Larry Sanger, the Wikipedia co-founder banned from editing the site he helped create, says the decision came after he launched a project aimed at making the online encyclopedia more ideologically balanced. That is a fairly dramatic turn for someone who helped name the platform, though Wikipedia has never been short on internal drama.
Sanger, 57, co-founded Wikipedia in 2001 and is credited with coming up with its name. He left the project in 2002 and has since become one of its more persistent critics, previously describing it as “broken beyond repair.”
Why was Larry Sanger blocked from editing Wikipedia?
The dispute centers on Sanger’s WikiProject Intellectual Diversity, Edit it out: “an effort he said was meant to support...” Wikipedia’s “original, firm commitment to intellectual diversity” and give more space to views he believes are underrepresented on the platform.
Wikipedia is famously editable by volunteers, a fact many students have heard from a teacher shortly before being told not to cite it as their only source. The site has nearly 53 million contributors, but Sanger is no longer among those allowed to make edits.
Editors accused him of “canvassing,” a term used on Wikipedia for attempts to influence internal discussions by directing outside attention toward them. According to the accusation, Sanger’s posts outside Wikipedia were “done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way.”
