User:Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger is editor-in-chief of Nupedia and (with Jimbo Wales) instigator of Wikipedia. Ph.D. 2000, M.A. 1995, Philosophy, Ohio State University. B.A. 1991 Philosophy, Reed College. Home town is Anchorage, Alaska. I'd prefer if you gave your messages to me below, but if e-mail would be more appropriate (e.g., if I have written something that offends you), you can feel free to add to my persistent backlog at lsanger at nupedia.com.

http://www.wikipedia.com/images/uploads/20ency1.1.jpg

Here is my to do list--mainly for my own use, but also to let people know where my priorities are right now.

What I've written here

I've worked on many hundreds of articles. I originated quite a few. I've inflicted a series of philosophy lectures first on Ohio State students, and now on Wikipedia.

I've written a few 'pedia-related columns, which I've moved to Wikipedia's meta-discussion wiki.

I am trying to promote Wikipedia. I want your help! Go to building Wikipedia membership.

I co-founded Wikipedia, and I am one of a few people who are paid to help organize this project.

I took the are you wikipediholic test, and scored a paltry 48. However, if people can get six points for having a row with me, I think I deserve fifty points just for being me.  :-) OK, I just edited the test. Now my score is 103.  :-)

Random discussion

• /Old comments that used to be at this point on the page.

• /More old comments

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• /And more old comments

Yes, I agree, he is he, nobody would argue with me! :-P

He is he, but this is twee, we'd all agree.

Larry's favorite philosopher is Thomas Reid, isn't he? Maybe!

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I'm not envious because I live here, in Russia!

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Can we rename Basque to Basque language, please? I expect we'll want articles on the Basque people and culture. --Vicki Rosenzweig

Go ahead! No need to ask me. --LMS

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Hi Larry -- I can't get links to Amazon and Pricescan to go away -- help! JHK

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Just don't put in the ISBN numbers... --LMS

You can leave 'em for now, I'll fix them all at once in the PHP script (soon...) --Magnus Manske

Yes, please leave them. ISBNs are useful and important information (in fact, I think in this medium, it's more important to have ISBNs than all the other information traditionally in a bibliography--CMS is simply out of step on that one. Let the software decide what to do with them. --LDC

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Larry, can you look at my wikification of your article on Argument from common consent - as well as wikiing I've added a couple more points that I made up, and contradicted one of your examples :) - Verloren

I'll try to get to it sometime soon. I've just driven to Longmont, Colorado and the plans for the next week are up in the air, but I'll be at work.

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Larry, I've sent you a 'favicon.ico' icon by E-mail, which should complement the new logo graphic in modern browsers -- The Anome

This is something for the sysadmins to deal with...I forwarded it to Jimbo. --LMS

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Thanks for the welcome. Interesting project; heard about it in the NYT Magazine piece. Forgot to put in my blurb that I have a philosophy BA. I see you graduated Reed in '91... know Jeff Hungerford (now Brideges)? We were in grad school together in Seattle. --Brian Hopkins

Can't say that name rings a bell. I'm very glad to hear that the NYT Magazine piece brought in some good hands! --LMS

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Trying to redirect ABM Treaty to Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems results in page name is too long.

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I see. Are those the only two names used? My main concern is that "ABM Treaty" might be (or might soon be) ambiguous. --LMS

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Dear Larry,

I'm brand new to Wikipedia, but I've jumped in with both feet. Right into a fire! My special interests include fantasy literature, which led me to start a page on Christian mythology. Well, since then it's been madness. I've tried to be neutral, compromising, and respectful, but I'm now seeing wholesale redirection of pages, loss of content I wrote, and ideas that disturb me -- for example, should we really have an encyclopedia with no "Greek mythology" page? (It got redirected to "The stories of the Greek religion.") My question for you -- have I breached etiquette in some way? Am I contributing badly? I feel discouraged -- what can/should I do about it? Should I just let it all drop, forget about these pages, and focus on Tolkien and D&D posts?

