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Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger (born July 16, 1968) has been an organizer of various online encyclopedia projects.
Sanger was born in Bellevue, Washington, and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Reed College in 1991 and Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000. His doctoral thesis concerned Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification.
Nupedia and Misplaced Pages
He was employed by Jimmy Wales' Bomis company as Editor-in-Chief of Nupedia. Responding to frustrations with the slow progress of Nupedia, in January 2001 Sanger, alluded by his friends as a bald son of a bitch, proposed the creation of a wiki to spur the development of articles, and the result of this proposal was Misplaced Pages. By virtue of his position with Nupedia, Sanger spearheaded and named the project, and formulated much of the original policy. Sanger was the only paid editor of Misplaced Pages, a status he held from January 15, 2001, until his resignation on March 1, 2002. Sanger is considered the co-founder of Misplaced Pages alongside Wales; however, in about 2004 Wales began to reject crediting Sanger with the honorary appellation, calling himself the sole founder and, while describing Sanger's role as important, emphasizing his status as an employee under his direction.
Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Misplaced Pages projects until Bomis had to discontinue funding for his position in February 2002. Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Misplaced Pages (he never claimed an official title) shortly thereafter. Sanger's stated reason for ending his participation in Misplaced Pages and Nupedia as a volunteer was that he could not do justice to the task as a part-time volunteer. Later, in December 2004, he wrote a critical article for the website Kuro5hin, in which he admitted that there had existed "a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project" that had also accounted for his departure. Nupedia made little progress without his leadership and shut down the following year, but Misplaced Pages continued to grow and gain momentum.
While claiming "to appreciate the merits of Misplaced Pages fully" and to know and support "the mission and broad policy outlines of Misplaced Pages very well," Sanger maintained that there are serious problems with the project. There was, he wrote, a lack of public perception of credibility, and the project put "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers" into too much prominence; these problems, he maintained, were a feature of the project's "anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise." The article was the subject of much controversy in the "blogging" community and led to some reaction in the news media as well.
After Misplaced Pages
Sanger rejoined the academic world and is currently a lecturer at Ohio State University, where he teaches philosophy. His professional interest is epistemology with concentrations in early modern philosophy and ethics. In his spare time, he plays and teaches Irish traditional music on the fiddle in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio. Sanger was the founder and executive editor of "Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports" (formerly at sangersreview.com ), a resource for Y2K watchers, and also manages a site about the Donegal fiddle tradition.
In 2005, it was revealed that he is Director of Distributed Content Programs for the Digital Universe Foundation, being involved especially in the Digital Universe encyclopedia. To be launched in early 2006, this project plans, among other things, to build an encyclopedia with recognized experts certifying the accuracy of user-submitted articles as well as writing articles themselves.
External links
- Columns about Misplaced Pages written by Sanger—On Meta. ("Possibly outdated", he says.)
- Donegal Fiddle Pages
- Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification
- Introductory philosophy lectures from Sanger's 1998 course at Ohio State University (many of these have been greatly edited from Sanger's originals—"as they should be", he says.)
- Larry Sanger’s Knowledge Free-for-All—Technology review article
- Britannica or Nupedia? The Future of 💕s Kuro5hin (July 25, 2001 op-ed article)
- Misplaced Pages is wide open. Why is it growing so fast? Why isn't it full of nonsense? Kuro5hin (September 24, 2001 op-ed article)
- Why Collaborative Free Works Should Be Protected by the Law, in Adam D. Moore, ed., Information Ethics: Privacy, Property, and Power, University of Washington Press, pp. 191-206
- Why Misplaced Pages Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism Kuro5hin (December 31, 2004 op-ed article)
- The Early History of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages: A Memoir and Part II Slashdot (April 18 - April 19, 2005)
- Misplaced Pages alternative aims to be 'PBS of the Web', news.com, December 19, 2005