One would think a founder of a website could edit that site as long as he or she wishes. That is not the case at Wikipedia.
Larry Sanger, one of the left-leaning site’s founders, has been permanently blocking from editing pages.
The move was made after Sanger launched WikiProject Intellectual Diversity (WID), a campaign to make it more balanced and neutral.
“I am flabbergasted,” Sanger told The New York Post, adding the decision was made by a group of the site’s volunteer editors.
He described the current Wikipedia community as like a “mob or a blob.”
He said users do not feel obligated to a specific vision of the rules, but rather to each other.
“They are constantly trying to gauge what other people think, and this is the way ultimately these people are able to influence each other,” Sanger said. “Even a lot of the hard and fast policies are regarded as just guidelines if everybody is on board.”
Sanger — who coined the name “Wikipedia,” drafted the site’s rules and guidelines — launched the site with Jimmy Wales in 2001.
Sanger said the quickness this was done showcases a lack of procedural fairness.
“There is no due process,” he said. “People are being blocked — in other words, disciplined — and yet there is no respect for certain expectations that any other serious disciplinary procedure would be held to.”
He said he was judged by a “faceless mob,” with no basic structural safeguards like a distinct prosecutor, jury, or opportunity to mount a formal defense.
Sanger announced the move Monday on X.
“There was no due process, no prosecutor, no dispassionate judge, no jury, no interpretation of law. All my judges were self-selected and hated me,” he wrote.
The editor who goes by TarnishedPath apparently instigated the Ban.
TarnishedPath was a driving force behind one of the most controversial maneuvers in Wikipedia’s recent history when there was a 12-month “moratorium” that froze the lead of the site’s “Zionism” article, keeping a sentence that critics have documented as effectively equating the movement for Jewish self-determination with ethnic cleansing.