Camp Gagnon
Wikipedia Co-Creator Reveals All: Secret Editors, Banning Content, & Ignoring Rules
27 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
My claim to fame is I am co-founder of Wikipedia.
Chapter 2: Who is Larry Sanger and what is his role in Wikipedia's creation?
Could you say you're like the Wozniak of Wikipedia? I've been called that.
Do you see it as a compliment?
Chapter 3: How was Wikipedia originally created and what was its mission?
Because you should. Well, I mean, if I really were very proud of Wikipedia, I might.
We've seen your former colleague Jimmy Wales, who was recently on a podcast where he was asked a similar question.
Just to be clear, right, Jimmy was one of three partners. So these guys are sort of like the institutional founders, but the person who actually got it started, that's me.
This is Larry Sanger, internet pioneer and the co-founder of everybody's first stop in internet research, Wikipedia. He was there at the very beginning, naming it, shaping it, and watched it explode into tens of thousands of articles in its first year.
Chapter 4: What challenges does Wikipedia face in presenting neutral information?
But years later, Sanger says something went wrong. The man who helped build the world's largest encyclopedia now believes that it's quietly shaping how millions think, and not always in the most honest way.
He argues that Wikipedia has drifted from neutrality into framing, bias, and in some cases, even propaganda, where subtle word choices can decide who's right, who's wrong, and what ideas are pushed outside the acceptable conversation.
And today we break down how neutrality is different from objectivity, how Wikipedia articles can quietly manipulate public opinion, who really controls these controversial pages, and why Sanger believes neutrality and free speech rise together and fall together.
So if you are interested in how the media can be manipulated, how information and disinformation actually work, and who is using propaganda in order to manipulate your feelings about global events, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Larry Sanger, thank you so much for joining me.
Oh, it's good to be here.
Thanks for coming into my tent and for taking an adventure all the way to New York City. So really quick, just explain to the audience, who are you and what specifically is your concern that you're wanting to talk about today?
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Chapter 5: Who are the contributors to Wikipedia articles and how are they managed?
Well, my name is Larry Sanger. I guess my training is in philosophy, so I still think of myself as a philosopher. My claim to fame is I am co-founder of Wikipedia. I like to call myself ex-founder now.
Now, you said that pretty easily. You said, I am the co-founder of Wikipedia. We've seen your former colleague, Jimmy Wales, who was recently on a podcast where he was asked a similar question. And he said that he was the founder. And then the host asked if he was actually the co-founder. Then he said he didn't care. And then he walked off.
Right.
And this seemed like sort of a bombastic, you know, maybe we say apoplectic response to a fairly simple question. So I'm curious, why did he respond in this way?
Chapter 6: What are the implications of Wikipedia's neutrality versus bias?
And he's responded that way often in the past, saying that he doesn't really care. Why he got so upset this time, I'm not sure. I think it's mostly because the interviewer just repeated the question so many times and he thought he was being disrespected, I suppose.
I see. But he is the co-founder, as are you, the two co-founders.
Well, I suppose that's a matter of opinion, isn't it?
Well, per Wikipedia, as we said, I read it and you were the co-founder. So we'll go with that.
Chapter 7: How does Wikipedia classify controversial topics and individuals?
He used to say I was. He put it in the first three press releases anyway. Strange.
So you have sort of come out since that founding day of, you know, a founder of Wikipedia. Yeah. And spoken about some of the potential issues as far as Wikipedia as a tool for, you know, the information coercion, can we say, the manipulation of how people think and understand, you know, news and information. And you haven't really let up.
And this has led you to publishing a sort of thesis about Wikipedia. how we can reform Wikipedia to be more neutral. So I guess maybe just for context for the audience, could you take us just to the beginning of Wikipedia in brief, how that was sort of formed and what the original mission of this encyclopedia on the internet was supposed to be?
Sure. Nine theses, actually, is what you're referring to on LarrySanger.org and actually posted from my user page on Wikipedia. That's where I first put it. So the origin story of Wikipedia. Basically, I knew Jimmy Wales for...
Actually, one of the very first discussion groups I ever got into on the Internet in 1994, I think, was something called the Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy, MDOP, which Jimmy Wales was the owner and moderator of. And so we got into some debates and so forth. And he called me up one time after we had an argument or something and tried to smooth things over.
So I thought that was nice. And later, I was taking a trip across the country and visited him and a mutual friend of ours who also lived in Chicago at the time on my way over to visit my uncle. And... we actually got to know each other face to face. So, you know, we weren't, we weren't really close friends, but we were friends sort of in, and, um,
When I was looking around in 2000 for a way to pivot my work on the internet, because I had started a website before this, I was looking for advice from friends about what to do with a website that I had been working on.
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Chapter 8: What are the issues surrounding Wikipedia's blacklisted sources?
And that was Newpedia?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's called Sanger's Review. I see. Yeah, it's no longer online. And he said, well, don't work on that. Come and actually work for me and you'll start a new encyclopedia called Newpedia.
I see.
Yeah. So I thought that was a great idea. I actually had dreamt of working on an encyclopedia. I thought, if I'm not going to be a philosophy professor, which for reasons I don't need to get into, I decided against as I was finishing my Ph.D., I thought maybe working on an encyclopedia would be a good alternative. And so here I had the opportunity of not just working on one, but starting one.
So that was the mission, essentially, to start Newpedia, to organize the people, to set the policy and the processes, and actually be the editor-in-chief. So I worked on that for a year, but it was very slow going because we wanted the whole product to be very reliable and high quality.
A friend of mine was telling me January 2nd, 2001, about wikis, which was a type of website that had been around for, at the time, like six years. The original wiki was called WikiWikiWeb, which means fast after the Hawaiian word wikiwiki.
Like the wiki taxis in Hawaii.
Exactly. At the Honolulu airport, apparently. Yeah. And so he told me how they worked, how if somebody edits a page, another person can edit it and correct errors and so forth. And they negotiate with each other. The edits are all immediately visible to... as if you were working on your own computer.
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