A Wikipedia founder has been banned

By Adeel Hasan

A Wikipedia founder who calls himself “Wikipedia’s pre-founder” and has been a critic of Wikipedia since leaving it 20 years ago has been barred from editing its articles.

Almost anyone can edit Wikipedia, but changes are checked by others. The site’s editors formed a consensus this week to restrict co-founder Larry Sanger’s access.

The reason given was not Sanger’s overarching stance against Wikipedia, which he has long criticized as having a left-wing bias, but rather something procedural. A Wikipedia Foundation press officer said Wednesday that he was campaigning to an external audience to influence internal policy votes.

A few days before the decision was to be voted on, Sanger submitted a proposal titled “WikiProject Intellectual Diversity”. His goal, he said, was to bring more diversity of viewpoints to the site.

Sanger promoted her project to her 93,000 followers on X and it was deemed a violation of promotion guidelines. He was declared “not here to make an encyclopedia”, a more serious violation.

After the conviction Sanger went back to Ax and wrote, “There was no due process, no prosecutor, no impartial judge, no jury, no interpretation of the law.”

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Sanger and Jimmy Wales, and has always operated as a nonprofit with a decentralized system of editing by mostly anonymous volunteers from around the world.

Those volunteers develop and implement policies “through open, transparent discussion and consensus-based decision-making,” a press official said Wednesday. “These policies apply equally to all contributors, regardless of their affiliation or history

With Wikipedia.”

Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, and last June he called the website “one of the most effective organs of establishment propaganda in history.” He returned last fall “for the purpose of helping Wikipedia improve in various ways,” he said.

Wikipedia exists in approximately 300 languages, and according to Dariusz Gmielaniak, who wrote “Common Sense? An Ethnography of Wikipedia”, each language version has its own rules.

The English-language site has long allowed its volunteer administrators to remain anonymous, said Jemielniak, a professor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Professor Jemielniak said of Sanger, “He has been staunchly against anonymity.” He believes, “People in power should create their own identity.”

Sanger did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

It is common for Wikipedia to block users from editing in certain circumstances “to prevent damage or disruption”. According to its policy, “blocks are used primarily to deal with immediate problems.”

But the site ban, which was imposed on Sanger, is a formal withdrawal of editing privileges on Wikipedia as a whole.