakthrough to the vision of
wikipedia as something sui generis, and freestanding.

I am betting there were hold-outs fairly long into the
last days of Nupedia, who still thought it should be
revivified in some form. I think for anyone who really
wants to put a face on the founding of wikipedia, it
would serve well if we revisited that particular period,
and gave credit to who ever it was that first suggested
that Wikipedia was *it*, and Nupedia wasn't. If that
was Larry Sanger, I *do* think he deserves the credit,
though that would clearly make him an apostate, since
he has clearly spent much of his time lately arguing that
no, after all, wikipedia _wasn't_ *it*.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen