[Wikipedia-l] Announcement about my involvement in Wikipedia and Nupedia

[Larry Sanger]

Dear everyone,

After a lot of thinking and negotiating, I've arrived at an important
decision and it's also important that I convey this decision to you.

For reasons I'll let Jimbo explain if he likes--it had *nothing* to do
with my job performance or with any personal animosity--I was placed on
half-time pay in January, and as of February 1, I am no longer a Bomis
employee.  There is no ill-will between Jimbo and I, and I wish him and
Bomis all the best.  This means that any work I do for the 'pedias, for
the near future anyway, I am doing as an unpaid volunteer, the same as the
rest of you.

This means two things.  First, I've got to get a job that will pay the
bills, and second, I'm going to have to reduce my participation in the
project quite a bit (over my pre-January participation).

I want to stress that I am *not* simply quitting altogether.  I can't see
abandoning the projects I started--they're too important.  I hate to think
of what might become of the projects if I were to quit altogether.  But
Wikipedia has become *largely* self-managing, something I'm tickled pink
about, and Nupedia has been moving so slowly anyway that I don't need to
spend a lot of time managing that.  (Ironically, I might have more time
for Nupedia, now that I'm not a paid employee. :-) )  Moreover, Bomis
might well start selling ads on Wikipedia sometime within the next few
months, and revenue from those ads might make it possible for me to come
back to my old job.  That would be great.  I've liked this job very much,
and I'm willing to do some work to help make it pay for itself.

Now that I'm on the job market, if you want to see my resume, let me know
at lsanger at nupedia.com.  I'm willing to work as a consultant or as an
employee--or, possibly, even as a partner.  I have quite a few ideas for
Internet projects that are potentially profitable and/or extremely
productive and interesting.  Among the cards I have to play are proposals
to big Internet portals, thinktanks, and magazines, to spearhead these
projects, much as I've spearheaded Nupedia and Wikipedia.  If you'd like
to discuss these project ideas confidentially on a serious business level,
please let me know.  Of course, I'm interested in less ambitious ways of
making money, too.  :-)

One last thing.  Please don't use this announcement as an excuse to say,
"Fine, I'm quitting then."  As you can see, *I* am *not* quitting, even
though prudence about my employment situation might dictate otherwise.  I
have decided to tough it out and join the ranks of volunteers myself.  If
anything, I hope this will make you even more inspired than ever to help:
"By golly, if Larry doesn't quit even though he's out of a job, and
volunteers his now-limited free time, I will too!"  That's what I hope
you'll think.  Just remember: Wikipedia is going full steam ahead.  We've
got nearly 25,000 articles in just a year!  We're getting ever-increasing
amounts of traffic and we have a very large, fairly competent (in some
cases, brilliant) base of contributors.  I will still be around to answer
questions, offer opinions, and occasionally kick ass over bad articles
:-).  As for Nupedia, now that I've finally made this decision, I do plan
sometime in the near future to make that final push to rewriting the
policy guidelines with the recent vote in mind.  Magnus Manske is champing
at the bit to write the code (Nunupedia, he calls it) that will implement
the new Nupedia system.  I do think that once the guidelines and the code
are up and running, Nupedia is going to experience growth of a sort it's
never seen before--one or two orders of magnitude greater.  Once we make
it easier and more automatic to submit Wikipedia articles to the new
Nupedia system, I think things are *really* going to take off for Nupedia.

Our forging ahead surely doesn't *require* my full-time paid involvement.
It would make it a lot easier and faster if I were still involved in such
a capacity, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

So--stay the course!

Best,
Larry