[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs

[Jimmy Wales]

lmsanger at sbcglobal.net wrote:
> To Andrew Lih: Andrew, let me throw this back at you: who has ever proven
> that all of the bulleted items *were* essential to the success of Wikipedia?
> Why assume without argument that they were?  Making unwarranted assumptions
> is the enemy of critical thinking and problem solving.

The interesting point, to attempt to return this discussion to something
useful, is that many of us have slightly different but largely similar
theories about which "bullet points" actually were essential to the
success of Wikipedia.  Larry's list is one which, by and large, I agree
with, although I would omit a couple and add a couple of others.

I suppose one might be inclined to wonder if there wasn't some magic in
the interaction between my personality and Larry's personality which
gave the project a boost in the beginning months and years.  Anyone
reading these threads can readily discern a difference in style, and of
course both styles have value and usefulness in a community project.

Larry, I am not going to respond in detail to your other message,
becuase it seems that you're agitated today to the point of taking
Pepcid, and I don't mean to upset anyone.

I'll just restate my point, which is that the first person to propose
that we move to a wiki system to resolve the problems of Nupedia was
Jeremy Rosenfeld.  I just think this is an interesting bit of historical
trivia which in no way detracts from your _causal_ role in the founding
of Wikipedia.  I apologize most sincerely if my saying so has upset you;
it was not my intention.

(And of course you never opposed _neutrality_, my point was that you
never were happy with NPOV _as a technical term to describe a social
concept of co-operation_.  You said so yourself the other day, and I
think that's great.)

--Jimbo