The dispute about fatherhood over Wikipedia

    Larry Sanger and Jimmy WalesLarry Senger, whom the press often refers to as the co-founder of Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales, launched a campaign to popularize his role in creating the largest online encyclopedia. With the support of as much of the community of its users as possible, he intends to regain his fame and restore justice.

    The fact is that for many years, Wales, who formally stood and is at the head of the company that manages Wikipedia, tried in every possible way to downplay the Sanger's contribution to its birth in the eyes of the public. Without hiding his annoyance from the fact that Larry allegedly appropriated the “title” of the co-founder, he even resorted to editing his own biography in order to exclude mention of Sanger from it.

    True, after he had to apologize to the audience, but Wales remained on his own: Sanger was just an editor, subordinate to Jimmy along with 20 other employees of Bomis, which at the turn of the century worked with several projects of the social knowledge collector. With the same success, he believes, can be called the founding fathers of all these employees. In a detailed conversation with his opponent, he asked him to stop such statements.

    However, now Sanger seems to have seriously decided to overthrow Wales' “regime”, based on the facts that he collected on the pageof his personal site entitled “My role on Wikipedia”. There we see links arranged in chronological order to publications in which Larry unambiguously secures the authorship of the most important idea of ​​creating an encyclopedia on the open Wiki engine, as well as articles, presentations and press releases, where he is called the editor-in-chief, organizer and, together with Wales, creator of Wikipedia.

    After Sanger left Wikipedia’s leadership in 2002, active members of her community welcomed Wales as a replacement for Larry and his successor as a manager, although there was no need to actively manage the “sphere” by then - the site had switched to quite tolerable self-organization.

    When the role of Sanger began to be gradually forgotten by the new activists of the encyclopedia, Wales gradually began to be referred to as the only driving force behind her birth. But this, as one of the most significant veterans of the site Manning Bartlett (Manning Bartlett) writes - "obvious absurdity." Yes, Jimmy was the one who first put forward and implemented the idea of ​​the online encyclopedia that Nupedia became. But this "old woman", who had not found a path to great popularity, completely gave up in the face of her sister Wikipedia, to the idea of ​​which Wales has no direct relationship.

    Wales' answer to Sanger's arguments is simple. He claims that all of the publications on his list were written mostly by Larry himself or with his active participation. Without thinking at the time that Wikipedia would have to be divided and not seeing the incipient personality cult of Larry, Jimbo approved all these releases and articles, which he now regrets. But he does not intend to give up, and he can also be understood.

    Such disputes between brilliant ambitious people are not new in world history. Sir Newton, becoming the head of the Royal Scientific Society, did everything to erase all references to his competitors from history. Mr. Edison did the same thing once. Detailed descriptions of these stories are on Wikipedia. But how the present story ends, we only have to find out.

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