Larry Sanger has said: “To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy’s, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis. The actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on.”

As far as I can tell, that IS Wikipedia. And however much work he did on it, Larry now wants to distance himself from that vision. He is doing so precisely because he thinks Wikipedia is dysfunctional and will fail in unless it changes course. He drew this conclusion from experience, and he might be right.

Yet he can’t have his cake and eat it too. If you work on a project under someone else’s vision and then leave when you can’t get them to change the philosophy to your idea, you’re an employee. A generous designation as co-founder in appreciation of working hard might be rescinded a few years when you… oh, I don’t know… leave and then spend all your waking hours trying to tear down the project!

Still the debate is silly because the words are silly. Why not call Ward Cunningham a “founder”? From the perspective of the future, everyone who participates in the project is founding it. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT. Wales serves on the Board of Trustees, so can’t an interview with him just say that and talk about the future?

Eventually we will need some of Wikipedia’s approach and some of Citizendium’s approach. The last thing we need is some lame personality clash in the middle of the problem solving. Time for the public to stop indulging the founder/co-founder battle of egos!!

“I was opposed to the change, and only reluctantly agreed to it after Matt Cutts of Google recommended it. I am still not sure it is the right answer. After all, Wikipedia prides itself on public service, and our external links are generally quite carefully vetted.”