[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs

[Matt R]

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Look, you have not been a part of the Wikipedia community since early 
> 2002, and now you reappear three years later talking about your 
> importance in the "founding" of Wikipedia, pimping a book, and writing 
> screeds about what's wrong with it while at the same time not actually 
> participating in any of the policy discussions, and indeed explicitly 
> saying you "don't have time" to actually discuss any of the issues [1].  
> Even your brief reappearance here is apparently entirely to defend your 
> claimed credit, not to actually discuss how to improve Wikipedia, an 
> endeavor in which you claim to be interested.

Hmmm...yes. While I do feel a little uncomfortable about bad-mouthing seminal
figures in Wikipedia's history, I'm afraid to say that I've not found Larry
Sanger's recent comments about Wikipedia to be particularly profound at all
&mdash; certainly not warranting quite so much widespread publicity. For sure,
the Slashdot-posted "memoirs" of the early history of the project were quite
interesting, but there's something about the way they were written that left a
bad taste in my mouth. It would certainly help Sanger's credibility a lot,
particularly for people who've never encountered him on Wikipedia before, if he
did the following: 

  1) If he actually dirtied his hands and got involved with the project again.
Something doesn't fit right here. Larry Sanger claims he "still loves"
Wikipedia and "wants only the best for it" &mdash; well if so, you think he'd
actually contribute to the project from time-to-time, no? One of Sanger's
criticisms is about Wikipedia's treatment of experts. However, it's not clear
that Sanger himself is any longer an expert on Wikipedia, the project having
moved on after he left. What are Sanger's credentials for commenting on
Wikipedia's dynamics *today*, as opposed to how it was over three years ago?

  2) If he stopped fighting so hard for his share of the "glory" of founding
Wikipedia, which seems a little unseemly, at least to me.

-- Matt
[[User:Matt Crypto]]


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