Why Wikipedia's Co-Founder Larry Sanger Was Banned From Editing
Left-leaning website Wikipedia took the drastic action of blocking one of its founders from editing pages on Monday — after he had campaigned to make it more balanced and fair.Last month, Larry Sanger launched WikiProject Intellectual Diversity (WID), a group designed to help reinforce the online encyclopedia’s “original, firm commitment to intellectual diversity,” by emphasizing neutrality and transparency.However, Sanger — who coined the name “Wikipedia,” drafted the site’s foundational set of rules and guidelines, and launched the site alongside Jimmy Wales in 2001 — was indefinitely blocked from editing, the most drastic action the site can take against an editor.Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger said he was “flabbergasted” by the ban on him editing the site he founded, by a group of mostly anonymous editors. ASSOCIATED PRESS“I am flabbergasted,” Sanger told The Post, saying the decision was made by a group of the site’s volunteer editors. He described the modern Wikipedia community as being like a “mob or a blob,” noting users do not feel obligated to a specific vision of the rules, but rather to each other.“They are constantly trying to gauge what other people think, and this is the way ultimately these people are able to influence each other,” Sanger said. “Even a lot of the hard and fast policies are regarded as just guidelines if everybody is on board.”Sanger became unpopular among the site’s most prolific editors for making public calls for those whose viewpoints have typically been underrepresented — Hindus prominently, but also, most pointedly, American conservatives — to be more involved. The exact reason for his blocking was not given.Jimmy Wales, who also co-founded Wikipedia and has been its public face for over 20 years. Bloomberg via Getty ImagesWikipedia makes a lot of noise about how its content is created by volunteer users, citing a figure of 267,000 people contributing or editing over the last 30 days on its website.However, Sanger has long argued the real power rests with a small, largely anonymous class of Wikipedia administrators — who he has identified as being just 62 accounts, which he calls the “Power 62,” of which 85% hide behind their screennames and have never revealed their true identities.For Sanger, the swiftness of the block highlights a glaring lack of procedural fairness. “There is no due process,” he argued. “People are being blocked—in other words, disciplined—and yet there is no respect for certain expectations that any other serious disciplinary procedure would be held to.”He likened the platform’s arbitration to being judged by a “faceless mob,” with the absence of basic structural safeguards like a distinct prosecutor, jury, or opportunity to mount a formal defense.After making the fact he had been blocked public on X this Monday, Sanger’s account was reinstated.One notorious anonymous editor pushed hard for JK Rowling to be labeled “anti-trans” or a “transexclusionary radical feminist” (TERF) on Wikipedia. Justin Goff Photos/Getty ImagesSome editors had interjected with questions about the appropriateness of the block decision against Sanger, arguing it was hastily implemented. The campaign to oust him was instigated by one of the most combative editors on the platform, who goes by the handle TarnishedPath. The same editor was a driving force behind one of the most controversial maneuvers in Wikipedia’s recent history: a 12-month “moratorium” that froze the lead of the site’s “Zionism” article, locking in a sentence that critics — and this reporter, in Tablet Magazine — have documented as effectively equating the movement for Jewish self-determination with ethnic cleansing. TarnishedPath has been extremely active in gender issues on Wikipedia, pushing strongly to have JK Rowling labeled “anti-trans” or “transexclusionary radical feminist” (TERF). The editor eventually placed a banner on Rowling’s entry alleging it expressed a non-neutral point of view. “She should be referred to as having ‘anti-trans’ or ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’ views,” the editor wrote last June.The editor wrote in 2023 of people who sought to lend credence to the idea that the theory that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology: “They might have a political smear that they wish to push, but anyone who knows what terms properly mean, can’t say that the Lab Leak conspiracy is a scientific theory with any sort of integrity.” Wikipedia was founded in 2001 and has over seven milllion articles in the English language. Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty ImagesJust weeks ago, Wikipedia’s own administrators banned TarnishedPath from editing in the entire Israel-Palestine subject area on account of the editor’s problematic behavior.This didn’t stop the anonymous editor from playing a key role in the ban of Sanger — indicating the kind of palace intrigue that Sanger has critiqued as being detrimental to the open exchange of ideas on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has come under intense scrutiny for leftwing bias, including a successful effort to brand Donald Trump as a fascist and authoritarian.Larry Sanger speaking about Bias on news channel CNN-News18 in India. CNN-News18/YoutubeThe site notably uses a list of reliable sources whose reporting can be cited as fact. While mainstream media outlets like CNN, New York Times, NBC, and BBC are almost universally rated as green for “Generally reliable,” conservative outlets, including Fox News, Newsmax, and Federalist are rated red for “Generally unreliable”— a rating lower than even Chinese state media outlet China Daily, which has a rating of yellow for sometimes reliable.To justify the ban against Sanger, editors categorized Sangers’ recent efforts — most notably his intellectual diversity project — as “canvassing.” Wikipedia policy describes canvassing as alerting other editors on the site about editorial activity “with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way.” Sanger strongly pushed back against the canvassing charges, saying: “The people who found fault with that… pointed to the fact that I was recruiting for a project that, in their opinion, is aligned with the radical right wing, which is absolutely absurd,” Sanger explained.However, the first sentence of that same policy specifies that “it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus.”Sanger’s tweet after he had been banned from editing by Wikipedia, which he co-founded. @lsanger/XSanger has returned to being active on Wikipedia in recent months after a long hiatus. Last September, he published his “Nine Theses,” a set of essays demanding a top-to-bottom overhaul of a site he argues has been captured by a “Globalist, Academic, Secular, and Progressive”—or GASP— worldview.Ironically, the eighth of Sanger’s nine theses called for an end to the practice of indefinite blocking, which the co-founder called “draconian.” Sanger’s return to active engagement had already thrown the site into turmoil. In November, Sanger’s decision to weigh in on the Gaza genocide entry — one of the most contentious on the site — threw Wikipedia into what editors called “pandemonium” after Wikipedia’s other co-founder, Jimmy Wales, waded into the Talk page of the same entry with a heavy critique.Reacting to his former partner stepping in to defend him, Sanger expressed appreciation, but remained fatalistic about his standing on the site.“It’s so interesting that Jimmy has come out and defended me,” Sanger noted. “But I have a feeling he’s going to be very unsuccessful and that I am going to be permanently banned. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to make any difference.”Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, and Wales has largely erased any mention of him as co-founder.Wales stormed out of a podcast interview last November when asked about whether he was the sole founder of Wikipedia, telling the host: “It’s stupid. Don’t ask me stupid questions.”
