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.
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An assortment of things that should exist
Occasionally I wish I had time to write a book to explain these ideas in detail. (Some of these are actually book ideas. Some of them are project ideas.) 1. A tutorial system,
13 comments on An assortment of things that should exist3 minutesWhy is spaced repetition not better known?
Suppose a method let you remember things with a 95% success rate–in other words, whatever information you’ve put into a system, you’d have a 95% chance of recalling it–and this effect is permanent,
3 minutesHow not to use the Internet, part 4: how “social” is social media?
<< Part 3: How the Internet’s current design philosophy fails 4. How “social” is social media? A person who is “social,” we think, gets along with others and does not always stay at
3 minutesHow not to use the Internet, part 3: how the Internet’s current design philosophy fails
<<Part 2: The pernicious design philosophy of the Internet 3. How the Internet’s current design philosophy fails. Websites compete for the really limited commodity online, namely, attention. That much is understandable, and not likely
10 minutesHow not to use the Internet, part 2: the pernicious design philosophy of the Internet
<< Part 1: It’s a problem that the Internet distracts us 2. The pernicious design philosophy of the Internet. The way that the Internet is designed—not graphic design, but overall habits and architecture—encourages the
6 minutesHow not to use the Internet, part 1: it’s a problem that the Internet distracts us
For almost a year, I’ve been at work on a very long essay about some problems with the Internet and social media in particular. I’ve worked on it now and then and occasionally
10 minutesMemory method
(The following is edited and elaborated from my comments in this BrillKids Forum discussion. The BrillKids Forum is awesome. The method we follow is greatly updated in this post.) I had an interesting conversation
16 minutesWikipedia’s porn filter DOA, and a proposal
Warning: this post has links to pages that are definitely not safe for work or school. I’ll warn you which ones those are with “NSFW.” The post has two parts. The first is
8 minutesThe uses of Reading Bear
After reading some feedback from a recent survey I performed on the Reading Bear website, it strikes me that some people don’t understand how to use the site, despite the availability of help
8 minutesUpdate about the boys, part 2 – February 2012
Since it’s been over a month since I updated you about H., it’s about time I updated you about baby E., who is now 16 months. First, I’m happy to report that E.
14 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 […]