Optional: write a lede — not necessarily a WP:LEAD. Interesting > encyclopedic.

Neutral Point of View is one of the Five Pillars of the English Wikipedia. It is also one of our harder policies to grasp.

The two co-founders share a complicated but diverging relationship with the English Wikipedia, or the greater community at large. Further information on these can be read on the various Wikipedia articles, including History of Wikipedia.

In 2000, Nupedia, considered pre-cursor of Wikipedia, was founded. In 2001, Wikipedia was launched, by founders Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger. In 2002, Sanger left Wikipedia. The various editions and sister projects of Wikipedia, such as German Wikipedia and Wikitionary started from 2001-02 onwards. In 2003, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) was established, as a non-profit organisation. By 2007, Wikipedia became one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, with 2 million articles. As of 2025, Wikipedia continues being 9th most visited, growing to 7 million articles. The Wikimedia Foundation now employs over 300 staff, and continues to host Wikipedia and all the sister projects.

Officially, the WMF and its Board of Trustees are responsible for Wikipedia and the highest level decisionmaking. However, the community of nearly 300,000 volunteers retains much of the autonomy in terms of the day-to-day running of the project. Broadly, the Foundation now supports fundraising, organisational and technical infrastructure, as well as development of tools and features. The community continues to curate the content, retain editorial control over the website, as well as develop the policies that govern the project. Direct action from WMF are few and far between, often invoked for legal reasons.

Since Larry Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, he founded or joined the leadership of several failed competitors, including Citizendium and blockchain based Everipedia. Over the years, he's also joined many right-wing figures in US in attacking Wikipedia, including interviews with Fox News, Tucker Carlson and others. Sanger frequently opines on Wikipedia, with controversial suggestions such as doxxing Wikipedia editors alleged to be antisemitic.

Sanger edits with the username Larry Sanger and has made less than 20 edits to mainspace since 2002, that's fewer than one article edited yearly. Due to having no involvement with the project for 23 years, his opinions are generally derided or disregarded by the community at large. Nevertheless, his comments are frequently picked by mainstream media. See also Washington Post coverage of Sanger from 24 October.

He's also made multiple comments on the Gaza Genocide article. In the interest of giving his views the weightage they deserve, we are not covering his comments.

For more, see prior Signpost coverage and editor comments from 2005, 2010, 2015, 2021, 2023, and 2025.

Comparatively, Jimbo has been significantly more involved with Wikipedia and sister projects (See WP:JIMBO for more). He joined the WMF Board of Trustees in 2004, and has retained a "Founder" seat there for the last 21 years. Jimbo has continued to be Wikipedia's most prominent spokesperson over the years, with many interviews in mainstream media on behalf of the WMF or the Wikimedia movement at large. He continues to be a central figure during Wikimania, as well as awarding the Wikimedian of the Year awards.

On the English Wikipedia, he had several significant powers, which were never invoked or were gradually decreased over time. Now, most of those powers are handled by the community or ArbCom. Many of these powers were relinquished by Jimbo after community discussion, such as having special dispensation to ban editors, which he gave up in 2022, or adminship itself, which was unbundled from the founder user right in 2023.

Jimbo edits as a volunteer with the username Jimbo Wales. While his volunteer edits on mainspace peaked in 2011, Jimbo's talk page remains highly watched by the community, often operating as a de-facto village pump for discussions earlier. Over time, this has reduced as well.

[Jimbo's book]