Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:23, 31 August 2007

Lawrence Mark Sanger
Larry Sanger
Born	(1968-07-16) July 16, 1968 (age 56) Bellevue, Washington, USA
Occupation	Editor-in-Chief of Citizendium
Website	Larry Sanger

Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger (born July 16, 1968) has been involved with various online encyclopedia projects (including the helping in the founding of Misplaced Pages). He is the former editor-in-chief of Nupedia, chief organizer (2001-2002) of its successor, Misplaced Pages, and the founder of Citizendium. In the interim, he was also an early strategist for the expert-authored and edited Encyclopedia of Earth. He proposed Citizendium on September 15, 2006, originally designed as a fork of Misplaced Pages. It was launched on March 25, 2007.

Early life

Sanger was born in Bellevue, Washington, and reared in Anchorage, Alaska. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Reed College in 1991 and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Ohio State University in 2000. His bachelor thesis is titled Descartes' methods and their theoretical background and his doctoral thesis concerned Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification. From 1998 to 2000 he ran a website called "Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports" (formerly at sangersreview.com), a resource for Y2K watchers. In school, Sanger was asked: "What are you ever going to do with philosophy?" He said: "Well, change the way the world thinks, for one thing." As a student, he explored the understanding and sources of knowledge. He also became interested in the Internet and its publishing abilities. These interests helped him to realize the benefits of using a wiki for an online encyclopedia.

Nupedia and Misplaced Pages

Nupedia was a Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Sanger hired as editor-in-chief. Responding to frustrations with the slow progress of Nupedia, in January 2001 Sanger proposed the creation of a wiki to spur the development of articles, and the result of this proposal was Misplaced Pages. By virtue of his position with Nupedia, Sanger spearheaded and named the project, and formulated much of the original policy, including "Ignore all rules" and "Neutral point of view." Sanger was the only paid editor of Misplaced Pages, a status he held from January 15 2001, until March 1 2002. Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Misplaced Pages projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002; Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Misplaced Pages (he never claimed an official title) on March 1. Sanger's stated reason for ending his participation in Misplaced Pages and Nupedia as a volunteer was that he could not do justice to the task as a part-time volunteer. Nupedia shut down the following year.

Later, in December 2004, Sanger wrote a critical article for the website Kuro5hin, in which he admitted that there had existed "a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project" that had also accounted for his departure. While claiming "to appreciate the merits of Misplaced Pages fully" and to know and support "the mission and broad policy outlines of Misplaced Pages very well," Sanger maintained that there are serious problems with the project. There was, he wrote, a lack of public perception of credibility, and the project put "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers" into too much prominence; these problems, he maintained, were a feature of the project's "anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise." The article was the subject of much controversy in the blogosphere, and led to some reaction in the news media as well.

Origins of Misplaced Pages

Wales, who is the current de-facto leader of Misplaced Pages, has publicly disputed since 2004 that Sanger is a co-founder of Misplaced Pages. Wales described Sanger as having been merely a subordinate employee, and stated of the co-founder claim, "I know of no one who was there at the company at the beginning who would think it anything other than laughable." The origins of Misplaced Pages began when Ben Kovitz, a computer programmer and regular on Ward Cunningham's wiki, introduced Sanger to wikis over dinner on the evening of January 2, 2001. Sanger thought a wiki would be a good platform to use and decided to present the idea to Jimmy Wales, the then head of Bomis. Sanger initially proposed the wiki concept to Wales and suggested it be applied to Nupedia and, after some initial skepticism, Wales agreed to try it. Wales ascribed the broader idea of an encyclopedia that "non-experts" could contribute to, i.e., the Nupedia. Wales mentioned that he heard of the general concept of wikis first from Jeremy Rosenfeld, though he said earlier, in October 2001, that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software." In fact, Sanger "came up with the name 'Misplaced Pages', a silly name for what was at first a very silly project." In response to Wales' view of his role in Misplaced Pages, Sanger posted on his personal webpage a collection of links which he claimed confirmed his co-founder role. Sanger has also provided evidence that he is the co-founder of Misplaced Pages, by referencing earlier versions of Misplaced Pages pages, citing press releases from Misplaced Pages in the years of 2002 - 2004, and asserting that early media coverage articles described Wales and Sanger as the co-founders. In review, Larry Sanger conceived of the wiki-based encyclopedia as an idea to assist with Nupedia's growth inefficiency, and spearheaded and guided the community as its leader in its first year. During the time of Sanger's involvement in the project, he was routinely known (never disputed) as a co-founder. Moreover, Sanger has been widely cited in the media as a co-founder. Misplaced Pages became an accidental spin-off of Nupedia, originally to allow collaboration on articles prior to the editorial review process.

