[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[Ray Saintonge]

Delirium wrote:
> Larry Sanger wrote:
>   
>> I can recognize when I am no longer welcome.  I didn't really believe I ever
>> was welcome to begin with, but I was willing to try.  I've always been
>> optimistic.
>>
>> I assume that, since the self-appointed silencers among you are apparently
>> operating with impunity, I could not possibly continue to press my case here
>> without continuing to cause an uproar among them.  So I will stop.  Those
>> who wanted to silence me have done so successfully, just as your fearless
>> leader did on [[User talk:Jimmy Wales]].
>>     
> For what it's worth, I don't think you're actually nearly as unwelcome 
> here as you seem to think. If you have meta-level proposals you want to 
> advance --- Wikipedia should change X because of Y --- I think people 
> would take them seriously, especially if there was a concrete, 
> potentially workable proposal. Such proposals would at the very least 
> spark discussion.
>
> It's just that nobody wants to debate "who founded Wikipedia" on this 
> list. We don't even necessarily all disagree with you on the subject. 
> But it's not clear what gain will be had by debating it here, or what 
> the outcome is supposed to be. Lots of people saying they agree? I don't 
> actually think Jimmy would get a much more favorable reaction if he 
> started trying to debate similar issues here, either.
>
> I think you might also be aiming at the wrong audience to some extent. 
> You seem to accept the media-narrative "founder myth" of Wikipedia as 
> this thing that sprang whole cloth out of nothingness due to the 
> ingenuity of Jimmy Wales; save only that you'd like to modify the credit 
> to include Larry Sanger in an equally or more prominent role. But my 
> impression is that this is mainly an external view. Most of the 
> knowledgeable Wikipedians I know take a more complex view, crediting to 
> various degrees: Ward Cunningham's development of wikis; the development 
> of community and social norms on WikiWikiWeb and MeatballWiki; the 
> expansion of subject-specific wiki encyclopedias from the original 
> design-patterns-encyclopedia focus of WikiWikiWeb to cover ever more 
> areas of knowledge; the parallel cropping up of non-wiki "all human 
> knowledge written by random people on the internet" compendia like 
> Everything2; and so on. You and Jimmy were among many actors in that sea 
> of ideas; what precise credit is due to each such actor for developing 
> those ideas or accelerating their spread and recombination is probably a 
> matter for historians more than us. But on the whole if you want a 
> bigger role in a simplified founding saga, you might be addressing the 
> wrong audience if many of us don't believe in the saga to begin with. =]
>   
I would suggest that the best place for an open discussion would be a 
face-to-face encounter between Jimmy and Larry at Wikimania.  Perhaps 
Ward and Sunir and other key historical persons could also be present 
for this. 

Following that Larry could be appointed to the advisory board at the 
usual salary.

Ec