Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
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.
The fact that they were surprised by its success does not mean that they don't deserve credit for it. History is full of ideas whose success surprised their creators. I'm sure the Beatles were surprised when they soared to the top of the music charts (especially after they had spent years grinding away with only modest success in Hamburg and Liverpool). When Linus Torvalds released the first version of Linux, he had no way of knowing that it would take off the way it did. That doesn't mean the Beatles don't deserve credit for their music or Torvalds doesn't deserve credit for Linux.
If anything, the failure of Nupedia shows that Sanger and Wales deserve *more* credit, not less. Rather than giving up on the idea of an online encyclopedia after their first attempt, they persevered, retooled and came up with an alternative approach that did work. Of course they had no way of knowing what a success it would become. They got lucky, and a huge community of other people has contributed in various ways. But they still deserve credit for the original innovation.
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