Wikipedia Co-Founder Banned for Life After Reform Effort

Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, was permanently banned from the site on Monday after he launched an effort to reform its editorial processes. Sanger stated that the platform had shifted from its founding goal of providing unfettered public knowledge. He said ideological bias had taken hold, pages had been whitewashed, and sourcing had come to rely heavily on left-leaning outlets.

Sanger wrote that a small group of administrators had become more loyal to one another than to any consistent rules. He described coordinated pushback against his reform proposals that included efforts to ridicule and discredit them. He added that he had previously known the site's disciplinary processes were flawed but had not experienced them directly until last week.

Wikipedia was created to democratize information through open editing by the public. Sanger left the project in 2002 and later observed changes in its editorial direction. The site now contains millions of entries and remains one of the most visited reference platforms on the internet.

“I knew Wikipedia’s disciplinary processes were bad—but I had never experienced them myself.”