Lawrence Mark Sanger (born July 16, 1968 in Bellevue, Washington and raised in Anchorage, Alaska) is best known as the cofounder of Wikipedia, along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger had been hired by Wales' company, Bomis, as editor-in-chief of Nupedia, a project to create a free encyclopedia. Responding to frustrations with the slow progress of Nupedia, in January 2001 Sanger proposed the creation of a wiki to spur the development of articles, and this turned into Wikipedia. By virtue of his position with Nupedia, Sanger spearheaded and named the project, and formulated much of the original policy.

For the next year, Sanger continued to work on and promote both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis had to discontinue funding for his position in February 2002. Feeling that he could not do justice to the task as a part-time volunteer, Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia shortly thereafter [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/My_resignation--Larry_Sanger . Nupedia made little progress without his leadership and shut down the following year, but Wikipedia continued to grow and gain momentum.

Meanwhile, Sanger has rejoined the academic world and is currently a lecturer at Ohio State University, where he teaches philosophy courses. His professional interest is epistemology with concentrations in early modern philosophy and ethics. In his spare time, he plays and teaches Irish traditional music on the fiddle in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio.

Sanger received his B.A. in philosophy from Reed College in 1991 and Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000, writing a thesis on Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification.

Recently Sanger has suggested that some vetting system be created for Wikipedia to ensure that the voices of authority in each subject carry more weight. [2] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25

Sanger was the founder and executive editor of "Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports" (formerly at sangersreview.com [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20001025181634/http%3A//www.sangersreview.com/ ), a resource for Y2K watchers, and also manages a site about the Donegal fiddle tradition.

External links

• Academic home page of Larry Sanger http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/sanger3/
• Wikipedia user page of Larry Sanger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger
• Personal Statement about Wikipedia's Reliability http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/sanger3/wikipedia_statement.htm (December 2004)
• Columns about Wikipedia written by Sanger —On Meta . ("Possibly outdated", he says.)
• Donegal Fiddle Pages http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6464/hmpg.html .
• Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/larrysanger/diss/index.html
• Introductory philosophy lectures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Larry%27s_Text from Sanger's 1998 course at Ohio State University (many of these have been greatly edited from Sanger's originals—"as they should be", he says.)
• Larry Sanger’s Knowledge Free-for-All http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/forward30105.asp?trk=nl —Technology review article
• Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25 Kuro5hin (Op-Ed) article