Thanks for any comment you have. Sorry to be a pest. -- Cayzle

Cayzle: I think you've made a great contribution, and I don't think you've done anything wrong. Just don't let other people get to you. -- SJK

I agree completely with Simon: you've made a great, important contribution, and you've essentially done nothing wrong. And don't let me get to you.  :-) If anything--since you ask--I would recommend that you (and all of us, of course!) try to be more sensitive to how others' beliefs are characterized. On those grounds--and this is not to say anything damning at all about you personally, bear in mind--I really do think there's something wrong with Wikipedia's listing old Bible stories as "Christian mythology," without further ado, etc. If there were a big Bible stories or traditional Christian stories article, and then, in addition, a Christian mythology article that explained the very notion of referring to those stories (and perhaps other stories) as a "mythology," that would be good. In any case, this is one issue (unlike other issues) that would be better treated sensitively by an expert. I think the right way to go about finding out how to do this is to solicit the advice of a few different religious studies professors, after having presented the issue clearly and in full.

I hope it's clear that this has nothing to do with you in particular; it has everything to do with the issue that you happened to have raised. Realize that you do not have direct control over what you've contributed. Neither do I (!), and neither does anyone else. We're working on it together, and the only thing that holds us together, I think, is the neutral point of view policy: the only thing that keeps us from all-out constant edit wars is that we are jointly committed to making each other, and future participants and readers, happy with how our many different views are characterized. This gives us a reasonably clear goal that nearly all of us, at least in practice, are willing to pursue. But it requires tolerance and intelligence, and probably a good sense of humor.

Just since you asked!  :-) Cheers, Larry

Under Buffalo, in the State of New York, page my link goes to a description of the water buffalo, bubalus bubalus, instead of the city! Help! http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/New_York

Werner Moeller

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Fixed! Buffalo, New York is in the standard U.S. city format. --LMS

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You wrote on Wikipedia Religion and Mythology standards

"Well, we certainly don't need a "Wikipedia Religion and Mythology standards" page to discuss this tiny issue. I'm insisting on the point mainly because I think it's very important what our joint understanding of what the neutral point of view policy entails--"

LMS, I have often criticized you for (IMO) not being NPOV, and you have often apparently found me offensive about this. In the interest of fairness, I'd like to say that the above strikes me as a great example of how NPOV issues on Wikipedia should be handled. (So am I getting mellow, or are you? :-) Have a good one.)

Excellent. By the way, people aren't NPOV; what they write is or isn't NPOV. You can be as biased as you want, and I don't care at all. What I care about is whether texts are unbiased. --LMS

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I wanted to contribute a new article on post-structuralism. I mistakenly added it through a link to post-structuralists. I changed the link to make the article "post-structuralism" but the older article (post structuralists) remains and it is the same -- would you mind deleting it? Thanks, SR

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Just redirect it to the new article title! Misspellings, alternative spellings, etc., I don't think there's any point in deleting--just redirect 'em.

Very busy here in Colorado, and sorry I haven't been able to participate more, folks. --LMS

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Larry, Ive managed to work on New_Age some more without anyone over-writing, removing, or revamping. Your opinions are welcome, as always on my graffiti page. If you think the article is close to a done state, maybe Vicki could do some editing to polish it.~BF

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I'm not really sure I like the 'grey splodge' favicon.ico now on the site: it appears to be based on the old logo, as well. It seems to me to be inferior to the one I submitted; would you like me to submit a few variants on the new logo? -- The Anome

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I don't like it either. Complaints on this should be sent to Jimbo. Did you submit that nice "W"? Do it again...to jwales at bomis.com or jasonr at bomis.com. Don't expect immediate service over the holidays, of course. --LMS

Done. The Anome

Note: there's a small bug with the version I sent: however, it works nicely as-is for at least IE and Konqueror users, and only looks wrong in Mozilla. I've already sent a new version to Jimbo (Walone2.ico) which should work OK in IE, Konqueror and Mozilla.

Merry Christmas!

