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- At best Wikipedia is a well-edited wiki of a smorgasbord, great writing, and an incredible resource that provides amazing value.
At worst it can be a hive mind echo chamber where certain views are banished to the Abyss.
Certain topics attract the latter rather than the former…
- I also have problems with Wikipedia, sure, but I resolved them simply by setting up a private wiki, and it's been quite peaceful.
Changing the whole institutional culture at Wikipedia is more of a social challenge than a technical one, and I am not well-versed in that area. So, I would rather fork some wiki software, write code, and write articles for myself.
Will my wiki be able to compete with a giant like Wikipedia on the internet? I don't know. I don't even know whether mine is indexed by search engines yet. But I love writing articles, so I'll keep doing it as long as I can.
by altilunium - There is a link in the other comments that is intended to explain the context, but as someone who isn't familiar with the structure of threads / conversations in the Wikipedia editing community, I am honestly struggling to follow it.
Can someone here please help me understand what the issue is?
(I keep seeing stuff in that linked article about canvassing and "the left marching through institutions" but again I'm not following the overall argument / issue. Please forgive my ignorance if I'm missing something obvious.)
by herodoturtle - Guy wanted to loosen rules around Wikipedia's sourcing to allow places like Breitbart and Fox News to be used as reliable sources (they are obviously not). Things were not going his way in the vote, so he asked his large social network following to brigade the vote in his favor. That's not allowed, so he's been banned.by coldpie
- it appears that larry sanger used twitter to promote an active wiki-related proposal ("WikiProject Intellectual Diversity"), and that is bad.
- My understanding is that he was unhappy with some of Wikipedia's direction and decided to go outside official Wikipedia channels to mobilize people to rewrite policies, which is not allowed.
- Banning transparent bad actors, even when they don't outright admit that's what they are, is both legitimate and necessary.by Planktonne
- One useful thing to do sometimes when looking at whether or not a user is interested in participating in Wikipedia or just participating in arguing about things is to look at their contributions to actual wikipedia articles, the thing Wikipedia is all about.
This is the list of articles Sanger contributed to in 2026: [1]
Compare that too all his contributions: [2]
Does it seem like this person is participating in Wikipedia in a genuine way? Or is he there to start political arguments on various internal pages?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContrib...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContrib...
by OskarS - There are very many admins, even bureaucrats who can and have failed that particular test. I voted 'no', often unsuccessfully, on many admin candidates who had upwards of 70 or 80% of their contributions being in the WP: namespace.by FireBeyond
- Link to the reason for his ban:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noti...
by octaane - Many of his essays have been deleted, and many others are Pending Deletion. Those deleted can be viewed only by admins. There is a large movement to censor this guy's opinions and undo his contributions. What happened? There is no explicit mention on the page.by dotancohen
- >There is a large movement to censor this guy's opinions
Wikipedia is the wrong place for opinions
by croes - As an outsider the accusation "Canvassing" seems like a double edged sword. Similar to Reddits "Brigading" but without the hostile intention. It's not clear to me, how Wikipedia prevents this rule from being used inappropriately to silence people.by pjio
- Let's not conflate these two issues. For this specific case there is absolutely no confusion.
A quote, from his own talk page, written by himself:
> But as of fall 2025, I have returned, with the aim of helping Wikipedia in various ways to reform.
This is somebody who (re)started their wikipedia editor career with one goal in mind, and set up a project to reach this goal, and then canvassed for that project.
There is no doubt about any of those 3 things. Specifically, he wants this project to get accepted, he is not all that interested in anything else, and it was him, himself, canvassing for this project in ways that wikipedia policy clearly delineate are not allowed.
This is specifically what the 'no canvassing' rule was written for. One can make quite a few remarks about how the 'no canvassing' rule can be abused, but this isn't an example case, at all. Quote the contrary: This is a textbook case for why the rule exists, and serves as a trivial slamdunk case as to when it should be applied.
Your point stands as an interesting debate, but it has no meaningful effect on Larry Sanger's banned status. It would have been interesting if, for example, somebody else started this project, and Larry Sanger started canvassing for the project. Banning Larry Sanger as an editor would then be an obvious community decision (banned for canvassing), but do you ban the project at that point? The cat's out of the bag, and, indeed, if you adopt the policy of: "If anybody on any social media anywhere canvasses for project X, then that automatically means project X gets canned without any further vote", then one can trivially can any project by canvassing for it.
But none of that is relevant here.
by rzwitserloot - There is a scale, sorta...by robertsky_
- Correct, and Administrators (and users invoking administrators) will often selectively use rules to pursue editorial purposes.
I learned about wikipedia rules before learning about actual law, it's interesting to see exactly how the mechanisms of modern democracy protect against the specific ways in which Wikipedia fails:
1- Separation of powers between rulemakers and judges. In practice many Administrators who have the power to enforce rules and bans are actually editing articles themselves!
2- Ignore all rules, certainly crazy, it makes the rules an afterthought, it reminds me a bit of the Common Law focus on Case Law as opposed to Napoleonic Civil Law's focus on codified laws, but way stronger.
3- No or weak procedure. Imagine you are in a legal fight with another editor, and you say a bad word, woops, turns out that's a 2 day ban. Maybe there's a parallel with contempt of court? But what happens in wikipedia is that the whole edit war is lost on that technicality, Administrators don't rule in favour of one edit or the other, they distribute penalties to one part or the other and if one party is temp banned, they can't edit the article anymore and the article state the other party desires has a stability and consensus advantage. The only exception are protected articles, in which case administrators can emit an official ruling on what the article content should be.
by TZubiri - > It's not clear to me, how Wikipedia prevents this rule from being used inappropriately to silence people.
