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Larry Sanger
Personal blog · larrysanger.orgphilosophywriting
Larry Sanger writes LarrySanger.org, a personal blog at larrysanger.org about philosophy and writing. Since 2010, 87 different Hacker News readers have linked it 112 times, most often “Wikipedia Is Badly Biased”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his posts arguing that Wikipedia is politically biased and has abandoned neutrality, especially 'Wikipedia Is Badly Biased' (2020), plus his essay on teaching his toddler to read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Read philosophy with me. A brainy Christian reading group in philosophy of religion and theology—close reading, hard questions, serious but friendly discussion. Let's go! What's included... Weekly reading assignments My in-depth Q&As Subscriber-only essays Prayers A growin
Most-linked posts?
- Wikipedia Is Badly Biased31 people · 47 mentions · first linked 2020-05-21
- Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-07-02
- Larry Sanger – Nine Theses on Wikipedia4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-08
- Grokipedia: A First Look3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-10-29
- How A Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian [Larry Sanger]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-11
- The Encyclosphere Is Greater Than Wikipedia2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-01
- The cybersecurity subcommittee's Wikipedia investigation2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-09
- How to decentralize social media–a brief sketch2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-21
- How and Why I Taught My Toddler to Read (2010)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-21
- Why Neutrality2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-11
What Hacker News says?
> - It contains 100% signal- no noise- and provides helpful related links if you need more information. This is not true anymore. From Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger: > Wikipedia Is Badly Biased https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ It's completely untrustworthy on anything remotely political. Very, very mainstream narrative compliant/reinforcing. - Every page has a steward who (thanklessly) kee…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Google Search Is Dying”Submitted Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us as a story · 478 points
HN discussionI don't think anybody who has seen an edit war thinks wiki editors (not mods, mods have a different role) are saints. I would imagine that fewer than 1% of people who view a Wikipedia article in a given month have knowingly 'seen an edit war'. If I'm right, you're not talking about the vast majority of Wikipedia users. But a Wikipedia page cannot survive stating something completely outside the consensus. Bizarre st…
Comment linking /nine-theses/
on “A small number of samples can poison LLMs of any size”Submitted How and Why I Taught My Toddler to Read (2010) as a story · 172 points
HN discussionWikipedia isn't trustworthy for anything political or controversial: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ <-written by one of the founders of it
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Blocking Kiwifarms”Submitted Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism? as a story · 166 points
HN discussion> If "Big Tech" doesn't want your content, you're free to set up your own server. People love to say this, but look at what happened to gab. There tried to exactly that and were deliberately singled out and blocked at nearly every turn. It's practically to the point that you have to set up a whole parallel society. The fact is Big Tech has be come the de facto public square. And they all share the same bias: https:/…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Blocking Kiwifarms”Submitted How and why I transitioned to Linux, and how you can too as a story · 158 points
HN discussionAccording to its cofounder, Wikipedia abandoned truth long ago. https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney”Submitted Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever as a story · 78 points
HN discussionLarry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, also gives a number of examples of Wikipedia's bias in this article: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Wikipedia is 20”Submitted Wikipedia Is Badly Biased as a story · 74 points
HN discussionI'm trying to understand what specifically makes a worldview conspiratorial for you. Are you disagreeing that the "Great Reset" involves implementing particular ideological views and political positions? Would you agree that people are allowed to disagree with those positions? And that those who disagree with those positions are allowed to call attention to powerful people pushing those positions? Personally I don't…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund”Submitted What should we do about Wikipedia's mature content problem? as a story · 44 points
HN discussionI just read [1]. I'd hope that a person with Sanger's experience and insight would at least float suggestions, proposals, wish list, or any thing at all, to achieve something he'd consider more neutral, objective, or something. everipedia.org I guess does some stuff differently. But if it has a different take on neutrality, it's not jumping out at me. Sanger has some role with Ballotpedia? Maybe his vision for neutr…
Comment linking /2020/09/how-to-fix-social-media-in-three-easy-steps/
on “Wikipedia is getting a new look”Submitted Geek anti-intellectualism: replies as a story · 40 points
HN discussionI also find your first point to be a truly indispensable tool. How else do you know what they call carbon fiber in German? [0] But the second is a touchy area. In fact, Wikipedia's co-founder recently wrote a blog post detailing how its neutral point-of-view policy has flopped, in the name of fighting false balance. [1] His examples are pretty embarrassing, but more important in that Google points human "Search Qual…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Wikipedia is getting a new look”Submitted The Biases of Wikipedia and Moderators Today as a story · 32 points
HN discussionYou're not trying very hard to see a side that's different from yours, are you? You are responding to a comment saying "leftist != realistic", yet you seem to be pretending my intent was to say "here's proof Wikipedia is left-leaning." Neither of my links were given to "prove" bias, either, only to show that accusations of leftwing bias are accusations that Wikipedia is valuing propaganda over truth and objectivity.…
Comment linking /2021/06/wikipedia-is-more-one-sided-than-ever/
on “Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks”Submitted How A Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian [Larry Sanger] as a story · 17 points
HN discussion>[Citation needed] Here you go, from Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger: >Wikipedia Is Badly Biased https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after “somewhat-viral” tweet”Submitted Wikipedia Is Badly Biased (2020) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionMore Golden quotes from the Co-Founder of Wikipedia: "It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one.4 It might be better to embrace a “credibility” policy and ad…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Patagonia joins growing list of companies boycotting Facebook ads”Submitted Grokipedia: A First Look as a story · 7 points
HN discussionOpIndia is not a propaganda website. Period. This is the typical slander that happens when you refer to left-wing articles. If you are referring to left-wing portal Wikipedia as your citation then something is really wrong with you. The point I was making was precisely this. That social media is dominated by the left-wing and the left-wing narrative. Anything that is published on left-wing outlets is taken as truth…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Patagonia joins growing list of companies boycotting Facebook ads”Submitted Larry Sanger – Nine Theses on Wikipedia as a story · 7 points
HN discussionWikipedia has long been unreliable when it comes to politically tangential articles, especially ones that cast characterizations. Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger said so on his blog: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Silicon Valley’s Safe Space”Submitted Grokipedia: A First Look as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI've donated thousands to Wikipedia over the years, but I've noticed an increasing amount of bias in the website that made me hit the pause button. At first I saw it in a couple random examples, where I just thought "that's weird" and dismissed it as a random issue. But then I started to look for bias and noticed it much more frequently. And I don't mean just on the left-right American political spectrum, but also i…
Comment linking /2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
on “Jimmy Wales’ Final Email”Submitted How a Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
