Larry Sanger

Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American philosopher and internet project developer.

He is most famous for his role as a co-founder of Wikipedia. Sanger was born on July 16, 1968, in Bellevue, Washington. His father, Gerry, worked as a marine biologist. Sanger grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, after his family moved there when he was seven. At age 16, he decided to dedicate his life to the study of philosophy. This academic focus shaped his views on how knowledge is organized and shared.

Sanger's academic journey led him to earn several degrees. He received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Reed College in 1991. He then earned a Master of Arts from Ohio State University in 1995. In 2000, he completed a Doctor of Philosophy at the same university. His doctoral dissertation focused on epistemology, which is the study of how we know things. Specifically, he wrote about epistemic circularity and the problem of meta-justification. This deep study of truth and evidence would later influence his work on the internet.

In the year 2000, Sanger became the editor-in-chief of Nupedia.

Nupedia was an online encyclopedia created by Jimmy Wales and his company, Bomis. The project relied on volunteer experts to write articles. These articles then went through a strict peer-review process before being published. While the quality was high, the process was extremely slow. By the summer of 2000, Nupedia had reached a standstill due to these delays. Sanger wanted a way to speed up the creation of content.

To solve this problem, Sanger proposed using a wiki. He learned about wiki software during a dinner with his friend Ben Kovitz in early 2001. A wiki is a website that allows many people to edit content collaboratively. On January 15, 2001, this idea resulted in the launch of Wikipedia. Sanger actually coined the name "Wikipedia" from a long list of potential names. He also created the first home pages and drafted the site's early policies. These included "Neutral point of view," "Verifiability," and "No original research."

During Wikipedia's first year, Sanger served as the "chief organizer."

He even created a concept called "Brilliant prose" to highlight the highest-quality articles. However, Sanger soon became frustrated with the growing community. He felt the site was being overrun by "trolls" and people who opposed any form of authority. He clashed with other early editors over how to organize the project. Sanger argued for more respect for expert editors to resolve disputes. These tensions grew as the project became more independent from Nupedia.

Sanger left the Wikipedia project in March 2002. This happened after his employer, Bomis, lost a grant during the Dot-com crash. As a result, Sanger was laid off from his position.

Since his departure, he has been a vocal critic of Wikipedia. He has argued that the site lacks credibility because it does not require enough expertise. In 2007, he even described the project as "broken beyond repair." He also accused the site of having a left-wing ideological bias starting in 2020. These criticisms have sometimes been viewed as part of a right-wing attack on the site.

Sanger has continued to work on many other encyclopedic projects. In 2006, he founded Citizendium to compete with Wikipedia's model. He later joined Everipedia as the chief information officer in 2017. He also advised the political encyclopedia Ballotpedia and worked with the Encyclopedia of Earth. In 2019, he resigned from Everipedia to start the Knowledge Standards Foundation. He now works to promote the "encyclosphere," a term for the interconnected world of online knowledge. His career shows a lifelong effort to balance speed and expertise in sharing information.