It doesn't. Wikipedia rules are often abused and selectively enforced.
by palmotea - I encourage people to read through his proposed WikiProject's page[0] and the related discussion.[1] Important context is also that WikiProjects are exempt from canvassing rules; members are free to notify each other of ongoing policy discussions with the goal of influencing the outcome.
This is usually not a problem, but given how aggressively vague the WikiProject's goals are (eg. "We hope to open Wikipedia up to using more sources" - which?) and Larry Sanger's prior conduct (eg. advocating for whitelisting of sources like Fox News[2]), it seems the real goal was organizing conservative editors. I'm not sure whether the fact that this is not clearly written is deception or trolling, but it's not a good look for Sanger either way.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/WikiProject_...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cou...
[2]: https://san.com/cc/wikipedia-co-founder-says-site-has-libera...
by mzajc
As I understood it, he wasn't advocating for whitelisting Fox News, he was advocating for removing the blacklist. That's a stark difference.> advocating for whitelisting of sources like Fox News
What doesn't look good for him? It doesn't seem that he has an intent other than enabling the viewpoint of those other than the far-left, which compromise almost the entirety of Wikipedias admins and editors.> it's not a good look for Sanger either way.by dotancohen- Possible context at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis... - might be a better link, too.by phoe-krk
- Meatpuppetry? Bludgeoning?
They've created their own lexicon and priesthood to run it. No wonder it's so badly compromised. Larry is right.
by SanjayMehta - Yeah I wasn't sure which to post. Maybe dang can put that link in the description...by FergusArgyll
- Seems to be a place full of pleasant people.by account42
- There is a long history here, and if you are looking at just the WikiProject and the community ban discussion, you are missing a Hell of a lot.
Very short background:
Larry Sanger left Wikipedia in 2003.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/707321
Sanger went on to set up Citizendium, a wiki encyclopaedia project organized the way that xe thought one should be organized, with an extensive rulebase and 'constables'. Sanger's edits on Wikipedia were sporadic from 2004 to 2023, and were almost exclusively focussed on Jimmy Wales's account talk page, the articles on Sanger and Wales, the article on Citizendium, and the articles on the history and criticism of Wikipedia. There was also a whole debate on whether Sanger was a co-founder or an employee.
Citizendium died 15 years ago. (Yes, you can see it now. It was resurrected in 2022, everyone having to start from scratch with new accounts.) I actually thought of getting an account there in its early years, but for several years prior to its effective death it sported an announcement that the new accounts process was temporarily not in service, come back later. The writing was on the wall for a long time.
Sanger re-gained interest in Wikipedia in 2025, but still far more interested in how an encyclopaedia should be governed, which motivated the creation of Citizendium in the first place, than in actually writing one. In the intervening years, xe had done a lot of punditry from the sidelines, concentrating everything through a lens of U.S.A. politics.
by JdeBP - > Sanger re-gained interest in Wikipedia in 2025, but still far more interested in how an encyclopaedia should be governed
Oh no. It's not like a fairly large swathe of admins (and their clingers on) haven't been credibly accused of speed running their contributions just to try to get admin/bureaucrat status. My own Wikipedia history has dozens and dozens of "No" votes on people who either had a serious chance of, or were, elected, who had a contribution history of 80%+ in the WP: namespace, rather than, as you say "than writing an encyclopedia".
by FireBeyond - Maybe not particularly relevant, but I'm noticing you using "xe" pronouns for Sanger. Why is that? Just wondering if I am missing more context.by spidercat
- So to summarize:
he resuggested "WikiProject Intellectual Diversity", a group with the goal to make "Wikipedia more intellectually diverse" and "ensure fair and open decision-making and governance, broaden the range of permissible sources, reinforce genuine neutrality, rein in over-aggressive blocking while holding the powerful to higher standards of accountability", etc, with the implied undertone of preventing Wikipedia from drifting too far to the political left.
This is unpopular because people oppose this on various grounds (mostly that it might be vote brigading and tiling decisions in their favor just by showing up in an organised way around wikipedia). Also the same project was apparently suggested before and rejected in early stages
But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it. Probably in an attempt to sway discussion, because his tweets are obviously seen primarily by people who like his ideas
Which then lead to the vote to ban him from editing Wikipedia. With a total ban getting more votes than a more limited ban, like banning him from participating in articles namespaced for internal matters
Is that about right?
by wongarsu - > But then he made a tweet that basically just says "I suggested this, some people like it, some hate it". That's super against the rules, because it attracts people to the proposal who otherwise wouldn't have seen it.
How would this in any way be against the rules? Wouldn'tan open and democratic process like wikipedia want as many eyes as possible on a vote or rule change?
That sounds completely backwards from the open and free spirit of wikipedia. If even wikipedia has gone full mob rule then hwo do any projects stay open and free to everyone?
by chollida1 - > This is unpopular because people oppose this on various grounds (mostly that it might be vote brigading and tiling decisions in their favor just by showing up in an organised way around wikipedia). Also the same project was apparently suggested before and rejected in early stages
It's gone now, but this is hilariously on-brand - Wikipedia Review had its own axes to grind but did hugely in-depth work exposing Wikipedia Admins for "caballing", having secret mailing lists that Wikipedia denied the existence of, private IRC channels where admins had their pet topics that they owned and would "get suppressing fire" from other admins when they were going to make edits that reflected their POV (i.e. "watch while I edit and block/ban people who try to revert or interfere"). They'd do the same for admin elections etc.
by FireBeyond - "Intellectual Diversity" seems to be another of these "Intelligent Design" rebrandings where rather than admit they were wrong the same crap just gets re-branded and goes straight back on the shelf.by tialaramex