The Anome

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Larry, I'd like to ask that you put a page on historicity on your agenda for articles. Your article on falsifiable was appreciated, as I expect one outlining historical criteria would be. -- BenBaker

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"Historicity" is one of those words bandied about by Continental philosophers a lot more than someone with my sort of training. The main content of the article would be filed under historicism, I suspect. I'll do a little entry on that. --LMS

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Thank you for the Christmas present. It does seem that historicity (as I understand it) and historicism (as you have written about it) seem to be different topics. To my knowledge, historicity is 'actual occurrence or existence; historical genuineness'. I would expect that an article on wikipedia would cover what criteria are generally used by historians to support the belief that historical events occurred. Your article is about the belief that there is no "ultimate" truth, no [absolute truth]. But again, thank you for the present, it is quite interesting, and opened my mind to another view I hadn't heard expressed previously. --BenBaker

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Oh, I see! Well, I don't know anything about that. You'd have to ask a historian! --LMS

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Thanks -- this is a pretty interesting project. I don't envy your position, but I appreciate your work. I also want to ask you to do something I do not know how to do: in the new article, "Evolution of Homo sapiens," and the link in the article "Homo sapiens," "Homo" is spelled with a small h. The convention is a capital H -- can you correct this? Thanks, SR

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Yep; it's just a matter of doing a redirect. I will do that... --LMS

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Anchorage, eh? That's where BrantEaton was born (father was serving in the USAF stationed at Elmendorf AFB) --BrantEaton

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Very cool! You know, Anchorage has an extremely high "achievement index" (average score tests of school students). So.  :-) --LMS

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I just read your article, The Nature of God in Monotheistic Religions and find it very interesting, but it leaves me confused because it seems more an abstract discussion of issues in theology in general, rather than a presentation of how the different monotheistic religions view God. Am I misunderstanding the intent? It seems to me that you could change the title to "The Nature of God" and cut the first two paragraphs, and it would still be a very useful and interesting contribution. But I really expected an article on "God in Monotheistic Religions" to be at least as much, if not more, about Monotheistic religions than about "God" as such.

By the way, a Jewish theologian defined "theism" as the claim that God is both imminent and transcendent (thus distinguishing theism from either pantheism or deism, and also setting up an agenda for "theology," viz. how exactly could God be both at the same time? I do not know if this would fit into your discussions of theism, I sense that you are working through a particular intellectual tradition. -- SR

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Well, just calling the article "the nature of God," which was my first thought, would raise a more serious problem, viz., the article doesn't discuss all conceptions of God, such as pantheistic and polytheistic ones--it focuses on just the one that is (roughly speaking) shared by the major monotheistic religions. But the article could perhaps live on a different page that makes it clear it's about philosophy and not comparative religion. I solicit suggestions.

The issue you raise is just totally ignored, for no good reason, by the article; it certainly isn't intended to be a complete discussion. So, it should be added! (By you, perhaps, please?) The issue fits in very well and is certainly part of the intellectual tradition I'm reporting about. --LMS

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Alas, I would not be the first person I would ask to make further contributions, it has been a long time since I was immersed in these issues. I appreciate your concern about the title of the article -- How about "Theistic Conceptions of God" or "The Nature of God in Western Theology" or "Philosophical discussions of Monotheism?" I don't mean to pick nits, but if your intent is not an essay on comparative religion, I think you'd be better off cutting the phrase "Monotheistic religions." This of course would leave the field open to another article -- one which I couldn't write, but would love to read! -- SR

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Aha! Good one: The nature of God in Western Theology. I think that would do it. However, I'm not sure how much theology per se is in the article. Enough, I suppose. --LMS

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Larry,

What a wonderful project! I stumbled onto Wikipedia entirely by accident a few days ago, and find it fascinating. The quality of the contributions is great. I hope to become a contributor, myself. I also hope the pressures of life do not prevent you from carrying on with these endevours far into the future. --SRWenner

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Thanks! Why merely hope to contribute? Do it!  :-) I hope I'm doing this when I'm an old man; there isn't much danger of my quitting. --LMS

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This is an update of my original comments to reflect current status. I mentioned in Resurrection of Jesus Christ/Talkarchive that I read an essay by Michael Polanyi. It inspired me to learn more about his philosophy of science. I'm now reading his book Personal Knowledge. It seems to me that his ideas could shed light on the

title=Faith_vs_science_with_regard_to_the_Wikipedia Wikipedia faith vs. science discussion. <>< tbc

I know zero about Polanyi. I'm not sure why I should care about the faith vs. science discussion now. Should I read some part of it and respond?

