Larry Sanger quotes

Larry Sanger is an American philosopher and internet project developer, best known as a co-founder of Wikipedia. His work has had a major impact on how knowledge is created and shared online. He has continued to advocate for reliable and decentralized information sources. Here are 15 of his quotes:

Citizendium is based on the failings and unreliability of Wikipedia.

Larry Sanger

Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise. As a community, far from being elitist (which would, in this context, mean excluding the unwashed masses), it is anti-elitist (which, in this context, means that expertise is not accorded any special respect, and snubs and disrespect of expertise is tolerated).

Larry Sanger

Wikipedia will be small, disreputable, and unimportant compared to CZ in a few more years. Uh,;-)

Larry Sanger

A few of the project's participants can be, not to put a nice word on it, pretty nasty. And this is tolerated.

Larry Sanger

I thought that the evidence against your claims about me would shame you into changing your behavior. But, five years since you started misrepresenting my role in the founding of Wikipedia, you're still at it.

Larry Sanger

If the project was lucky enough to have a writer or two well-informed about some specialized subject, and if their work was not degraded in quality by the majority of people, whose knowledge of the subject is based on paragraphs in books and mere mentions in college classes, then there might be a good, credible article on that specialized subject. Otherwise, there will be no article at all, a very amateurish-sounding article, or an article that looks like it might once have been pretty good, but which has been hacked to bits by hoi polloi.

Larry Sanger

Suppose that, as is perfectly possible, Wikipedia continues producing articles at a rate of 1,000 per month. In seven years, it would have 84,000 articles.

Larry Sanger

Banning Fox News as a source is just good sense, says Wikipedia.

Larry Sanger

Jimmy Wales is right. We did originally adopt the neutrality policy to foster "a culture of thoughtful diplomatic honesty.” In other words, the way to keep the peace among a radically diverse set of contributors is not to declare winners and losers. But that is only one reason we adopted the policy. There was another key reason: as I have explained, no one has a right to make up your mind for you, especially in an open, global project.

Larry Sanger

I actually think that the mechanisms just of people acting like jerks and driving off decent people who want a neutral reference, that's enough to explain the bias.

Larry Sanger

They seem not to realize that it is possible to dispute what the facts are, as if they were in all cases absolutely obvious.

Larry Sanger

The best thing we can do basically is to supply alternatives and make them better and better and better.

Larry Sanger

The bias that they (Wikipedia) now reflect, is that of the Globalist Left. Of the Establishment, with a capital E.

Larry Sanger