Summary
Hank Green’s main point is that Jimmy Wales walking out of the interview was not really about the “founder vs. co-founder” label. He argues it was about a much deeper conflict over trust, Wikipedia’s legitimacy, and the internet’s tendency to turn everything into outrage and culture-war ammunition.
He frames Larry Sanger as a former collaborator who now attacks Wikipedia from the outside, often in ways that undermine public trust in it, while Wales has spent decades actually sustaining the project. From that perspective, the interview question was not neutral small talk; it reopened a long-running fight about who gets to define Wikipedia’s story and, by extension, whether people should trust Wikipedia at all.
Green’s larger defense is of Wikipedia itself. He says its real value is that it is transparent, citation-based, community-maintained, self-correcting, and importantly, boring. In his view, that boringness is exactly what makes it one of the few trustworthy places left on the internet. His conclusion is that Wikipedia is a quiet public good, and the attacks on it are part of a broader system that profits from destroying trust rather than building it.
Transcript
[00:00] So, there’s this clip going around of [00:01] Jimmy Wales, who is the founder or [00:04] co-founder, we’ll get into it, of [00:05] Wikipedia, walking out of an interview [00:07] after like 50 seconds. And to start out, [00:09] like I got to say that that I respect [00:11] Jimmy Wales so much. I see him as over [00:14] the last 20 years just having done a [00:16] tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes [00:19] hard and good work. And Wikipedia, it is [00:22] now better than Google. Like, if I want [00:23] to know something, I search Wikipedia [00:25] first. And it is a crowdsourced [00:26] nonprofit. But the thing that happened [00:28] in this interview, he starts out saying [00:29] that I’m Jimmy Wells, the founder of [00:31] Wikipedia. The interviewer says, “Are [00:33] you the founder or are you the [00:35] co-founder?” And Jimmy says that this is [00:37] the dumbest question in the world. [00:39] >> You’re the founder or co-founder? Cuz uh [00:41] >> I don’t care. It’s the dumbest question [00:43] in the world. Absolutely. [00:44] >> There seems to be a dispute. [00:46] >> There’s no dispute. I don’t care. [00:48] >> Then they have a a little back and forth [00:49] and he just gets up and leaves. This [00:51] feels, as a viewer, petty. It feels [00:54] dramatic. It’s the kind of internet [00:56] moment where one guy is clearly [00:58] overreacting and everybody else gets to [00:59] dunk on him. He’s saying like, “I don’t [01:01] care whether I’m the founder or [01:02] co-founder, but like obviously he does.” [01:04] But here’s what I think. I don’t think [01:05] this is petty and I don’t think it’s [01:07] simple. And I don’t think it is about [01:09] founder versus co-founder. I think it is [01:11] what happens when you try to build trust [01:14] in a world that is currently structured [01:16] to destroy trust at every opportunity. [01:19] So on its face, this question is silly. [01:22] Wikipedia was co-founded by Jimmy Wales [01:24] and Larry Sanger. You can look that up [01:26] on Wikipedia. And if you don’t know [01:27] anything about either of these guys, [01:28] this is going to look super petty. Like, [01:30] why is Jimmy detonating because of this [01:33] question that he supposedly doesn’t care [01:35] about? This is a trap door into 20 years [01:38] of baggage that has nothing to do with [01:40] who registered a domain name and [01:42] everything to do with the internet that [01:44] we are trying to survive. Right now, [01:47] Larry Sanger is on a campaign to try and [01:50] destroy people’s trust in Wikipedia. So [01:52] saying, “Do you acknowledge that Larry [01:54] Sanger, this guy who hasn’t worked on [01:55] Wikipedia since 2002, who now goes on [01:58] right-wing media to say that Wikipedia [01:59] is controlled by leftist elites, can we [02:01] talk about that guy, that guy who’s [02:03] destroying trust instead of the thing [02:05] that you’re here to talk about, which is [02:07] the book that you wrote about how to [02:09] build trust?” So yeah, Jimmy Wales is [02:11] currently on book tour. He’s headed all [02:12] over the world to promote this book. [02:14] It’s exhausting to promote a book. This [02:16] is a thing that I can attest to. You get [02:18] worse and worse as it as time goes on. [02:20] But at the same time, he’s being [02:22] attacked by some of the most powerful [02:23] people in the world, including the [02:25] richest men in the world, for doing his [02:26] very hard and thankless