No. After I finish his book I'll try to apply what I've learned to add to that discussion. So far the book is a delight. It's been a long time since I delved into philosophy. Early in the book, Polanyi writes, "[C]omplete objectivity as usually attributed to the exact sciences is a delusion and is in fact a false ideal." I can't wait to learn how he backs up that thesis! Doesn't that make you the least bit curious about his work?

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Larry, do you have anything new to report as far as selection of a Colorado domicile? <>< tbc

No! I'm moving back to Columbus, Ohio, or that's the plan, now! I'm afraid Colorado is now looking too expensive, and Columbus isn't a bad place (it's where I went to grad school)... --LMS

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Would you kindly look into the following problem: I believe that one of the participants is acting improperly in cavalierly erasing extensive work I have done on the Bipolar Disorder and the Depression topics. I am a neuropsychiatrist with great expertise in this area, and as you may see from the Talk on the Bipolar Disorder topic, Anome has cavalierly gone in and deleted all of my work. I made extensive corrections to the egregious misinformation he had provided, but out of respect for him I never changed or deleted any of his work or his misinformation. I simply added corrections to balance his misinformation. I realize that someone has to decide whether to delete his errors but I did not feel that it was my place in this sort of forum in which I hold no official position, and out of respect for Anome (who openly admits that he is not an MD and therefore cannot be a psychiatrist) I changed nothing of his work. I hope you will inform him (since I assume that this is the case) that it is improper to arbitrarily delete someone else's entry because it may embarrass him as exposing the fact that he is passing out unreliable information. I am a brand new participant but I surely have no intention of participating in this project if the unqualified and uninformed can arbitrarily delete the work of those who are informed experts who provide evidence in the literature for their explanations. I should appreciate your assurance that my assumptions in this respect are correct and, further, your informing him of what is and is not appropriate in this forum. Please also take the trouble to inform me what I should do if I find that someone has entered flawed information as in this case. I believe it would help reassure me (and perhaps others with some qualifications) that their effort is not wasted and that there are some standards to the project.

Checking back with the Depression site I see that Anome has again deleted my work, and his written to me both in the entry and in the Talk, stating that:

(1) He is authorized by you to delete my work

(2) He writes to me: "Hey, SE! Please don't just revert my changes - I am trying to merge in your point of view. Please don't just write CORRECTION all over the place: it breaks up the article, and forces others to edit the article back into readable shape." --

I do not find it acceptable for anyone to "merge" my work and I cannot imagine that you prefer the unqualified to be "merging" or modifying the qualified, much less that you authorize this.

Please let me know whether you are interested in having me participate by restoring my original work. I realize that it cannot remain with the word "CORRECTION", but I am sure you understand that this was the only option given my desire to respect the integrity of Anome's original writing--however filled with error. I should prefer not to discuss this with him any further, and I should appreciate your letting me know your decision at your earliest opportunity.

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Hello, doctor!

First, let me welcome you to Wikipedia. As a psychiatrist with some willingness to work on this project, you're extremely valuable--invaluable, in fact--and we don't want to lose you. I should think that the rest of us, who lack your expertise, should go out of our way to respect your views and your contributions.

Second, let me say that, for better or worse, Wikipedia contributors do not claim ownership or exclusive authorship over their contributions; the whole thing is collaborative. This doesn't mean that Anome was justified in his particular edits of your work, but it does mean that, in general, we're collaborating on articles and not just staking out our individual claims. Our sister project, Nupedia, which I hope you will visit, is different--exclusive authorship is certainly possible there. What conclusion to draw from this about Wikipedia and your participation in it, I leave up to you; but I do hope you'll participate. To learn more about this aspect of Wikipedia policy, please see Wikipedia policy as well as Wikipedia/Our Replies to Our Critics.

