trying to contribute to wikipedia was the most miserable experience in a "collaborative" process I've ever had in my life.
Like arguing with cranks at a town hall meeting, ignorant high school group project classmates, and bureaucracy-obsessed nonprofit initiative zealots all wrapped into one.
in the area I was trying to contribute (a math subdomain) to there is sooooo much technical misinformation. but if you don't have an intimate knowledge of all the details of the editing bylaws, and seemingly infinite time to be able to litigate your case, it's almost impossible to get any of these edits through when the original page author is sufficiently motivated to prevent them.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
More than whatever process was used, just looking at his user page I do think some sort of ostracism-like response was inevitable. The thing about communities like Wikipedia is when you have a group of volunteers coming together to do something the culture has to be somewhat intolerant of cultural change, otherwise it'll fall apart pretty quickly. To repeat that another way, culture defines who is part of the in- and out-group, so once the group has formed it is very slow to change or the group collapses.
I quite like what he's going for with these 9 theses - the ideas of the public rating articles or enabling competition between articles seems like a clever compromise position - but frankly I don't see how the Wikipedia community could treat this as anything other than an attack whether or not the ideas are improvements. The parallel with Martin Luther and the Catholic Church was appropriately foreshadowed by Sanger.
Organisations eventually become corrupt. Wikipedia might already be there or it might have a ways to go, who knows. But this sort of change might require a new project or some sort of schism among the Wikipedia editors, it sounds pretty radical. Especially in the post-Trump era; I expect his presidency has been a traumatic era for the English Wikipedia project.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
37 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] threadThey've created their own lexicon and priesthood to run it. No wonder it's so badly compromised. Larry is right.
Like arguing with cranks at a town hall meeting, ignorant high school group project classmates, and bureaucracy-obsessed nonprofit initiative zealots all wrapped into one.
in the area I was trying to contribute (a math subdomain) to there is sooooo much technical misinformation. but if you don't have an intimate knowledge of all the details of the editing bylaws, and seemingly infinite time to be able to litigate your case, it's almost impossible to get any of these edits through when the original page author is sufficiently motivated to prevent them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noti...
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.)
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.
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…
Ironically they might have amplified the reach of their articles to laymen and editors and made him a martyr in the process.
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?
I quite like what he's going for with these 9 theses - the ideas of the public rating articles or enabling competition between articles seems like a clever compromise position - but frankly I don't see how the Wikipedia community could treat this as anything other than an attack whether or not the ideas are improvements. The parallel with Martin Luther and the Catholic Church was appropriately foreshadowed by Sanger.
Organisations eventually become corrupt. Wikipedia might already be there or it might have a ways to go, who knows. But this sort of change might require a new project or some sort of schism among the Wikipedia editors, it sounds pretty radical. Especially in the post-Trump era; I expect his presidency has been a traumatic era for the English Wikipedia project.
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.
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...
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...
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.