job that did not [02:29] make him a billion dollars. So, yeah, [02:30] the guy’s exhausted. He walks in and the [02:33] interviewer, knowingly or not, sticks [02:35] his finger into an old bruise. And I [02:37] could totally be getting this wrong, but [02:39] I’m going to attempt like a little [02:40] internet anthropology here. Jimmy Wales [02:43] funded Wikipedia’s predecessor. He set [02:45] up the infrastructure. He championed the [02:47] idea of the open encyclopedia. He kept [02:50] the servers on. He kept the lights on. [02:51] He kept the project alive. Larry Sanger, [02:53] he coined the name Wikipedia. He wrote [02:55] the early rules. He organized the first [02:58] contributors. Then he left the [02:59] organization with his co-founder status [03:01] and then went on to become one of [03:03] Wikipedia’s greatest critics and the [03:05] patron saint of Wikipedia has a liberal [03:07] bias. These people are obviously [03:09] co-founders. The reason that Jimmy Wales [03:11] thinks this is a dumb question is [03:12] because their work that they have put [03:14] into these things is not equal. Since [03:16] Larry Sanger left, the work of building [03:19] the Wikipedia Foundation, of running [03:20] Wikipedia, of being the person in charge [03:23] of it, of a community of a bunch of [03:25] individual volunteers who have built the [03:28] greatest resource of information the [03:31] world has ever seen and all have their [03:33] own personalities and and need systems [03:35] for organizing them, are extremely [03:37] difficult and thankless jobs. He’s been [03:39] doing that work. Larry Sanger’s been [03:41] over here from the sidelines critiquing [03:43] it. These men are obviously co-founders, [03:45] but that makes them seem like they have [03:46] like equal ability to speak to the [03:49] situation that Wikipedia is in, which [03:52] they do not. One of them is involved [03:54] every single day. One of them has been [03:55] critiquing from the sidelines for 20 [03:57] years and all the different [03:58] disagreements that they had in the early [03:59] moments of Wikipedia. This should be in [04:01] a dusty corner of a mailing list [04:02] archive, but it has been enrolled in the [04:05] modern war over who gets to define [04:07] reality. And if you just look at this [04:09] from a a distance, what you see is [04:11] people who want to be able to define [04:13] reality, but who do not have control [04:16] over Wikipedia. Elon Musk is like, “This [04:18] is a disaster of a place.” Because, of [04:20] course, it says things he doesn’t like [04:22] about him. And so Elon is responding by [04:23] creating Groipedia, an AI created [04:26] version of Wikipedia that mostly just [04:28] pulls Wikipedia off of Wikipedia, which [04:30] is admittedly in the Creative Commons. [04:32] So you could do that. That’s fine. is [04:35] just worse in every way because it [04:36] doesn’t have all of the amazing [04:38] infrastructure behind it of the talk [04:39] page of the people who I don’t I I don’t [04:43] know if I can get people to understand [04:44] this but holding this community together [04:47] and keeping them maintaining Wikipedia [04:51] for decades is insane. It’s a miracle. [04:55] So that’s the mess. That’s why the [04:56] stupid question is stupid and also not [04:58] stupid and also he doesn’t care but [05:00] obviously cares because we’re asking if [05:02] the people who built Wikipedia can’t [05:04] agree on its origin story. What does [05:06] that mean for the truth that we all rely [05:08] on Wikipedia to tell? So imagine you’re [05:10] Jimmy Wales, like you built something [05:11] truly magnificent, truly like a great [05:14] resource for humanity with a lot of help [05:16] of course, but you’re doing that every [05:18] day and you’re not using it to get rich. [05:20] And the project of Wikipedia, like being [05:22] adree, being a a lovely little place on [05:24] the internet, not a place to get [05:26] outraged, not a place to get [05:27] radicalized, not a place to make money, [05:29] but just a place to learn things, to [05:31] start someone’s journey into [05:33] understanding in the world, and you can [05:34] fall down that rabbit hole. And in the [05:36] meantime, you watch the entire rest of [05:38] the internet slide down into [05:40] polarization, misinformation, [05:42] algorithmic blood, sport, filter [05:45] bubbles, all of that. And then your [05:47] former collaborator who left the project [05:49] before most of it even existed gets [05:52] adopted by a political movement that [05:54] needs Wikipedia to be corrupt. Because [05:56] if Wikipedia is neutral and boring and [05:59] well