Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:40, 3 May 2007

Lawrence Mark Sanger
Larry Sanger
Born	July 16, 1968 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. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Nupedia, co-founder and 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.

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 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.

Nupedia and Misplaced Pages

Sanger was employed by Jimmy Wales' Bomis company as Editor-in-Chief of Nupedia. 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. 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.

Jimmy Wales, who is the current Wikimedia Foundation Chairman Emeritus, 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". Sanger concedes that it was Wales alone who conceived of an encyclopedia that non-experts could contribute to, i.e., the Nupedia. However, Sanger maintains that it was he who brought the wiki concept to Wales and suggested it be applied to Nupedia and that, after some initial skepticism, Wales agreed to try it. (Wales has claimed that one Jeremy Rosenfeld first suggested the idea of a wiki to him, though he claimed earlier, in October 2001, that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software.") Sanger also maintains that he "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 stated Wales and Sanger are the co-founders. In review, Larry Sanger conceived of the wiki-based encyclopedia as a strategic solution to Nupedia's inefficiency problems, and spearheaded and pursued the project as its leader in its first year. Further, Sanger has been widely described in the media as a co-founder.

After Misplaced Pages

Sanger returned to the academic world as a lecturer at 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 27 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.

Larry Sanger criticised Misplaced Pages two weeks after the launch of Citizendium, stating that Misplaced Pages 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".

References

• "Larry Sanger creates a new Misplaced Pages" Jewish Chronicle, October 27 2006, p.10

1. ^ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Sanger says he co-started Misplaced Pages". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-26. 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. — Brian Bergstein.
2. ^ Larry Sanger. "My role in Misplaced Pages (links)". larrysanger.org. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
3. ^ David Mehegan (February 12, 2006). "Bias, sabotage haunt Misplaced Pages's free world". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
4. ^ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Citizendium aims to be better Misplaced Pages". Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-26. 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. — Brian Bergstein.
5. Larry Sanger. "Citizendium launch plan as of September 26", Citizendium-l mail list, September 27, 2006.
6. Sanger, Larry. "Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports". sangersreview.com. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
7. ^ Jimmy Wales (2001-10-30). "LinkBacks?". wikipedia-l archives. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. Poe, Marshall (September, 2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2007-03-31. 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) — Marshall Poe.
9. My resignation — Larry Sanger, March 1 2002
10. Larry Sanger (Dec 31, 2004). "Why Misplaced Pages Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism". Kuro5hin. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
11. H. Pink, Daniel (March, 2005). "The Book Stops Here". Wired News. Retrieved 2007-03-31. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. Terdiman, Daniel (January 6, 2006). "Misplaced Pages's co-founder eyes a Digital Universe". CNET. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
13. Mitchell, Dan (December 24, 2005). "Insider Editing at Misplaced Pages". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-26. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |quotes= (help)
14. Two who were there dispute founding of online encyclopedia - The Boston Globe
15. ^ The Early History of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages: A Memoir Part 1 and Part 2 from Slashdot, Retrieved on March 29, 2007."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.
16. An Earlier Version of the "Misplaced Pages" Article.
17. An Earlier Version of the "History of Misplaced Pages" Article.
18. An Earlier Version of the "Larry Sanger" Article.
19. An Earlier Version of the "Jimmy Wales" Article.
20. Misplaced Pages press release from January 2002, describing Sanger and Wales as "co-founders"
21. Misplaced Pages press release from January 2003, stating Sanger and Wales founded the site
22. Misplaced Pages press release from February 2004 describes Sanger as a founder
23. Peter Meyers (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)"It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work," said Jimmy Wales, Misplaced Pages's co-founder and the chief executive of Bomis, a San Diego search engine company that donates the computer resources for the project. "There's kind of this real social pressure to not argue about things." Instead, he said, "there's a general consensus among all of the really busy volunteers about what an encyclopedia article needs to be like."
24. Kendra Mayfield (2003-01-28). "Not Your Father's Encyclopedia". Wired News. Retrieved 2007-03-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
25. Larry Sanger (January 10, 2001). "Let's make a wiki" (Email). Nupedia-l mailing list. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
26. Ben Hammersley (January 30, 2003). "Common knowledge". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
27. Press Release, Kintera Inc. (January 10, 2007). "Kintera Announces Larry Sanger, Co-Founder of Misplaced Pages, as Keynote Speaker for Annual User Conference". Yahoo. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
28. Stefanie Olsen (October 16, 2006). "Misplaced Pages co-founder plans 'expert' rival". news.com. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
29. Jay Lyman, LinuxInsider (September 20, 2006). "Misplaced Pages Co-Founder Planning New Expert-Authored Site". Retrieved 2007-03-19.
30. Steve Tally (March 20, 2006). "Misplaced Pages co-founder to speak on campus". Purdue University News Service. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
31. Natali T. Del Conte (October 20, 2006). "Misplaced Pages Co-Founder Starting Rival Online 'Encyclopedia Project'". Fox News. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
32. "Lawrence Sanger, Ph. D., Director of Distributed Content Programs". Digital Universe. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
33. "Digital Universe Seeks to Become Free 'PBS of the Web'". Rress Release, Digital Universe. January 17, 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
34. Larry Sanger (April, 2006). "Text and Collaboration: A personal manifesto for the Text Outline Project". textop.org. Retrieved 2007-03-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
35. Larry Sanger (September 27, 2006). Citizendium-l "Citizendium launch plan as of September 26". Citizendium-l mailing list. Retrieved 2007-03-19. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
36. Larry Sanger. "We have launched", Citizendium blog, March 25, 2007
37. McNicho, Tom (February 27, 2007). "Misplaced Pages founder hunts for gold". Business 2.0. CNN. Retrieved 2007-03-26. "I'm sort of like a British monarch," Wales said, while smiling.
38. Anderson, Nate (February 25, 2007). "Citizendium: building a better Misplaced Pages". ars technica. Retrieved 2007-03-26. 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.
39. Thomson, Iain (April 13, 2007). "Misplaced Pages 'broken beyond repair' says co-founder". Information World Review. Retrieved 2007-04-14.

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