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
18 things about Apple that suck
Apple, how dost thou suck? Let me count the ways: iTunes, the worst software in the world. The App Store is a centrally managed walled garden. I can’t run apps Apple hasn’t approved
113 comments on 18 things about Apple that suck2 minutes
I joined a homeschooling legal defense association
Actually, I joined the Homeschooling Legal Defense Association (as a rank-and-file paying member). Authoritarianism is on the march, and while homeschooling has enjoyed a golden age in the last couple decades, having achieved
1 minuteHow deep should one go into this privacy stuff, anyway?
Probably deeper than you thought. Here’s why. If you are convinced that privacy actually matters, and you really want to lock down your cyber-life, as I am trying to do, there are easy
14 minutesWhy is consciousness mysterious?
So why, precisely, is consciousness mysterious? What is it, anyway? My view on this, in short, is that the weirdness, the mysteriousness, of consciousness lies primarily in the fact that it is an
5 minutesJoin me on my new friends list
> Go here to subscribe < My theory is that people have a hard time keeping away from Facebook because Facebook scratches a certain kind of online socialization itch. Well, since I’m leaving Facebook
1 minuteNotes on choosing a Linux distro (for Linux geeks only)
I’ve ditched Windows on my desktop machine. Similarly, I can’t keep using macOS on my laptop. I decided to put Linux on it (and dual-boot). I thought it would be a good idea
3 minutesWhy I quit Quora and Medium for good
It’s not a temporary rage-quit; I’ve deleted both accounts. I have zero followers, no content, and no username. I’m outta there. This is going to be more interesting than it sounds, I promise.
13 minutes
A plea for protocols
The antidote to the abuses of big tech is the very thing that gave birth to the Internet itself: decentralized, neutral technical protocols. The thought that inspires my work. Ever since I started
4 minutesWe need to pay more for journalism. A lot more.
I’m going to say a few obvious things, and then then a few unobvious things, about the business model for news publishing. Obvious thing #1: One of the most consequential facts of the
4 minutes
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/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 […]