Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

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Clearly there's no love lost between the two co-founders, but if either of them had been missing, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is today.

Larry may have left the project, but sticks his oar in frequently, see for example the Nine Theses he posted to Wikipedia last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Nine_Theses

Neither Larry nor Jimbo "are" Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editors are Wikipedia, and if they collectively agree with any of Larry's policy ideas, they'll adopt them in time.

I used to glibly agree with what you said, because back in the early 2000s it was primarily the right-wing nutters being fed a diet of Fox News bullshit that were deranged from reality... "reality has a liberal bias", right? Remember the crackpot Conservapedia? But these days I find plenty of equal opportunity derangement from terrible news sources chasing clicks, promoting FOMO, anxiety and keeping their readers/viewers addicted. No political flavour of bullshit belongs on Wikipedia.

His nine theses are basically a how-to guide for replacing democratic consensus with culture war bullshit. He clearly wants to bend the process to match his perception of the world rather than update his understanding of the world to match the facts.

The process Wikipedia uses to produce articles that present facts with without editorializing has clearly worked fairly well. Obviously we have a more difficult time reaching consensus on contentious topics but in general the system works quite well.

I don't understand how you could read the nine theses essays and think they are anything but reasonable. Even if you disagree with his politics, the results of his suggestions would almost certainly make Wikipedia more pluralistic, welcoming and neutral.

Because they have all been tried before and had the opposite affect.

Anyone who likes them should make their own site to try and see. Oh wait, sangar already did that multiple times and it crashed and burned every time.

> Because they have all been tried before and had the opposite affect.

Did you even read the document? Claiming that Wikipedia has implemented all of these suggestions in the past is just plainly false. If you disagree with the documents contents, why don't you provide a substantive argument instead of just belittling efforts at changing the status quo?

> Claiming that Wikipedia has implemented all of these suggestions in the past is just plainly false

I'm claiming people, not necessarily wikipedia, have tried them. However many have been tried by Wikipedia too.

> just belittling efforts at changing the status quo?

The status quo is pretty good. Change for change sake is an anti-pattern.

Regardless, i think people who like these ideas should try them, on their own site. I suspect they will quickly find out why Wikipedia does not want to do them.

After all, martin luther didnt just whine that the pope wouldnt listen to him, he made his own thing.

Your comments are shallow because you just continue to assert the idea are bad with no reasoning. You also clearly don't know your protestant history: Martin Luther did basically just whine about the Pope. He was thoroughly a reformer that wanted to see the Catholic church changed; he did not condone "Lutheranism" as a separatist movement.

The reasoning is historical precedent. If something doesn't work out the first time you try it, why would you do it again.

We are talking about at least 10 pages worth of proposed reforms. Do you have a specific one you would like to discuss? I'm not particularly interested in writing a 10 page essay in an hn comment about why i think all the proposed reforms are stupid.

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