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"Larry Sanger's Knowledge Free-for-All"

MIT's Technology Review profiles Wikipedia co-creator Larry Sanger, a professional epistemologist who left the project, partly because of the "revert wars."

...there’s a second complaint against Wikipedia that bothers Sanger more deeply—the fractiousness among Wikipedians themselves. Sanger says participants often become embroiled in “revert wars” in which overprotective authors undo the changes others try to make to their articles. He says he’s afraid that this kind of behavior drives away academics and other experts whose contributions would otherwise raise Wikipedia’s quality.

Sanger may be speaking from the heart. He left Wikipedia in 2002 when funding for his position ran out and no longer contributes, in part because of the lingering sting of some particularly nasty revert wars. He now lives in a suburb of Columbus, and lectures in the philosophy department at Ohio State University, his alma mater. To build a public encyclopedia, you don't need faith in the possibility of knowledge, he says. "What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together."

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jon posted this at 4:00 AM
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