[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sanger's memoirs

[Richard Holton]

On 4/20/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > For what it's worth, my view on it is that who gets the credit is pretty
> > meaningless.  As can be seen by the fact that many people suggested it,
> > the idea of a wiki-based encyclopedia by the time Wikipedia was started
> > was becoming fairly obvious, so eventually someone had to start it.
> 
> I think this comment (which Bjarte Sorensen also made, in different
> words) bears repeating, and expanding upon. The way in which the
> concept of wikis grew slowly for years and then boomed (take a look
> around, they're everywhere now) suggests to me that they were "an idea
> whose time had come". It also seems reasonable that Wikipedia itself
> was an idea whose time had come - being, as it was, the culmination of
> all sorts of attempts at an online encyclopedia, of which Nupedia was
> a drop in the ocean (see, for instance,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_encyclopedia_project)
> 
> As such, I think the problem we are all struggling with is this:
> -> "What does it mean to 'create' an idea?"
> Like "Who invented the telephone?" the question of "Who invented
> Wikipedia?" may be best viewed as an unanswerable question, as it is
> simply too easy to redefine. Thus Larry is defining it in such a way
> that the answer is "Larry", and Jimbo is defining it in such a way
> that the answer is "Jeremy, and Jimbo, and also Larry". Obviously, if
> you assume these are answering the same question, they are conflicting
> answers; but it seems to me that they're not.
> 
> BTW, I now notice, after already drafting most of the above, that
> [[Telephone]] on Wikipedia includes this statement:
> > It is important to note that there is no "inventor of the telephone." The modern telephone is the result of work done by many hands, all worthy of recognition of their addition to the field. <
> I couldn't have put it any better myself.
> 
> Which brings me to my next point - note the phrase "all worthy of
> recognition". If you accept my reasoning that "who created Wikipedia?"
> is a meaningless question, then you can see that the key point is how
> we frame things. Nobody is denying that Larry had an extremely
> important role in the early development of Wikipedia; and nobody is
> claiming that Jeremy had more than a fleeting role in the idea. So,
> the following should, I think, be uncontroversial:
> 
> * Jeremy and Larry both independently had the idea of using a wiki to
> replace or complement Nupedia.
> * They both mentionned this to Jimbo, who felt this better matched his
> original "vision"
> * It was Larry, however, that saw the idea through, and who was
> extremely important in the early development of Wikipedia
> * It is Jimbo who has stuck through, and worked on the project from
> before it began to the present day
> 
> But the million-dollar question is apparently "was Larry a
> co-founder?". I'd say "yes", in that he was part of the core that made
> it happen. The problem is, if somebody came along just days after the
> wiki was "switched on", and became an influential part of the
> decision-making process, were they also a "co-founder"? Again, the
> question is hard to frame. [I wasn't "there" anywhere near the time, I
> should point out, so I am being purely hypothetical]
> 
> My conclusion?
> "Jimbo Wales had a vision for a free online encyclopedia; he and his
> employee Larry Sanger worked up Nupedia as a first stab at this
> vision; after hearing about wikis - which Jimbo had also recently
> discussed with another employee, Jeremy Rosenfeld - Larry laid down
> the first strokes of what would become Wikipedia."
> 
> Sorry this has turned into such a ramble, but I hope it is of some
> value to someone.
> --

Thanks, Rowan. I found this very helpful.

-- Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]