Report/Interview: “Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger Says Website Has Been ‘Taken Over by Trolls'”

From The Independent:

Larry Sanger said that he walked away from the internet phenomenon just one year after it began life in 2001 because it quickly became “taken over by trolls”.
Wikipedia never solved the problem of how to organize itself in a way that didn’t lead to mob rule,” the Ohio-based internet project developer told Vice.com. “On the one hand, it isn’t a mob at all. It’s highly organized and structured and there’s a lot of rules, so it seems like the very opposite of that, right?
“But on the other hand, the way that the community is organized isn’t codified or decided upon in any type of constitutional way. So there might be some people who selectively apply rules according to positions that other people take on their pet issues. And that’s inherently unfair, right?
[Clip]
If he could go back to his time at Wikipedia again Mr Sanger would have insisted on a more academic system of approving articles and edits as “credible” – but he said a lack of leadership meant it never happened.

Read the Complete Article
See Also: Complete Interview with Larry Sanger, “Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Is Wikipedia’s Most Outspoken Critic” (via Vice.com)
See Also: See Also: Wikipedia is Up! (Nupedia-L Post by Larry Sanger on Jan. 17, 2001; via Wayback Machine)

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