After Misplaced Pages

Sanger returned to the academic world as a lecturer at The Ohio State University, where he taught philosophy until June 2005. His professional interests are epistemology (in particular), early modern philosophy, and ethics. In his spare time, he plays and teaches Irish traditional music on the fiddle in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, and also manages a site about the Donegal fiddle tradition.

In December 2005, Digital Universe Foundation announced that Sanger had been hired as Director of Distributed Content Programs, where he would lead the Digital Universe Encyclopedia content resource of the larger web project launched in early 2006. Unlike Misplaced Pages, the Digital Universe encyclopedia plans to bring in recognized experts to certify the accuracy of user-submitted articles as well as to write articles themselves. The first step in this effort is the Encyclopedia of Earth.

In April 2006, Sanger published "Text and Collaboration: A personal manifesto for the Text Outline Project" arguing for the importance of what he called "strong collaboration" (that is, collaboration in which people work on the parts they're interested and nobody gets to claim control), the possibility that strong collaboration could be more effective with a less anarchistic set of ground rules than Misplaced Pages, and the creation of a new Text Outline Project to create The Book of the World, featuring summaries of the arguments of the great philosophers, organized by topic and time, along with summaries of their debates.

At the Wizards of OS conference in September 2006, Sanger announced a fork of Misplaced Pages, named Citizendium. The objectives of the fork are to address various perceived flaws in the Misplaced Pages system. The main differences will be no anonymous editing - every author/editor will have to be identified by his/her real name, no "top-down" hierarchy of editors, and to aspire to be a "real encyclopedia." More differences are discussed in the FAQ. The initial fork will be only of the English language Misplaced Pages.

Sanger took a "leave of absence" from Digital Universe, announced on the 27th of September 2006, "in order to set up a fully independent Citizendium Foundation."

Citizendium launched

On March 25, 2007, Citizendium ended its pilot phase and went live, into its beta phase, and the site became publicly readable. The launch coincided with a feature-length Associated Press article that ran widely, with a title in USA Today of "Citizendium aims to be better Misplaced Pages." Unlike Wales, who has compared his role in Misplaced Pages with that of a British monarch, Sanger said he would not head Citizendium indefinitely, and has already announced his planning to step off the leadership team in two or three years.

Two weeks after the launch of Citizendium, Sanger heavily criticized Misplaced Pages, stating the latter was "broken beyond repair," and had a range of problems "from serious management problems, to an often dysfunctional community, to frequently unreliable content, and to a whole series of scandals." Citizendium is overviewed by experts.

