Larry Sanger

“ For me this allows us to focus on a very important and timely issue: what role does total freedom and openness--to the point of anarchy--play in the Wikipedia project? I think its purpose is to help build the encyclopedia, no more and no less. Is Wikipedia an experiment in anarchy? I don't think so. Is anarchy of such extreme, perhaps intrinsic, value that we ought to try to preserve it at the cost of other values? ”

“ There is, it turns out, in a few cases a tension between the goals of anarchy and encyclopedia creation.
Some tensions spring immediately to the minds of the uninitiated, and I don't mean those. For example, some people would say that anarchy will lead to poor quality and invasion by cranks and vandals. We've learned that, while there are a few problems in that direction, the freedom each of us have to edit others' contributions more or less ensures that we'll remove the vast majority of egregiously bad stuff, crank productions, and vandalism. (See w:Wikipedia/Our Replies to Our Critics.) ”

“ Now if, as I have been recently, I am constantly forced to justify my every action, I can act far less, and my effectiveness as a leader of the project becomes much less effective. This is precisely what has been happening recently. ”