Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content.
Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is an ideological, left-wing bias on a variety of topics, and on X has framed this recent ban as further proof of everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia. The New York Post took that bait and last night published an article with the headline “Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site—after he campaigned to make it more balanced.”
Wikipedia editors obviously reject that framing and say that Sanger was banned for wielding his followers to sway discussion and decision making on Wikipedia. The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a “clear consensus” to ban Sanger.
Sander hasn’t been a part of the Wikipedia project since 2002.
He launched a competing project - Citizendium - which flopped. Also, the Digital Universe Encyclopedia web project, which went nowhere. And Encyclopedia of Earth which also failed to launch. WatchKnowLearn and Infobitt did a bit better, but neither became household names.
Basically, he’s been bouncing in and out of middling projects for the better part of 25 years. And I suspect this string of failures hasn’t been particularly good for his ego.