References

1. Sanger, Larry (2000). "Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification". Enlightenment: Objectivist Scholarship. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
2. ^ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Sanger says he co-started Misplaced Pages". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-25. The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Misplaced Pages, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial - Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it.
3. Moody, Glyn (July 13, 2006). "This time, it'll be a Misplaced Pages written by experts". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Larry Sanger seems to have a thing about free online encyclopedias. Although his main claim to fame is as the co-founder, along with Jimmy Wales, of Misplaced Pages, that is just one of several projects to produce large-scale, systematic stores of human knowledge he has been involved in. saw that I was essentially looking for employment online and he was looking for someone to lead Nupedia... Career: 1992-1996, 1997-1998 Graduate teaching associate, OSU; 2000-2002 Editor-in-chief, Nupedia; Co-founder and "chief organiser," Misplaced Pages.
4. Sidener, Jonathan (September 23, 2006). "Misplaced Pages co-founder looks to add accountability, end anarchy". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 2007-03-25. The origins of Misplaced Pages date to 2000, when Sanger was finishing his doctoral thesis in philosophy and had an idea for a Web site.
5. ^ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Citizendium aims to be better Misplaced Pages". Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-25. This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Misplaced Pages alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Misplaced Pages's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.
6. ^ Sanger, Larry (September 27, 2006). "Citizendium launch plan as of September 26". Citizendium-l mail list. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
7. Sanger, Larry. "Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports". sangersreview.com. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
8. Boraas, Alan (September 2, 2006). "Hometown kid an Internet revolutionary". Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
9. Roush, Wade (January 2005). "Larry Sanger's Knowledge Free-for-All". Technology Review. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
10. ^ Wales, Jimmy (October 30, 2001). "LinkBacks?" (Email). wikipedia-l archives. Bomis. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
11. ^ Poe, Marshall (September, 2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The initial purpose was to get the public to add entries that would then be "fed into the Nupedia process" of authorization. Most of Nupedia's expert volunteers, however, wanted nothing to do with this, so Sanger decided to launch a separate site called "Misplaced Pages." Neither Sanger nor Wales looked on Misplaced Pages as anything more than a lark. This is evident in Sanger's flip announcement of Misplaced Pages to the Nupedia discussion list. "Humor me," he wrote. "Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes." And, to Sanger's surprise, go they did. Within a few days, Misplaced Pages outstripped Nupedia in terms of quantity, if not quality, and a small community developed. In late January, Sanger created a Misplaced Pages discussion list (Misplaced Pages-L) to facilitate discussion of the project. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. "Rules To Consider". Ignore all rules. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
13. "History of NPOV". Neutral point of view. Misplaced Pages. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
14. Schiff, Stacy (July 24, 2006). "Know It All". Can Misplaced Pages conquer expertise?. The New Yorker. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
15. Sanger, Larry (March 1, 2002). "My resignation--Larry Sanger". Meta-Wiki. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
16. ^ Sanger, Larry (Dec 31, 2004). "Why Misplaced Pages Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism". Kuro5hin. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
17. "Next Misplaced Pages, take a right". Misplaced Pages, Citizendium, and the politics of knowledge: An interview with Larry Sanger. Dossier Open Source. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
18. Pink, Daniel H (March, 2005). "The Book Stops Here". Wired News. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. Terdiman, Daniel (January 6, 2006). "Misplaced Pages's co-founder eyes a Digital Universe". CNET. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
20. Frith, Holden (March 26, 2007). "Misplaced Pages founder launches rival online encyclopaedia". The Times. Retrieved 2007-03-27. Misplaced Pages's de facto leader, Jimmy Wales, stood by the site's format.
21. Mitchell, Dan (December 24, 2005). "Insider Editing at Misplaced Pages". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |quotes= (help)
22. "Two who were there dispute founding of online encyclopedia". Associated Press. The Boston Globe. March 26, 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
23. "Ben Kovitz". WikiWikiWeb. Retrieved 2007-03-25.Ben Kovitz wrote on his Misplaced Pages user page about his conversation with Larry Sanger that led to the creation of Misplaced Pages, stating in part: "I suggested to Larry that he make Nupedia into a wiki. I said, instead of trying to prevent error and bias, to openly invite error and bias and make it very easy for people to correct them. It's a rare thing to tell someone to do something exactly the opposite of what he's been doing, indeed the exact opposite of how he's been thinking and investing mentally for most of his life, and get a fair hearing. It almost never happens that someone actually takes the suggestion. But Larry listened to what I had to say, let his imagination engage, and ran with it."
24. Sanger, Larry (January 10, 2001). "Let's make a wiki" (Email). Nupedia-l mailing list. Nupedia. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
25. ^ "The Early History of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages: A Memoir - Part I" and "Part II", Slashdot, April 2005. Retrieved on 2007-03-25. "The actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on. So I arrived in San Diego in early February, 2000, to get to work. One of the first things I asked Jimmy is how free a rein I had in designing the project. What were my constraints, and in what areas was I free to exercise my own creativity? He replied, as I clearly recall, that most of the decisions should be mine; and in most respects, as a manager, Jimmy was indeed very hands-off. Nevertheless, I always did consult with him about important decisions, and moreover, I wanted his advice. Now, Jimmy was quite clear that he wanted the project to be in principle open to everyone to develop, just as open source software is (to an extent). Beyond this, however, I believe I was given a pretty free rein. So I spent the first month or so thinking very broadly about different possibilities." — Larry Sanger.