Third, there is one thing that has come up only seldom before now (because usually the nonexperts happily defer to the experts), though it has indeed come up now and then: when a nonexpert tries to edit an expert's work, and the expert disagrees, what are we to do? My basic suggested rule of thumb is, of course, that we defer to the experts. But in some cases (and I certainly do not make this claim in your case--I haven't reviewed the page in question at all--I'm writing in generalities), a nonexpert could be justified in sticking to his guns. Just for example, it is possible that the expert has an ax to grind, and the nonexpert knows enough to be able to see this and is right to object (because we have a neutral point of view policy). Another example would occur when the expert's text needs some basic copyediting, as does happen sometime, and someone does the copyediting. Even in such cases, we (nonexperts) should do our best not to step on expert toes. Actually, this is just an application of general wikipetiquette; we should do our best not to step on each others' toes generally.

This (the third point) is something that would be great to discuss further on http://meta.wikipedia.com .

I'm crazy enough to think that we can be bold in editing pages and yet maintain a high degree of wikipetiquette! --LMS

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Please see my detailed, line by line, justification of my edits in Bipolar disorder/Talk and Depression/Talk, especially the citation of opinions of medical authorities, and my earlier comments to SE.

Oh, and welcome aboard, SE! -- The Anome

Anome, I'll have a look, since you invite it. Hmm...I think that saying "Hey, SE!" after the person has reported (and we might as well take the person at his or her word, I suppose) being an evidently distinguished psychiatrist. It seems to me that evincing that attitude is going to tend to drive people away who have a low bullshit intolerance (where "bullshit" means dialogue of the sort that they happen to find worthless). (Of course, I don't expect you, me, or anyone to be perfect. We all make mistakes.) Moreover, the merits of your points aside (I admire your desire to enforce NPOV!) I doubt your disrespectful manner of replying helped to convince the person you were trying to convince; please see wikipetiquette. It seems to me you were a little too concerned to assert your moral equality with the guy for purposes of working on Wikipedia articles. But few people here will dispute that (at some level); you could therefore have made the point much more nicely.

We should work on ways to agree with each other and arrive at consensus. If we don't do that, we're going to waste way too much time in personal disputes. Frankly, I'm getting tired of all that. We've got to stop it... --LMS

I think we had two people with "low bullshit tolerance", and an unnecessary clash took place, with not much respect on either side. That said,

I'm happy to apologise - I've certainly calmed down now and I look forward to further progress on the article. SE's input has certainly been helpful, and I look forward to his/her contributions in future. -- The Anome

Sounds very good. Yep, two people with low bullshit tolerance.  :-) Would that we all increased our bullshit tolerance and decreased our output of bullshit.  :-) --LMS

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I wasn't sure what you meant by confirmation that I wrote the False Claims stuff. Warnermendenhall

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Answered on your page! --LMS

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Larry...isn't the direct realism of Thomas Reid a bit archaic? If we relied on sensory input unaided by technology for information about the universe, we would be forced to conclude that most physicists since about 1935 were insane (not to mention people in most other fields of science). I certainly hope that there are enough Wikipedians familiar with scientific developments over the past 50 to 100 years to reflect within the Wikipedia the increasingly accelerating level of consilience currently underway in virtually all fields. F. Lee Horn

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There are people with all sorts of backgrounds, actually. You misunderstood what Reid's realism says. --LMS

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Perhaps I wasn't placing enough confidence in the process whereby the Wikipedia is being written. It's not surprising that I may have misunderstood Reid's realism. The entries in the Wikipedia have so far been my only source of information about him.

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Right; if you rely only on the Wikipedia entries, then (unless you are already familiar with the philosophy of perception as its prosecuted by analytic philosophers) you might very well not understand Reid's realism just on that basis. --LMS

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Ouch! Well, like they say: "A litle knowledge is a dangerous thing." Forgive my presumptuousness. F. Lee Horn

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Sorry, I am new. Your response forced me to learn how to redirct articles -- Something that will be most useful.

