Over on slashdot, Larry Sanger has published the first in an N-part series (N>1) on the early history of the Wikipedia (and the failed Nupedia) projects.
It has all of the benefits and disadvantages of being written by someone present at the creation: the details of early choices are fascinating, while the score-settling is a bit tedious. (He takes Daniel Pink to task for misquoting the tiny number of finished Nupedia articles, even though the gap between Wikipedia and Nupedia covers orders of magnitude.)
What’s most fascinating, though, is not the historical element, but Sanger’s own position. He understands why Wikipedia works and Nupedia didn’t, and yet is constantly maintaining that the Wikipedia would benefit from being more like the planned Nupedia:
This point bears some emphasis: Wikipedia became what it is today because, having been seeded with great people with a fairly clear idea of what they wanted to achieve, we proceeded to make a series of free decisions that determined the policy of the project and culture of its supporting community. Wikipedia’s system is neither the only way to run a wiki, nor the only way to run an open content encyclopedia. Its particular conjunction of policies is in no way natural, “organic,” or necessary. It is instead artificial, a result of a series of free choices, and we could have chosen differently in many cases; and choosing differently on some issues might have led to a project better than the one that exists today.
I have a hard time understanding how a loosely bound community, choosing among available options, isn’t an organic process, but Sanger has always been convinced that setting and enforcing a Nupedian-style respect for authority was a) possible for Wikipedia and b) desirable for Wikipedia. (I’ve disagreed with Sanger on both points in the past, but based on a less complete re-telling than this looks to be.)
In any case, since the whole piece isn’t yet published, it’s too soon to see how the various themes will develop, but for anyone following Wikipedia, this will be a key piece of writing.
1. Larry Sanger on April 18, 2005 3:33 PM writes...
For the record, I agree that Wikipedia will probably never adopt any official policy of respect for authority. I've never said otherwise. What Wikipedia needs is a more straight-laced partner that is completely independent.
Whether Wikipedia's early process of adopting policy was "organic," the dispute here is mainly philosophical. When people make choices together, the fact that they are choosing together does not make the choices any less free or contingent. Wikipedia is not the inevitable result of any large-scale attempt to make a free, public, wiki-based encyclopedia; it's just one particular historical result. Many other things could have happened, some better, some much worse. I completely reject the idea that Wikipedia had to become exactly what it was. In fact, every tiny aspect of Wikipedia policy can be traced back to the decisions and advocacy of very specific individuals.
You might as well say that wiki software in general requires the adoption of wiki's very idiosyncratic culture, because somehow that culture is an "organic" and necessary outgrowth of the brute existence of the software. Wikipedia has already shown that that is absolutely false, and time will show many other ways to use wikis.
Clay, I think you'll find a lot more grist for your mill in the second part (I'm pretty sure there's only two parts).
Permalink to Comment2. Brian on April 18, 2005 6:34 PM writes...
Sanger, no matter how many times you say it you will never be co-founder of Wikipedia. You were Wales' employee, and just as he stopped paying you, you stopped contributing. The only thing you do now is critique the philosophy articles with no intention of making them better.
"It is not correct to say that 'With Larry Sanger, Wales in 2001 founded...' I founded Wikipedia, Larry just worked for me. The idea for using a wiki orginally came to me from an employee -- Jeremy Rosenfeld. I am adding a note to the Bomis article's talk page about this one as well." --Jimbo Wales 18:52, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC) [link]
Permalink to Comment3. Larry Sanger on April 18, 2005 8:45 PM writes...
I was virtually always referred to as a co-founder until last year. What has changed?
Wikipedia was my idea (in the very robust sense explained in my memoir), its main founding principles were in large part mine and enforced by me, and I did more than anyone to organize it. It simply would not have existed if I had started it, indeed while being employed by Jimmy. It was on that basis that I was for several years credibly and repeatedly called "co-founder" of the project.
The fact that I was Jimmy's employee, which I freely admit, does not mean I was not also a co-founder of the project.
Until last year, again, this was my honorific, and until this year, nobody has bothered questioning it. I wonder why.
Permalink to Comment4. Brian on April 18, 2005 11:21 PM writes...
I don't wonder why. You began with a nervous trembling for your reputation, trying to separate yourself as much as possible from the encyclopedia so it wouldn't harm you in the academic job market. Now that it is proving itself successful you are doing everything you can to close that gap and speak as if you are some sort of authority on the subject, when truth be told, you have no idea what it's like anymore. You don't contribute to the wiki, to the mailing list, or to IRC discussions. You don't contribute anything at all, actually. All you do is critique, and everyone who is involved in the encyclopedia knows it.
Permalink to Comment5. Phil Mitchell on April 19, 2005 10:25 AM writes...
As an outsider w/o any connection to the parties of this history, I found Sanger's article to be extremely useful and look forward to the sequel. I don't hear him grinding axes -- what I hear him saying is that there were conscious policy choices that affected the long-term viability of the community. Those of us interested in building online communities can benefit greatly from people like Sanger providing "lessons learned". Rather than take potshots, I'd love it if other parties would provide alternative views of the same history with the same kind of detail.
Permalink to Comment6. jason on April 20, 2005 7:26 AM writes...
It is interesting to hear about authority. As an academic with authoritative publications under my belt, I find the notion of authority suspect. I review a lot of academic work and find it full of holes. Just like wikipedia. What i like about wikipedia is the honesty found in work being 'under development'. That said, it would be nice if there were a function by which an article could be designated as having reached a certain level of completeness that it was suitable for use in say k-12, post-secondary... etc.
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