Larry Sanger

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Larry Sanger's English Wikipedia user page, see User:Larry Sanger.

Image:20ency1.1.jpg Larry Sanger, born Lawrence Mark Sanger July 16, 1968, in Bellevue, Washington, and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, was employed by Jimmy Wales with Bomis, founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia, as Editor-in-Chief of Nupedia. Sanger is considered the co-founder of Wikipedia alongside Wales; however, Wales rejects crediting Sanger with the honorary appellation instead preferring to describe Sanger's role as important but as an employee under his direction. After being introduced to the concept of a wiki, Sanger proposed applying it to an encyclopedia, which directly led to the setup of the website. Sanger was the only paid editor of Wikipedia, a status he held from January 15, 2001, until his resignation on March 1, 2002.

Sanger received his B.A. in philosophy from Reed College in 1991 and Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000. His doctoral thesis concerned Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification.

1 Wikipedia
- 1.1 Departure
2 After Wikipedia
3 External links

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Wikipedia

Sanger was hired as editor-in-chief of Nupedia by Wales' company, Bomis. 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 Wikipedia. By virtue of his position with Nupedia, Sanger spearheaded and named the project, and formulated much of the original policy.

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Departure

For the next year, Sanger continued to work on and promote both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis had to discontinue funding for his position in February 2002. Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia (he never claimed an official title) shortly thereafter. [1] Sanger's stated reason for ending his participation in Wikipedia and Nupedia as a volunteer was that he could not do justice to the task as a part-time volunteer. Later in December 2004 he 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. Nupedia made little progress without his leadership and shut down the following year, but Wikipedia continued to grow and gain momentum.

While claiming "to appreciate the merits of Wikipedia fully" and to know and support "the mission and broad policy outlines of Wikipedia 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 "blogging" community and led to some reaction in the news media as well.

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After Wikipedia

Meanwhile, Sanger has rejoined the academic world and is currently a lecturer at Ohio State University, where he teaches philosophy. His professional interest is epistemology with concentrations in early modern philosophy and ethics. In his spare time, he plays and teaches Irish traditional music on the fiddle in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio.

Sanger was the founder and executive editor of "Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports" (formerly at sangersreview.com [2]), a resource for Y2K watchers, and also manages a site about the Donegal fiddle tradition.

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