History is written by the victors, and unfortunately Sanger decided to instead focus on Nupedia, which was more focused on "experts" writing the articles. Ultimately it seems that Sanger didn't truly believe in the core underlying idea of Wikipedia, which is that allowing anyone to write/edit without any reputation or credentials (or even an account!) eventually leads to a good outcome. It's counter-intuitive to some degree that the noise of allowing the "unwashed masses" to contribute is outweighed by the ease of attracting new contributors combined with the decentralized, crowd-sourced corrections of the community.

There's a reason why Wikipedia is one of the largest and most useful websites on the internet meanwhile Citizendium barely lasted, and that reason had little to do with ideas being stolen or porn profits being redirected. Jimmy is just a good businessman and made something people want / need with the proper marketing and leadership. It's as simple as that.

He did something. He is doing something now.

Exactly. Why does it matter?

These arguments about who's more important than who are usually pretty pointless. You should begin with a measure of importance and then use it in an unbiased way to evaluate people. It should give results you agree with no matter who you apply it to. Is funding something more important than founding it? Is doing unpaid work more important than paying for work? Who knows without any criteria, but coming up with a name surely ranks pretty low by anyone's standard.

Larry's been here a few times! https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=lsanger

Just mentioning for curiosity's sake.

This isn't really any different than most cases. Think Elon Musk started Tesla or SpaceX? Nope, he bought in just like Jimmy.

Tesla, sure, but SpaceX was all Elon Musk, unless I am living in an alternative universe. His friends all tried to convince him he was crazy to start a rocket company. One even put together a montage of rocket explosions to try to keep him from doing it.

Musk didn't found Tesla and is (somewhat inappropriately) labeled as a cofounder, but joined in Series A as an investor.

But he very much did build SpaceX from nothing (well, his Paypal money), and his unconventional approach is responsible for their success.

Musk absolutely should take credit for Tesla as it exists today.

The Tesla he bought into was just a research project. It was nowhere near the global brand it is today nor were they on a trajectory that would have put them anywhere close to where they are today. It was his vision that made it possible at all.

Similar to the founding story of McDonald's. Ray Croc bought the idea and made McDonald's what it is today. He didn't actually start the original 6 burger restaurants named McDonald's.

I agree that Musk was very impactful for Tesla, and it would most likely be nowhere near where it is today without him.

My only complaint is that he is not a cofounder, but joined in Series A as an investor.

It's also questionable whether Tesla Motors would have had the same impact (or even survived) without Musk's efforts and leadership. They were making a very niche sports car at the time that was basically hand built. Musk is the one that got them to a mainstream commercial product.

There's almost 100% chance it would have failed, I doubt they could have found a more dedicated and driven person to take it through its darker times.

Fine, but when do we stop assigning money and drivers as co-founders? You can look at situation like Lee Iacocca did the same thing for Chrysler, but he wasn't labeled as a co-founder.