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
I apologize for Wikipedia to Tucker Carlson
Nice of Tucker to invite me on his program to talk about issues with Wikipedia circa 2021. This was the second time he invited me on, out of the blue. I’m very grateful
No comments on I apologize for Wikipedia to Tucker Carlson1 minute
Unherd opinions
I frankly had no idea that this Unherd interview would blow up the way it did. Not only did the interview itself get a lot of traffic, it ended up being shared and
1 minute
Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever
“All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia,” declares a policy page, “must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV).” This is essential policy, believe it or not. Maybe that will be hard to
31 minutes
A first attempt at using WordPress for microblogging
Here is the brand spanking new Larry Sanger Microblog, which lives at a domain I had sitting around doing nothing: http://StartThis.org. As you’ll see, it looks a little like a social media feed.
1 minute
What Decentralization is Going to Require
Decentralization. It’s not just a hip happnin’ buzzword. And it’s not just for blockchain. It has been important, and it always has been—I was using it back in 2005 to describe the early
5 minutes
We Want to Pay for a Good, Functioning WordPress Microposting Plugin
Skip down to the plugin requirements section We are deeply upset at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and all the rest. Blocking President Trump from these giant corporate networks was just the last straw. Most
21 minutes
Five-Year Humanities Plan
By request, here is the “five-year plan” that my older son is following. Introduction and educational strategy What this document is. This is a roadmap for the next five years of your course
11 minutes
An ActivityPub WordPress plugin
Matthias Pfefferle has made a WordPress plugin that converts your blog into a very, very stripped-down Fediverse server. What this means, basically, is that if you install this plugin on your WordPress blog,
1 minute
An idea for theological self-education
I almost wrote: “a crazy idea for theological self-education” Let me describe what I am doing, and how I might want to go on doing it in the future. This description has two
7 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 […]