I'm not sure this article is really appropriate for Open Sources. While it claims otherwise, it has the tone of a defensive article trying to justify his past and defending his reputation.
it has the tone of a defensive article trying to justify his past and defending his reputation.
More than that, I think it shows that Larry Sanger just doesn't get it.
Sanger writes:
[...] Nupedia withered due to neglect--which was largely due to a lack of sufficient funds for paid organizers--which was as much due to the bursting of the Internet bubble as anything else.
Nope. I tried to participate in Nupedia, and IMO the problems had nothing to do with the lack of paid organizers. I wrote an article on force (the physics concept), and gave up before getting it accepted. In my experience, problems were:
Many of the reviewers did a great job, but many of them were unqualified, and wanted to argue forever about things they didn't know much about. They were also anonymous by default, so there was no way to check out their qualifications.
The software was a disaster. Lots of stuff didn't work, and lots of stuff that should have been automated wasn't. I'd go around in their web interface clicking on underlined things that looked like hyperlinks, but nothing would actually happen. They had mocked up a whole web interface, but had only actually implemented a small subset of the functionality.
There was nothing about the project that made it inherently expensive to get off the ground. They basically needed labor, and for that they needed volunteers (writers, programmers, reviewers, and editors). The problem was that it didn't attract enough volunteers, due to the severe problems with its design.
He also says:
But some of the mischaracterizations I've seen do make a difference, because they give the public the impression that Nupedia failed because it was run by snobbish experts whose standards were too high. As the following should make clear, that is not quite correct.
No, if anything it failed because its standards were too low: too many of the reviewers weren't qualified.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it has been a huge success within the area where its model makes sense (factual articles about noncontroversial topics).
BTW, I wonder if the length of this article by Larry Sanger exceeds the total amount of text that was ever actually completed in Nupedia:-)
Appropriate? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure this article is really appropriate for Open Sources. While it claims otherwise, it has the tone of a defensive article trying to justify his past and defending his reputation.
Re:Appropriate? (Score:2)
More than that, I think it shows that Larry Sanger just doesn't get it.
Sanger writes:
He also says:
Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it has been a huge success within the area where its model makes sense (factual articles about noncontroversial topics).
BTW, I wonder if the length of this article by Larry Sanger exceeds the total amount of text that was ever actually completed in Nupedia :-)