Nine Theses on Wikipedia: A Special Feature
I submit these nine theses to Wikipedia’s community and to the world. I do this, as Martin Luther said when he posted his famous 95 theses, “Out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.” A quarter of a century ago, Jimmy Wales’ company Bomis hired me to start a free encyclopedia. The first draft, from which we learned much, was Nupedia—it made slow progress. So, a year later, on January 2, 2001, when a friend told me about wikis, I immediately began imagining a wiki encyclopedia.
My Blog
Things I don’t understand even after they are explained to me
Why public art is so ugly. Why the public are not up in arms about the ugliness of public art. Why I continue to drink and even occasionally desire beer even though it
2 comments on Things I don’t understand even after they are explained to me3 minutesOn the clash of civilizations
There is a global conflict underway. A good way to understand it is by looking at the different interests that are coming into conflict. And a good place to begin is, of course,
12 minutesWhy Murder Is Evil
Why is murder wrong? It amazes me that you can find discussions of this question that manage to supply no clue about how to answer it, especially considering how many confused teenagers ask
7 minutes
Toward a social contract for social media
Last week, I led a “strike,” or boycott, associated with the hashtag #SocialMediaStrike, directed at the giant, centralized social media services. Though throttled by Twitter and no doubt by others, the brief campaign
17 minutes
Declaration of Digital Independence
Version 1.3 (June 29, 2019; version history) See also: Social Media Strike! — FAQ about the project to decentralize social media — Resources This document is included as Chapter 11 of my 2020
8 minutes
Support the Knowledge Standards Foundation:
/larrysanger- I invited my X peeps to ask me questions and then "like" the various questions, and I would upload the answers in video form. Here it is! Christian identity – 1:10 "Call no man teacher" – 9:25 Role of government – 15:45 Authority & resistance – 19:15 Wikipedia labor – 24:20 Net value of Wikipedia […]
- Made for beginners, family, friends, study group members. Most of this stuff is obvious after you use LLMs long enough. If you have more good ideas, put them in comments!
- While I was raised Christian, I lost my faith in my teens, as so many do. But my life has been a truth-seeking quest, and I ended up earning a Ph.D. in philosophy (as I was starting Wikipedia). My reasons for disbelief fell away one by one; eventually I read the Bible, finally, for good […]