26. ^ Sanger, Larry. "My role in Misplaced Pages (links)". larrysanger.org. Larry Sanger. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
27. "History Version of the 'Misplaced Pages' Article". Misplaced Pages. June 2004. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
28. "History Version of the 'History of Misplaced Pages' Article". Misplaced Pages. August 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
29. "History Version of the 'Larry Sanger' Article". Misplaced Pages. August 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
30. "History Version of the 'Jimmy Wales' Article". Misplaced Pages. September 2004. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
31. "Misplaced Pages press release from January 2002". describing Sanger and Wales as "co-founders". Misplaced Pages. January 15, 2002. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
32. "Misplaced Pages press release from January 2003". stating Sanger and Wales founded the site. Misplaced Pages. January 21, 2003. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
33. "Misplaced Pages press release from February 2004". describes Sanger as a founder. Misplaced Pages. February 25, 2004. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
34. ^ Meyers, Peter (September 20, 2001). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-25."I can start an article that will consist of one paragraph, and then a real expert will come along and add three paragraphs and clean up my one paragraph," said Larry Sanger of Las Vegas, who founded Misplaced Pages with Mr. Wales.
35. Mayfield, Kendra (January 28, 2003). "Not Your Father's Encyclopedia". Wired News. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
36. Mehegan, David (February 12, 2006). "Bias, sabotage haunt Misplaced Pages's free world". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
37. Hammersley, Ben (January 30, 2003). "Common knowledge". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
38. Olsen, Stefanie (October 16, 2006). "Misplaced Pages co-founder plans 'expert' rival". CNET. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
39. Lyman, Jay (September 20, 2006). "Misplaced Pages Co-Founder Planning New Expert-Authored Site". LinuxInsider. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
40. Tally, Steve (March 20, 2006). "Misplaced Pages co-founder to speak on campus". Purdue University News Service. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
41. Del Conte, Natali T (October 20, 2006). "Misplaced Pages Co-Founder Starting Rival Online 'Encyclopedia Project'". Fox News. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
42. Tiwari, Neha (April 5, 2007). "Misplaced Pages today, Citizendium tomorrow". CNET. Retrieved 2007-04-05. Sanger now believes that the world deserves something better than his former start-up when it comes to online research.
43. "Lawrence Sanger, Ph. D., Director of Distributed Content Programs". Digital Universe. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
44. "Digital Universe Seeks to Become Free 'PBS of the Web'". PR Newswire. Digital Universe. January 17, 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
45. Terdiman, Daniel (December 19, 2005). "Misplaced Pages alternative aims to be 'PBS of the Web'". CNET. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
46. Sanger, Larry (April, 2006). "Text and Collaboration: A personal manifesto for the Text Outline Project". textop.org. Retrieved 2007-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
47. Sanger, Larry (March 25, 2007). "We have launched". Citizendium Blog. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
48. McNichol, Tom (March 1, 2007). "Building a Wiki World". Business 2.0. CNN. Retrieved 2007-03-25."I'm sort of like a British monarch," Wales said, while smiling.
49. Anderson, Nate (February 25, 2007). "Citizendium: building a better Misplaced Pages". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Citizendium currently has over 500 participants, most of whom have been individually screened. Growth has been sometimes erratic; Sanger says that the site gained 50-75 contributors on a single day after being featured on Slashdot. Edits have now topped 500 per day, which Sanger says compares favorably with the earliest days of Misplaced Pages.
50. Thomson, Iain (April 13, 2007). "Misplaced Pages 'broken beyond repair' says co-founder". Information World Review. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
51. Heater, Brian (January 26, 2007). "Q&A With Citizendium Creator Dr. Larry Sanger". AppScout. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
52. Orlowski, Andrew (September 18, 2006). "Misplaced Pages founder forks Misplaced Pages". More experts, less fiddling?. The Register. Retrieved 2007-03-25. Larry Sanger describes the Citizendium project as a "progressive or gradual fork," with the major difference that experts have the final say over edits.

External links

• Larry Sanger - Sanger's personal website.
• User:Larry Sanger - Sanger's account on the English Misplaced Pages.
• User:Larry Sanger - An essay discussing the origins of Misplaced Pages.
• User:Larry Sanger - Meta-Wikimedia ("Possibly outdated," he says.)
• Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification - index.
• Introductory philosophy lectures from Sanger's 1998 course at Ohio State University (many have been greatly edited from Sanger's originals—"as they should be," he says.)
• Britannica or Nupedia? The Future of 💕s Kuro5hin (July 25, 2001 op-ed article)
• Misplaced Pages is wide open. Why is it growing so fast? Why isn't it full of nonsense? Kuro5hin (September 24, 2001 op-ed article)
• Why Misplaced Pages Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism Kuro5hin (December 31, 2004 op-ed article)
• The Early History of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages: A Memoir and Part II Slashdot (April 18 - April 19, 2005)
• Video interview: Larry Sanger talks about Misplaced Pages and his plans with Citizendium (mostly in English, with a German introduction and subtitles)

• 1968 births
• American businesspeople
• American bloggers
• American philosophers
• History of Misplaced Pages
• Living people
• Ohio State University alumni
• People from Anchorage, Alaska
• Reed College alumni
• Misplaced Pages people