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No problem! Yes, redirecting is very useful! --LMS

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Larry, I have started an entry on Religious_Pluralism, which deals with some of the issues raised in recent Wikipedia discussions in the various anti-Semitism related articles. I have tried to create a useful format, describing both intra-religious pluralism (between denominations within a religion) and inter-religious pluralism (between different religions), and I have currently separated viewpoints within each section by faith. Different ways of presenting this material are possible, but its a start. I've only worked on it for a little while, but I plan on adding more this weekend. I've also asked Slrubenstein and Wesley, and anyone else, to join in. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. RK

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I gave a few comments, but not about the content of the article, about which I don't think I know enough. I guess I can add the general comment that we have to be careful not to try to use Wikipedia to do our own original research or even some significant syntheses of old material (which could be controversial, actually). So I would ask questions like this: is this subject (or something like it) actually discussed under the heading "religious pluralism"? Can we, without stretching the ways this topic are actually discussed by theologians and others concerned, distinguish between intra-religious pluralism and inter-religious pluralism? For all I know, the answers to these questions are "yes, of course." But in that case it couldn't hurt to drop a few names, conferences, etc., into the article. (By the way, not all my philosophy articles would meet this standard!) --LMS

This subject is nowadays discussed by many liberal Jewish scholars and rabbis under the title "religious pluralism" and more often, just plain "pluralism". Dozens of articles on this topic are easilly available on the web; hundreds more make reference to it.

• A significant number of books on theology by Jewish authors have sections on this topic.

• I have three books on this topic by Islamic scholars; I assume more exist. Eventually I will have time to add material from these works. These Islamic scholars are (unfortunately, in my view) not representive of Islam, but they speak for more than just themselves. There is a Muslim intellectual minority which lectures and writes about these issuess; they argue that Islam needs to confront pluralism head on; without developing a form of it, they argue, Islam condemns itself to perpetual warfare (in the literal sense of the word) with the rest of the world.

• In the last 20 years some liberal Christians scholars and priests have adopted this terminology, but I don't know how representative it is. I doubt that many people know of this term.

I plan on adding a significant number of names, references, books and organizations to this topic; right now the entry is just a beginning; over the next week it will evolve. I have some references in front of me that I will add some info from over the next few days. Others, no doubt, will join in with additional information and perspectives. RK

Fine! I am not surprised. --LMS

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Larry...the way Wikipedia is currently structured we can go from general topic areas (Biology, for example) and work our way down to articles about specific subjects. What do you think about adding a method of looking up an article about a specific subject and then working our way back up to see what general area(s) it's under? I think this would be helpful. Or can we do this already and I just haven't discovered how? F. Lee Horn

I think this would be a great idea. As Wikipedia is currently structures, I doubt that there is an automated way to do this. But for the sciences at least it wouldn't be that hard to add a new set of links to each article, as we work on them, to do precisely what you propose. RK

But...consider the fact that we can simply encourage people (add a rule to consider!) to add the general subject(s) of an article whenever we create articles. I try to do that myself, at least with the philosophy articles. Simplicity is key. If we don't keep this simple, it's going to be harder to use. One reason Wikipedia is so successful is that it is easy to use. There are, by the way, lots of ways to solve this problem. One suggestion that someone (or several people) has made is the idea of backlinks: on an article page we list, in a column or at the bottom (for example), all the articles that link to the article in question. This could be tweaked all sorts of ways.

Really, the place to make such a suggestion would be on feature requests and we could discuss it on Meta-Wikipedia. I don't make such decisions unilaterally, and usually such feature are created only if interested programmers feel motivated to contribute them! BTW, see the archives of Wikipedia-L; Magnus has added a "category" feature that does something of the sort you suggest. I am skeptical, as you'll see in the discussion. --LMS

P.S.: RK, thanks for the e-mail, sorry I haven't replied. It's awful, my backlog. --LMS