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
Why do I get so much work done on airplanes?
Riding in planes ain’t so bad. I wholeheartedly believe they’re safer than cars–and this is the one actual advantage of having short legs. So I don’t mind riding in planes. Maybe, I admit,
No comments on Why do I get so much work done on airplanes?2 minutesIs it time to move from social media to blogs?
This began as a Twitter thread. I’ve finally put my finger on a thing that annoys me—probably, all of us—about social media. When we check in on our friends and colleagues and what
2 minutesEU copyright reform could threaten wiki encyclopedias
If we are to believe its critics, under the pending EU copyright reform legislation, the EU would implement a “link tax” across all of Europe. So if you link to a news article,
3 minutesThe Well-Ordered Life
The well-ordered life may be defined as that set of sound beliefs and good practices which are most conducive to productivity and therefore happiness, at least insofar as as happiness depends on productivity.
4 minutesHow to crowdsource videos via a shared video channel
I got to talking to one of my colleagues here at Everipedia, the encyclopedia of everything, where I am now CIO, about future plans. I had the following idea. We could create an
1 minuteCould God have evolved?
1. How a common argument for the existence of God failed—or did it? As a philosophy instructor, I often taught the topic of arguments for the existence of God. One of the most
5 minutesOn intellectual honesty and accepting the humiliation of error
I. The virtue of intellectual honesty. Honesty is a greatly underrated epistemic virtue. There is a sound reason for thinking so. It turns out that probably the single greatest source of error is
9 minutesModern education and culture, or, what did you think would happen?
I. Modern education and culture Look at where we are in education and culture today. Let’s catalog the main issues, shall we? School children are often not taught to read properly, and too
15 minutesIndependent study, a replacement for college
There are many things wrong with higher education today, as I’ve argued on this blog. It’s way too expensive. The amount of bureaucratic overhead is simply ridiculous. The focus on education as vocational training
9 minutesOn the Purposes of the Internet
SISCTI 34 February 28, 2009 Monterrey, Mexico Introduction I am going to begin by asking a philosophical question about the Internet. But I can hear some of you saying, “Philosophy? What does that have to
26 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 […]