Larry Sanger was the first (and so far only) editor-in-chief of Nupedia and (with Jimbo Wales) instigator of Wikipedia. Ph.D. 2000, M.A. 1995, Philosophy, Ohio State University. B.A. 1991 Philosophy, Reed College. Home town is Anchorage, Alaska. Can be reached at lsanger at nupedia.com.
Until December 2001, I was a full-time paid employee of Bomis, spending most of my work time (especially in the latter part of 2001) on Wikipedia. As of February 1, I was no longer paid at all; I made an announcement explaining that I'd continue on as a part-time volunteer. As of March 1, however, I have resigned responsibility for leading Wikipedia and as editor-in-chief of Nupedia; my reasons are given in my letter of resignation to the community. To reiterate, primarily I need this extra time to find a job, and I feel that I cannot work effectively as a leader when I am working only as a part-time volunteer.
It's hard to restrain myself. :-) As of April 19, I'm back on a very part-time basis; I promised Mrs. Sanger that I would look at Wikipedia only an hour a day.
I've settled in the Columbus, Ohio area.
Columbus has a lot of squirrels. Sometimes I feel like this when working on Wikipedia--hard to explain.
- Because sometimes it seems like a gathering of nuts? Sorry, coudln't resist. --LDC
- No, actually because it's a fuzzy cute small animal that looks like it's saying, "Who, me?" :-)
(This picture was taken for a New York Times article about Wikipedia.)
What I've written here
I worked on many hundreds of articles. I originated quite a few. I inflicted a series of philosophy lectures first on Ohio State students, and now on Wikipedia.
I wrote a few 'pedia-related columns, which I moved to Wikipedia's meta-discussion wiki.
You can help to promote Wikipedia. This is one of the most important things you can do for the Wikipedia community. Go to building Wikipedia membership.
Random discussion
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- Will these comments ever stop
- Final comments archive, maybe
Add any comments here!
A message in a bottle to Larry Sanger . . .
I am not yet clear on what happened before I encountered Wikipedia and Nupedia, but I do know what it is to work on something that matters.
. . . And that the work is the important thing.
. . . And that the quality of your work speaks for itself.
Oh yeah! . . .
F*** `em if they can't take a joke! -- NetEsq
Thanks! I appreciate that. Yep, I'd like to put the unpleasantness behind me. The treatment was rough while it lasted but the whole process of making and guiding Wikipedia from the beginning was also fun and rewarding. But y'know I'm very glad that Wikipedia is surviving without me. :-) --Larry
Here's a link for you to try: [1]
It's a recient changes list for everything linked from List of philosophical topics. It should have nearly all the topics that currently exist, and links to a number of potential topics, so there's a good chance new philosophy topics will show up on the list as well. Hopefully it will be useful to you.
Thanks for putting it together, Mark. I already tried it and it's pretty neat. I just hope some coder puts together a plan of action for how we can auto-categorize (and hand-recategorize) existing and newer links, so that this sort of resource is available for all Main Page fields, and kept up to date. --Larry Sanger