An exclusive club
Larry Sanger community-banned
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- See also this issue's In the media
Larry Sanger, known to many as the co-founder of Wikipedia, was banned by the Wikipedia community following a lengthy discussion on June 22, under accusation of canvassing his 90,000 followers via X (formerly Twitter) to support his proposed WikiProject Intellectual Diversity (WPID).
Sanger has a long history of confrontation with Wikipedia. Over the last two years, he has been campaigning against Wikipedia's purported lack of a neutrality policy and against the Reliable sources noticeboard page that sometimes deprecates sources as being generally unreliable. His campaign took place on Fox News and other right-wing news sources, some of them deprecated.
Sanger was banned as the result of an WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents complaint, which was closed on 22 June. The closer offered this rationale:
There is clear consensus for a community ban of User:Larry Sanger. There is general agreement among participants that he has engaged in off-wiki canvassing and is not here to constructively build the encyclopedia. There is also a significant concern shared by many editors that his actions constitute calls for outing.
The only alternate sanctions that gathered significant support were a topic ban or partial block generally intended at forcing him to engage constructively with articles or avoid project space discussions. These alternate sanctions did not reach consensus.
— ScottishFinnishRadish, WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, Special:Diff/1360671935
The ban – itself not without contention over procedure, but reinstated by a second administrator after a 10-hour interval to allow the discussion clock to run out – follows years of Sanger's on-and-off involvement in the community, from the beginning of Wikipedia.
– S – B
Wikimania
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Wikimania 2026 will be held in Paris from 21 to 25 July under the banner of Liberté, Équité, Fiabilité (Liberty, Equity, Reliability). In-person tickets have been sold out – with a very long waiting list – but everybody can register online for free virtual attendance at the registration site until 24 hours before the event. Videos will be streamed live on YouTube and Eventyay, with the latter offering a monitored chat for remote participation.
Some notable differences from previous Wikimanias include a serious emphasis on security and a fairly academic tone to the program. In-person attenders had to first request an invitation and then wait for up to two weeks to hear whether they passed a security check. The actual name and location of the venue has not been disclosed online except that it is in Northeast Paris near the number 7 metro line.
The program can be found here. Presenters are listed together on one page, but without the title of their presentations. You'll recognize several names from earlier Wikimanias or from reading Wikipedia, Diff, or The Signpost. Other presenters appear to have predominantly academic, tech, or perhaps government backgrounds. – S, H
Brief notes
- Arbitration enforcement rules simplified: The procedures around Contentious topics were simplified by three motions:
- The former "awareness" framework was simplified to the following rule:
an administrator should warn an editor whose behavior is not egregiously disruptive if the administrator believes the editor does not understand what editing in a contentious topic means. Otherwise, the administrator should issue an appropriate restriction.
- A complicated process called "renewal", which was literally never used, was repealed
- Finally, admins are instructed that
If an editor does not improve their behavior after a warning, administrators should normally impose editor restrictions rather than give additional warnings.
- The former "awareness" framework was simplified to the following rule:
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators, Chipmunkdavis and TechnoSquirrel69, selected in "old fashioned" requests for adminship with over 200 supporters and no opposition. The RfAs both concluded on 30 June. There are currently two ongoing requests for adminship, scheduled to close on 20 July 2026.
- Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Chess, followed by Chicago Bulls (beginning 13 July). Please be bold in helping to improve these articles!
- Next 25 kickoff: The meeting summary notes from the initial meeting of the Next 25 group held on 7 July, attended by some 50 Wikimedians, have been posted.
- Wikimedia Café: This month's edition of the Café is to be held July 26 with two time slots for global convenience (time slot 1, time slot 2 – both one day later than usual to deconflict from Wikimania). The topic will be Wikimedia governance, not limited to the Movement Charter. Check the signup page for details.
- NPOV: A proposed baseline NPOV standard has a planned discussion period on Meta-Wiki through 15 July.
- Commons AI policy: An RfC concerning policy update for AI content is open on Commons.
- New edition of free MediaWiki book: User:Yaron Koren has announced a new revision of his book Working with MediaWiki (ISBN 978-1540761149, also freely accessible online). Updates include a new chapter titled "AI and the future of wikis".
- Proposed changes to the recognition and funding of Wikimedia affiliate organizations: The Wikimedia Foundation has published a proposal
The Foundation is soliciting community feedback on the proposal until August 7, before submitting it to the Board of Trustees.that would update movement affiliate recognition and establish new, connected criteria for eligibility to receive Community Fund grants. The proposal also clarifies expectations for different types of affiliates [such as Wikimedia chapters and user groups], [and] formalizes the role of hubs within the model [...].
