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
Essay on Baby Reading
I started teaching my little boy to read beginning at 22 months, and by age four, he was decoding text (reading, in that sense) quite fluently at the sixth grade level, or above.
135 comments on Essay on Baby Reading4 minutesA comment on Wikileaks
Over the weekend, I wrote a series of Tweets inspired by Wikileaks’ then-upcoming release of U.S. diplomatic communiqués. This caused quite an uproar, with people insulting me vociferously and demanding that I explain
9 minutesMore replies about Wikimedia and the fallout of my report to the FBI
Background: on April 7, I posted the text of a report I made to the FBI to the EDTECH mailing list, in which I stated that, in my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation may
12 minutesReply to Slashdot about my report to the FBI
On April 7, I posted the text of a report I made to the FBI to the EDTECH mailing list, in which I stated that, in my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation may knowingly
11 minutesShould Science Communication Be Collaborative?
Plenary address at PCST-10 (10th conference of the International Network on Public Communication of Science and Technology), Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden, June 25, 2008. A slightly abbreviated version of this was delivered. I.
21 minutesA Defense of Modest Real Name Requirements
Lunchtime speech at the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 13th Annual Symposium: Altered Identities, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 13, 2008. I. Introduction Let me say up front, for the benefit of
23 minutesCitizendium: A New Vision for Online Knowledge Communities
Speech delivered at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, Feb. 7, 2008, as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series, “Wikipedia – Democratization of Knowledge or Triumph of Amateurs,” hosted by Marshall
21 minutesHow the Internet Is Changing What We (Think We) Know
This speech is included and fully revised and updated in my 2020 book, Essays on Free Knowledge.
1 minuteAn explanation of the Citizendium license
Preliminary notes (please read): Purpose: this long essay explains in depth why we have chosen CC-by-sa as the license for our own original collaborative content. Summary: this probably isn’t an easy read. You
118 minutesThe Citizendium one year on: a strong start and an amazing future
Contents: Debunking some myths What we have demonstrated in our first year Our new initiatives Short-term plans Longer-term plans The coming explosion of growth Essential reading in bold above. A possibility you may
27 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 […]