sourced, then that is a threat to [06:01] their worldview and it’s a threat to [06:03] their ability to define reality. And [06:06] then you go on and you write a book that [06:08] says, “Hey, can we still build things [06:10] that work? Can we still trust each [06:12] other? It doesn’t have to be like this.” [06:14] And as you’re on book tour for this, [06:16] Elon Musk launches Grocipedia and the [06:20] rightwing has a sudden like explosion [06:22] and then reporters feel like they have a [06:24] a requirement to report on that during [06:27] these interviews. So instead of talking [06:28] about trust and the book, you’re like, [06:30] “What about your rival? What about this [06:31] guy who says, “Oh, this thing that is we [06:33] think is good is actually evil.” Oh, you [06:35] wanted to talk about how to build trust. [06:36] Well, LET’S USE THE SAME SYSTEM THAT [06:38] WE’RE CONSTANTLY USING TO DESTROY TRUST [06:40] IN everything to take your tour about [06:42] how to build TRUST AND MAKE IT ABOUT [06:45] DESTROYING TRUST IN A THING PEOPLE [06:47] TRUST. AND EVERYBODY knows the wrong [06:49] decision to make is to get frustrated [06:52] and get mad and to storm out of an [06:54] interview. Everybody knows it. But [06:56] people areing humans. It’s obviously a [06:58] terrible reaction. It’s just like a [07:00] completely to me a completely [07:02] understandable one. I think that Jimmy [07:04] is right that this question is dumb. [07:07] [laughter] It’s not it’s not that [07:09] interesting because he’s not writing a [07:11] book about Wikipedia. He’s writing a [07:12] book about trust. He’s writing what he’s [07:14] learned from his position, from his [07:17] seat. But as with so many founder [07:19] stories, neither of them matter that [07:22] much anymore. Wikipedia is a community [07:24] of hundreds of thousands of editors. [07:26] People don’t get this. You can go on [07:27] pretty much any Wikipedia page and you [07:29] can make your own corrections. You can [07:31] make your clarifications. And as a new [07:33] editor, that might get reversed because [07:34] maybe you don’t understand why the [07:36] sentence was the way that it was. But I [07:37] do this all the time. Like I find [07:39] something in Wikipedia that’s wrong and [07:40] then I change it. Like I fix it. Like I [07:43] find something on a topic that I know a [07:44] lot about. Often times this is like [07:45] online video stuff and I like, you know, [07:48] I try to find a source for it and I make [07:49] a change and I include the citation for [07:51] that and then the change sticks. And [07:53] that’s how for the most part the whole [07:54] website works. It is transparent. It is [07:57] citationbased. It’s globally accessible. [07:59] It’s self-correcting. And I cannot [08:01] emphasize this enough, boring. It’s [08:03] boring. And in the media landscape [08:06] designed to amplify the drama and the [08:07] outrage and the conflict, the fact that [08:09] Wikipedia is kind of boring is one of [08:10] the most BEAUTIFUL THINGS ABOUT IT. I [08:12] LOVE IT. I WANT A PLACE THAT’S NOT ABOUT [08:15] TRYING TO get views. It’s God. And it’s [08:18] so obvious that the people who critique [08:20] it, they love getting views. And like I [08:24] know it because I’m them, right? I love [08:26] getting views. You think I GET THEM BY [08:27] ACCIDENT? Wikipedia is a miracle. Like [08:30] it is not perfect. But thank [screaming] [08:32] God for Wikipedia. It’s just a bunch of [08:34] regular people who choose for like a few [08:35] minutes of their day. Maybe more than [08:37] that because a lot of people are like [08:38] storied Wikipedia editor who spend a lot [08:40] of time doing it, but they just spend [08:42] that time being careful and helpful and [08:44] trying to be factual, which I know is [08:46] hard. It’s hard to be nonpartisan. It’s [08:50] hard to have that neutral point of view, [08:51] but the attempt is there. And of course [08:54] people are going to disagree, but like [08:56] we got to try. And fine, if you want to [08:59] build another version of it, that’s [09:00] fine. But the attacks are ridiculous. [09:02] They try so hard. And I’m sitting here [09:04] watching as one of the few people who [09:06] has successfully laid a foundation of [09:09] trust, tries to go on a book tour [09:11] talking about how that might be [09:13] replicated and is being used as an [09:15] opportunity to tear at the foundation of [09:17] trust that he’s built. [09:20] Oh [sighs] my god. And if I can use this [09:22] as an opportunity for anything, it’s to [09:25] not lose sight of what Wikipedia [09:28] actually is. It’s one of the only places [09:30] on