Wikipedia community votes to ban co-founder Larry Sanger indefinitely

Wikipedia editors voted to ban co-founder Larry Sanger indefinitely after he launched a new campaign for "intellectual diversity" and pressed a set of governance changes that challenged some of the platform’s core norms.

The conflict sharpened on June 12, 2026, when Sanger wrote on a Wikipedia talk page that he was taking the lead in starting WikiProject Intellectual Diversity. The effort was meant to work with existing groups without overlapping too much, and his Nine Theses on Wikipedia called for ending decision-making by consensus, allowing competing articles, abolishing source blacklists, reviving the original neutrality policy, ending indefinite blocks, and adopting a legislative process.

Wikipedia’s Village pump, especially the proposals section, is the site’s venue for concrete, actionable changes and policy discussions, and Sanger’s intervention drew criticism. Critics argued that the proposal and the surrounding outreach fit Wikipedia’s canvassing concerns, which define stealth canvassing as contacting users off-wiki by email, IRC or Discord in order to influence internal discussions.

He co-founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, coined the site’s name and helped draft early norms that still shape editing today, including neutral point of view, no original research, be bold, aspects of verifiability and ignore all rules. Sanger left the project in March 2002 after being laid off from the early effort, but he has continued to argue since 2020 that Wikipedia carries a left-wing ideological bias.

The Wikipedia Signpost listed Sanger’s return with Nine Theses on Wikipedia as a major community topic on October 2, 2025. Wikipedia remains a volunteer-run encyclopedia hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation and available in 347 languages.