Discuss this story
Larry Sanger
— Jacques Mallet du Pan (1793)
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! Andrew🐉(talk) 15:38, 29 July 2026 (UTC)reply
Wikimania
As I have requested on pretty much every Wikimania for years, I call for the WMF to publish a detailed accounting of how much this Wikimania is costing the donors who are paying for it. With names of individuals redacted, of course. Adding a section on what the objective benefits are would be a nice addition. Even nicer would be a section documenting any bad effects from cancelling Wikimania during Covid. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:44, 13 July 2026 (UTC)reply
I have witnessed and endured the changes at this year's Wikimania in Paris, and it is truly disheartening.
Let’s start toalking about money and organization. I should mention that I have attended two previous Wikimanias: London in 2014 and Esino Lario in 2016. On both occasions, I paid for all my expenses out of my own pocket. I was accompanied by my wife and two sons, and I covered their costs as well. I do this because Wikimedia is a voluntary activity for me, and I believe I should pay my own way. As a side note: at a meeting in Esino, I asked if anyone else had paid for their own expenses. The look of surprise on people's faces was indescribable—they wouldn't have been any more astonished had I asked for representatives from Wikimedia Uranus.
This year I applied for a grant to attend, mainly just to secure a ticket. At first (back in February, I think), I was told that my application had been rejected. That’s just how life goes! I have other things to do—responsibilities, commitments, and a life of my own—so I simply made other plans. When I received an email months later (in June, I believe) saying I’d been awarded the scholarship and that I had to answer in two days time, I simply couldn't go. The thing is—and I can't stress this enough—I have a life, and I can't just put it on hold.
I should add that my first impulse after the refusal was to buy the tickets and head straight to Paris. Paris is a fourteen-and-a-half-hour drive from where I am sitting now, and I am capable of doing the drive—I’ve done it many times. But the idea of just paying my way was quickly abandoned because all available information indicated—with every source saying the same thing, including several official sources from the Organization and the Chapters—that there were no tickets. Punto-pelota!
So far, I have addressed two issues. One that you have already discussed: who is paying for all this. And another that you haven't discussed, but which is also infuriating: the very poor organization.
Now, let’s turn to the subject of security. I’ve been looking into this, and in the state of Ohio—with the exception of the city of Toledo—police officers patrol alone. In France (and in many other European countries—at least in Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom), the standard practice is to patrol in pairs; think, for instance, of the classic Spanish Civil Guard patrols: “la pareja de la Guardia Civil”. Furthermore, in France, as an extra precaution, many public spaces are patrolled by a special unit known as the CRS, who operate in groups of three. You see them quite often. Needless to say, firearm laws in France are nothing like those in the United States. Consequently, the situation in Ohio differs significantly from the situation in Paris. Other things can happen, of course, because there is always the risk of encountering some heartless individual. But establishing an entirely new security paradigm because of the actions of some moron in El Quinto Pino is truly disproportionate. I am well aware that risks do exist—they always do. On December 20, 1990, an ETA bomb exploded about 300 meters from where I am now, at a bus stop on San Vicente Street. Yet, life in my neighborhood didn't come to a halt because of it.
Now it turns out there is an unspecified threat that has materialized into an incident—an isolated one, perhaps? What should be an occasion for Wikimedians to gather has turned into an event requiring a security scrutiny and individual express approval to assist. I believe the only other time I’ve been asked to undergo a formal security clearance process to gain access to something was when entering an Airbus factory. Certainly, you don’t go through security checks to attend a gathering of colleagues—or a football match, a concert, a university graduation, and so on—beyond whatever standard procedures might be in place due to specific circumstances. And such measures were not applied at the Wikimanias I have attended. (I wonder: how would they have been organized in Esino? Would have all the village be seald off for a week?)
For me, the most important part of attending Wikimania isn't the official program of events. You really gain knowledge and spark new ideas through interactions with the random people you meet: a guy with a project on Timor-Leste, a couple telling you about Month of Asia, a young professor organizing editing sessions on Spanish literature in Arabic, or someone interested in whether Catalan is older than Polish or whether it’s possible to cover 90,000 square kilometers in a year taking pictures. That’s where you get new ideas. You don't get much out of listening to the official presentations. If those random people can't attend, the project is being ruined.
It is truly sad.
B25es (talk) 16:08, 15 July 2026 (UTC)reply