Location matters sometimes
Disgruntled cofounders can sometimes start a real opposition. Disgruntled Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger has started an alternative called Encyclosphere. The initial splash is unimpressive, with one important exception.

What's unimpressive? They seem to be spending a lot of time discussing and debating standards and principles, and no time at all writing and editing content. You need to start MAKING things first, then you can figure out how to EDIT and SELECT things. Until you have some material to practice and experiment on, there's no point in debating principles.

The LOCATION is impressive. It's not in DC or NYC or Frisco or even secondary tech hubs like Boston or Madison. It's headquartered in Canal Winchester, an old town that has become part of suburban Columbus without becoming suburban. Definitely a long way from the evil influences of the tech world.

Sanger is trying to break O'Sullivan's Law, which states that any organization with a central headquarters in Satan's world will succumb to the influence of Satan.

Worth watching.

I registered without having to own a cellphone. Another positive, compared to eg Parler. Requiring cellphone guarantees minimum privacy.

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Note for clarity: I don't have a big problem with Wikipedia anyway, so I don't think this is tremendously important. Wikipedia seems mostly neutral on the subjects I've seen. Maybe I'm not looking up the subjects where it's badly biased, but in any case I haven't seen serious bias. My main annoyance with Wikipedia is poor teaching and poor explanation. Too much abstraction and specialized jargon. Often a page on a scientific question is written by and for the people who already know the answer to the question. If you can read the formulas at all, you're already inside the narrow subspecialty, so you don't need the answer.

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Reading more about the foundation behind Encyclosphere, it sounds a little like Trinity House, but it's missing two crucial elements: MONEY AND MOTIVATION.

Trinity House supported science with big MONEY because Trinity House was funded by a fee charged to every ship that docked in Britain. Trinity House was MOTIVATED to spend money on USEFUL research because anything that improved the safety of navigation would increase successful dockings, and thus increase its PROFIT.

Labels: Experiential education, Trinity House

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