the internet where you can see how [09:32] the sausage is made. You can read the [09:34] real arguments. You can check the [09:35] sources. You could decide for yourself [09:37] how you feel. And it is not designed to [09:40] get clicks. What was that thing? Null. [09:43] Like Google made a Wikipedia competitor [09:45] called null. K N O L. And it failed [09:48] because it was about rewarding the [09:51] people who wrote the pages. Like they’d [09:52] get money based on the impressions and [09:54] then they’d run ads on it. So just like [09:56] YouTube, I make the video, YouTube [09:58] shares the revenue that of the ads that [09:59] they sell. They wanted to do that but [10:01] with like a Wikipedia corn and it bombed [10:04] because everybody was trying to make the [10:05] pages that would get the most views and [10:07] it tore itself apart. I mean, if you [10:09] spend any time on the internet, you find [10:11] how tremendously useful it is and it is [10:13] maintained quietly by people who get [10:16] nothing from doing that except the [10:19] satisfaction of making the world a [10:20] little more accurate. And maybe these [10:21] people can’t believe that and so they [10:23] think that they’re a bunch of wokesters [10:24] trying to lie and and like form their [10:27] own version of reality. But I it’s just [10:29] not what’s going on. Like if they were [10:30] trying to get attention, you’d know who [10:32] they were. Cynicism and nihilism are so [10:35] high and that matters way more than two [10:38] founders who do not like each other and [10:40] I am so worried about it. But what I see [10:42] like I don’t know that much about Jimmy [10:44] Wales. I don’t know that much about [10:45] Larry Sanger. But I do see one person [10:47] who’s trying to say we need to build [10:50] trust and I see one person who’s doing [10:51] the same thing as everybody else who [10:53] wants to get attention on the internet. [10:55] And I know this because I write YouTube [10:56] titles. They are asking. One of the best [10:58] ways to get attention is to tell people [11:00] that they are being lied to. And it’s [11:01] also a great way to get people to leave [11:04] behind some system over here and see you [11:07] as one of the only sources for good [11:08] information which obviously Elon Musk [11:11] leans into that really hard. He [11:12] obviously very clearly wants to be in [11:15] charge of defining reality for you know [11:17] a large group of people if not everyone. [11:19] We are so hungry for conflict that we [11:21] turn something as boring as Wikipedia [11:23] into a part of the culture war. But we [11:25] are also so hungry for good information [11:27] that Wikipedia gets billions of page [11:29] views a month. Wikipedia is as good and [11:30] as successful as it has ever been. And [11:32] it is actually new knowledge being [11:35] synthesized by people, not just [11:37] regurgitations of that by an AI [11:39] overview. The fight is always going to [11:41] be the loud thing, but like the actual [11:43] useful things in the world are quiet and [11:45] invisible. And I hate that like the [11:47] quiet invisible usefulness of Wikipedia [11:50] is getting dragged into this fight. And [11:52] the rebuilding of trust, [11:55] it’s so hard. I hate watching a person [11:57] who’s like trying to think honestly and [11:59] openly about how to rebuild trust and [12:01] then the systems of the internet, both [12:03] the people who know what they’re doing [12:05] and then all the structures that reward [12:07] that behavior, they tear it down. They [12:09] turn that conversation into yet more [12:11] destruction of trust. But if you look [12:12] past this drama, which is like [12:14] momentary, this is of this moment. Like [12:16] if you’re a Wikipedia and if you’re a [12:18] Wikipedia editor, Wikipedia is working. [12:20] It’s still being improved. It is still [12:22] teaching us things and it is not done. [12:25] And it is more necessary now than it has [12:27] ever been. And I just want to say how [12:29] much I appreciate your work. I know this [12:32] and I want everyone to know this. You [12:33] are not trying to define reality. You’re [12:36] just trying to give us all a shared [12:37] starting point. And we need that and it [12:39] is so worth celebrating and I celebrate [12:42] the [ __ ] out of you. Thank you. It’s so [12:44] good and it is so dumb but so [12:47] predictable that these people would drag [12:48] this into their discourse because [12:50] anything anything that they don’t [12:52] control somehow just by pure luck I [12:55] guess is wrong and bad and woke and [12:56] needs to be attacked. What a surprise.