Although Larry Sanger is most recognized for his role as a co-founder of Wikipedia, he also served as Nupedia’s first head editor.
Another of Sanger’s projects, Citizendium, required all of its editors to be subject matter experts and to operate under their true names.
2015 saw the Erasmus Prize given to the whole Wikipedia community, including Sanger, in recognition of their noteworthy “contribution to the humanities, social sciences, or the arts.”
American philosopher and internet project developer Lawrence Mark “Larry” Sanger. In addition to working as an American college professor, he is most recognized for co-founding Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales. He is also accountable for a number of other internet projects.
Early Years
On July 16, 1968, Sanger was born in Bellevue, Washington. His father, Gerry, was a marine biologist, while his mother was a housewife. His family moved to Anchorage, Alaska when he was seven years old, and he spent the rest of his life there.
Fast Facts
Full Name: Sanger, Lawrence Mark
Date of Birth: July 16, 1968
Awards $650,000–$1 million in net worth
2015 Erasmus Award
Humanitarian Star Rotary (2018)
Offspring: two boys
nationality
American; born in Bellevue, Washington
Areas of Specialization: “Computer Science,” “Philosophy”
Organizations
Contributions from Ohio State University and Reed College
Reading Bear, Citizendium, Nupedia, and Wikipedia
Sanger studied philosophy at Reed College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1991. Sanger’s interest in the internet and its potential as a publishing and information-gathering tool grew throughout his tenure at Reed College. He created a listserver that served as a conduit for information between teachers and students and as a means of pursuing knowledge outside the confines of conventional university education.
After that, Sanger studied philosophy at Ohio State University, where he graduated with a master’s degree in 1995 and a doctorate in 2000. It was about this period that he first connected with Jimmy Wales through a philosophy-related email list.
Career
Larry Sanger has been involved with several successful commercial projects, but he is most known for his work at Wikipedia. Below, let’s examine this in more detail.
Sanger started working with Jimmy Wales at Bomis, Inc. in 2000. Sanger was appointed chief editor of Nupedia, a project Bomis was working on. Nupedia has strict content standards for trustworthiness because it was intended to be the first internet encyclopedia. Every piece was authored by volunteers who had to possess subject matter expertise in the fields they were writing about. The editorial team then gave those stories a review before they were posted on the website.
Sanger approached Wales with the idea of including a wiki as a way for authors to submit Nupedia articles to the editorial staff for approval after speaking with others about the effectiveness of wikis in other applications. It was hoped that this would expedite the process of creating material. Actually, though, this developed into a separate project, and in 2001 Wikipedia was released as an own website.
When Wales’s firm Bomis, Inc. launched Wikipedia in February 2001, Sanger served as its principal organizer and the only employee who received compensation. Problems surfaced fast; Sanger apparently lost patience with dishonest contributors trying to sabotage the editing process. Even as one of the founders of Wikipedia, Sanger found it difficult to guarantee that the information posted there was verified and subjected to professional editorial scrutiny.
These disagreements with the community at large intensified and eventually contributed significantly to Sanger’s removal from Wikipedia. In order to sustain Sanger’s payment, Bomis wanted to monetize Wikipedia by pursuing ad revenue from placement on the website. This was met with strong opposition, which was made worse by the fact that at the time, online ad revenue was not as high as it is now. After that, Bomis reduced Sanger’s pay, and because he was unable to commit the time necessary to oversee both Nupedia and Wikipedia without sufficient pay, he quit from both organizations.
After leaving Wikipedia, Sanger made an independent attempt to relaunch Nupedia without Wales’ or Bomis’ help, but his efforts were ultimately vain, and the website crashed in 2003.
Citizendium
Next, Sanger hard-forked Wikipedia to establish Citizendium. For this project, editors had to be subject matter experts in their industries and operate using their true names. Privately launched in 2006, Citizendium made its public debut in March 2007. Sanger quit as the project’s editor in chief in September 2010 after finishing work on it in 2009.
SeeKnowLearn
Between 2008 and 2010, Sanger was employed by the nonprofit WatchKnowLearn to make instructional videos for kids in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Bear
Sanger then expanded on this effort by producing material expressly designed to teach young children to read. His work on this web application, which he completed in 2010 and 2011, used a variety of tools, including ebooks, PowerPoint presentations, and videos, to achieve this goal. In 2012, the application was released under the name Reading Bear.
Knowledge Bits
The brief existence of Infobitt was aimed at serving as a crowdsourced news aggregator. It launched in December 2014 and shut down in the summer of 2015 due to funding constraints.
Sanger’s blog and Infotbitt’s website both state that, should funds become available, the project may be relaunched.
The Everipedia
The next endeavor for Sanger was Everipedia. Another online encyclopedia that makes use of blockchain technology is called Everipedia. In 2017, Sanger started serving as their chief information officer. His intention was to rid Everipedia of all the prejudices he perceived to exist on Wikipedia and create a knowledge base covering an infinite number of topics. 2019 saw Sanger depart Everipedia.
Foundation for Knowledge Standards
As of right now, Larry Sanger serves as the Knowledge Standards Foundation’s executive director. The “encyclosphere” is to be built, as stated. This is going to be a dispersed knowledge network that adheres to academic standards.
