Lawrence Mark Sanger (/ˈsæŋər/ ⓘ;[1] born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales.

Sanger coined Wikipedia's name, and provided initial drafts for many of its early guidelines, including the "Neutral point of view" and "Ignore all rules" policies.

Sanger continued to serve as Nupedia's editor-in-chief and as an active contributor to Wikipedia in its first year, but he was laid off and left the projects in March 2002.

[19] Beginning in 1998, he and a friend ran a website called "Sanger and Shannon's Review of Y2K News Reports", a resource for people such as managers of computer systems who were concerned about the year 2000 problem.

[14][20] Nupedia was a web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors possessing relevant subject matter expertise and reviewed by editors prior to publication, and were licensed as free content.

[14] Sanger served as Wikipedia's "chief organizer",[34] inviting new contributors and drafting early policy, including "Ignore all rules", "Neutral point of view", "No original research", and "Verifiability".

[39] While such issues were not important to Sanger when Wikipedia was a source of articles for Nupedia, as it grew into an independent project he started to become more concerned about the community.

[40] Sanger responded to these conflicts by proposing a stronger emphasis on expert editors and giving certain contributors the authority to resolve disputes and enforce rules.

[44] Sanger was laid off in February 2002[45][46] after Bomis lost a grant in the Dot-com crash,[9] and he resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and chief organizer of Wikipedia on March 1.

[47] Sanger said he ended his participation in Wikipedia and Nupedia as a volunteer because he could not do justice to the tasks as a part-timer,[47] he was frustrated by sustained arguments,[39] and while he cared about the project, it was "not something [he] would have chosen as a hobby" and he would rather spend time with family, "reading and writing philosophy, and playing fiddle.

[54] As early as January 17, 2001, Sanger was cited as "Instigator of Nupedia's wiki" by active volunteer and chief copyeditor Ruth Ifcher,[55] and he was identified as a co-founder of Wikipedia in September 2001.

Wales responded to a query about the feud between the two men, stating: "I think very highly of Larry Sanger, and think that it is unfortunate that this silly debate has tended to overshadow his work.

"[62] In a November 2015 interview with Zachary Schwartz for Vice, Sanger expanded on his experiences with trolls on Wikipedia during the site's initial growth: "It was kind of stressful.

[17] When asked by Schwartz what he would do differently if he started over with Wikipedia, Sanger said: "One thing that I would have done, could have done, and should have done right away would be to create a process whereby articles were approved by experts.

[26] In March 2014, Sanger stated that "In some fields and some topics, there are groups who 'squat' on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases.

"[64] In December 2015, Sanger said that "Wikipedia itself might be thought to be committed to such a completely international neutrality, and in places, its policies have seemed to hold it to that utopian ambition.

Sanger commented in the blog post: "It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy)."

As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science".

[68] In a February 2021 interview with Fox News, Sanger stated that Wikipedia's "ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work".

"[70] In a July 2021 interview with Freddie Sayers of LockdownTV, Sanger claimed that Wikipedia is not trustworthy and that its contributors have a left-leaning bias.

"[71] In a July 22, 2021, interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Sanger said that Wikipedia allowing anonymous contributors had resulted in the website being taken over by criminal bodies, as well as by corporations and governments.

[73] In an August 2021 interview with The Sunday Times of London, Sanger objected to Wikipedia's description of alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, as "pseudoscience".

[78] In 2012, Sanger told Fox News that he worked with NetSpark to get them to donate or heavily discount its pornographic image filtering technology for use on Wikipedia.

[80] At the Wizards of OS conference in September 2006, Sanger announced the launch of a new wiki-based encyclopedia called Citizendium—short for "citizens' compendium"—as a fork of Wikipedia.

[81] The objective of the fork was to address perceived flaws in the way Wikipedia functions; anonymous editing was disallowed, all users were required to use their real names,[82] and there was a layer of experts who had extra authority.

[81] It was an attempt by Sanger to establish a credible online encyclopedia based on scholarship,[83] aiming to bring more accountability and academic rigor to articles.

[81] Sanger has worked at the WatchKnowLearn project, a non-profit organization that focuses on educating young children using videos and other media on the web.

[115][116] On October 18, 2019, Sanger announced that he had resigned from his position at Everipedia and returned his stock holdings in the company without compensation to establish the Knowledge Standards Foundation and develop the website encyclosphere.org.

[121] Sanger has argued that liberal and left-leaning views dominate in academia, science, the media and tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter.

[122] In September 2021, in response to U.S. President Joe Biden announcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, Sanger tweeted "Nor I.#IWillNotComply" in agreement with political commentator Tim Pool.