[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs

[Phil Sandifer]

I don't know why Jimbo would do that, Larry. But I do know that Jimbo 
has been putting a tremendous amount of work into this community and 
this project. I know that h e's been active from a level ranging from 
the broad fundraising level to an astonishing level of specificity as 
he deals with individual problems. I know he's been fast to respond to 
queries, reasonable, judicious, and nothing but respectful.

I also know that the only time I see your name of late is attached to 
another screed about why the project you abandoned is doomed. 
Curiously, it seems to keep climbing in the Alexa rankings while you 
claim that. Equally curiously, it took you a few years yourself to 
change from leaving because you weren't getting paid anymore to leaving 
because of a poisonous social atmosphere.

My point here being that, all things being equal, when it comes to 
Jimbo's word against yours, I'm going to go with Jimbo. And when it 
comes to taking seriously critiques of the project, I'm going to go 
with people who are involved in it, instead of capitalizing on their 
past involvement to hit the frontpage of the geek news sites.

Now go take your drama queening somewhere else. We're busy with this 
project. You may remember it. It's called Wikipedia.

-Snowspinner

On Apr 19, 2005, at 10:10 PM, <lmsanger at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> I was looking at wikipedia-l to see how the community might react to my
> memoir.  I haven't been subscribed for three years.  But seeing Jimmy's
> comment impelled me to rejoin the list, for the sole purpose of 
> confirming
> what has been on record for five years.
>
> Jimmy wrote:
>
>> The original idea for a wiki for Wikipedia was not proposed by Larry,
>> but by Jeremy Rosenfeld.
>
> Who is Jeremy Rosenfeld?  I'm afraid I don't remember, but I don't 
> have a
> very good memory for names.  Was he one of the people doing link 
> weeding for
> Bomis?
>
> I remember very clearly the evening when I got the idea for Wikipedia. 
>  It
> was January 2 and Ben Kovitz and I were eating at a Mexican restaurant 
> just
> around the corner from the old Bomis office.  (I could point out the 
> place,
> if it still exists, but I forget the name.)  Ben no doubt remembers it 
> as
> well, because I told him almost immediately after he explained the 
> concept
> of a wiki to me that it would be interesting to consider building a 
> more
> free-wheeling encyclopedia project using a wiki.  I told him that, 
> even as
> we were still eating dinner.  I remember writing a wiki encyclopedia
> proposal soon after I got home, I think that very night; I remember you
> saying that you liked the idea and that you'd set up the wiki.  That 
> would
> have been January 3.  I think you (or maybe it was Jason Richey) 
> actually
> put the wiki online either that day or the next.  I think it was that 
> very
> day, because I remember being happy that the thing had been set up so
> quickly.  Over the next few days I started populating the wiki with the
> basic pages, and pitched the idea to Nupedia.
>
> If Jeremy Rosenfeld told you about wikis, or suggested that wiki 
> software
> could be used to run a wiki encyclopedia, you certainly never told *me*
> that; and in any case, it was not Jeremy Rosenfeld's conversation with 
> you,
> but instead mine, that actually caused the precursor of Wikipedia to 
> come
> into existence on January 3 or 4.  I know how Wikipedia was originated,
> since, well, I did the origination.  Moreover, I came up with the name 
> for
> the project and shepherded it very closely from then through its first 
> year.
>
> Do you deny these claims, Jimmy?
>
> If not, then what you say is simply false, is it not?--That "The 
> original
> idea for a wiki for Wikipedia was not proposed by Larry, but by Jeremy
> Rosenfeld."
>
> I just don't know what you could possibly thinking.  Why don't you 
> clarify
> for the list what you meant, precisely, in light of the facts as I have
> presented them?  Surely you're not accusing *me* of having lied since
> practically the beginning of the project?  Because, as you know, the 
> above
> story has been the official story of the origin of the idea for 
> Wikipedia
> since the beginning of the project.  Why would you take five years to 
> "set
> the record straight" and thereby accuse me of having been a liar all 
> that
> time?
>
> --Larry
>
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