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
4-year-old reading philosophy textbook (and Elkind’s “Miseducation”)
Here’s H. reading a random page from Jones’ History of Western Philosophy. Recorded last Nov. when he was 4 years, 5 months. A few comments about this. First, obviously, he must understand
No comments on 4-year-old reading philosophy textbook (and Elkind’s “Miseducation”)1 minuteThe Today Show’s takedown of Your Baby Can Read ridiculously biased
This is a review of a review. Last November 1, the Today Show did a segment about Your Baby Can Read, and that segment is now one of the top results for the
12 minutesKindle Store version of essay available (for those who need it)
At least one person said she wanted to read my essay on her Kindle, but could not figure out how to get it. I’m pretty sure she could download it from her desktop
1 minuteDoes reading count as direct instruction?
I have a provocative question for the teachers and educational theorists out there: does reading count as direct instruction? I ask because, if it does, then there is surely nothing wrong with direct
1 minuteReview: “Your Baby Can Read”
Here is my review of the Your Baby Can Read videos, as posted on Amazon.com. Many people have found that Your Baby Can Read works, especially if it is used as part of
4 minutesAdvice for the Wikimedia Foundation (not for Wikipedia!)
Since before I left Wikipedia, even before I proposed the old Sifter project in 2002, Wikipedians have talked about a method of using experts to rate, or approve, or review versions of Wikipedia articles (cf.
2 minutesUpdate about the boys
Here is a “brain dump” about what I’ve been doing with my little boys, ages 4.5 and 2 months. I will refer to them as H. (the older) and E. (the younger). H’s
5 minutesWikipedia’s ancient history unearthed
Wikipedia programmer Tim Starling has discovered some ancient backup files from the earliest months of Wikipedia. The files themselves (which I haven’t downloaded yet, if I ever will) are here (8.4 MB) and cover some
1 minuteAre child development experts getting it wrong?
I just came across this Psychology Today blog by Richard Gentry, author of Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write — from Baby to Age 7. He poses
2 minutesCould you teach your baby to read?
Is your reaction, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? I claim that you can teach your baby, toddler, or preschooler to read–probably. What do you say to that?
2 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 […]