Andrew Lih wrote:
As for, "Who was co-founder of Wikipedia?" I'll wait until Jimbo responds.
Opinions about this may differ. It's to some degree a matter of terminology, and I don't particularly care about it one way or the other. I have no desire to see an ongoing storyline of a feud, it's not helpful to anyone.
Larry wrote: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine..." and that's exactly right, though of course I use the term "free" rather than "open".
Larry wrote: "Jimmy then started a specialized policy page he called 'Neutral Point of View'" and goes on to explain that he feels that the term became popular because it was used "by Wikipedians wanting to seem hip" -- failing, I think, to recognize the special innovation that NPOV is (as a social concept of co-operation which avoids some philosophical dilemmas posed by such concepts as 'biased'), instead assuming that this is just a cute phrase of hipsters.
Larry might be right or wrong about his disapproval of NPOV of course. But he agrees that the idea for the freely licensed collaborative encyclopedia open to contributions by ordinary people was mine, and that NPOV was my idea, and that the investment was mine. That's enough for me. Other people can decide what makes a founder.
I hired Larry to assist with my vision, and he did so competently. We argued constantly during the era of Nupedia, with me pressing for more openness, and he pressing for more academic standards -- and I let him win those arguments because _knowing what we knew then_, he was drawing the correct conclusions. Knowing what we know now, of course, his design for Nupedia was a failure. But that's easy to criticize in retrospect -- Larry deserves credit for it despite the failure because we did _not_ know what we know now.
I think people are unfortunately eager to see a war where there isn't one -- at least not from my side. Larry deserves credit for his work, and no less.
--Jimbo