[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[Fred Bauder]

> 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.

[snip]

> 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.

Sanger probably had the initial idea, but Wales listened to him. Wales
paid for the initial operation and supported the project financially for
at least a year, including paying wages to Sanger. Sanger came up with a
lot of policy, but Wales insisted on assume good faith and lived it.
Sanger himself might have torn the project up banning people if given his
way.

Fred Bauder