[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[Brian]

This is exactly what matters. From what I can tell Sanger wrote much of
Wikipedia's initialy policy - policy that lives on today in various edited
forms. Not only was he key in coming up with the more formal guidelines for
Nupedia, he personally wrote many of the informal guidelines that came to be
used on Wikipedia. This is well documented on archive.org and Wikipedia
itself.

Let's be clear that, especially after the failure of Nupedia to take off,
Wikipedia's success was a surprise both to Sanger and Wales. Neither of them
expected that this would happen and can therefore not take full or too much
credit for it. Both of their lives have been redefined by Wikipedia's
success and it seems reasonably human to not want to let go of that. At the
same time, while an individual can co-found an encyclopedia, they cannot
take credit for the community's work.

I say this because I get the feeling that Wales and Sanger both believe
there is a lot at stake here and at the same time I feel that they both take
too much credit for what has happened. What they did is akin to writing an
academic paper that first introduces an idea. They cannot claim authorship
or credit for all of the publications that cite their initial publication -
just the initial idea. It seems clear that this initial idea was authored
and implemented by Sanger & Wales (2001?). It would be a grave injustice to
just cite Wales (2001) if the idea was only part, or not even, his.


On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 10:16 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <
cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> [...]
>
> 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
>
>
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