The chart was modified by Marshall Fritz, who founded the Advocates for Self-Government and who also created and popularized the World's Smallest Political Quiz based on the chart in the early 1980s. His modification was to take the original Nolan chart (which was displayed as a square) and turn it 45º counter-clockwise to make the chart into a diamond shape and add a 10 question "quiz." Our own version of the chart uses the same diamond orientation. Fritz's World's Smallest Political Quiz is used to this day by the Advocates, and their quiz has been taken by millions of people.

www.NolanChart.com was founded in August 2007. The site provides a forum for open debate on any and all parts of the political spectrum. It is an open site where anyone can join and contribute articles for free, or join in a revenue sharing plan if desired. Comment fields are provided in all articles for any reader to comment.

Founder Walt Thiessen was dismayed by the lack of respect demonstrated by the mainstream media towards libertarian views. For the most part, libertarian ideas are not presented as being part of the public discussion of issues. If they are even mentioned at all, the reference is usually made in a disparaging way, and the merits of the ideas are discounted.

Since libertarian ideas have already been successfully affecting the public discussion in subtle, unnoticed ways, this situation is not tolerable. Most people in this country would be hard pressed to simply identify a libertarian idea, yet many are unwittingly expressing them in their daily discourse.

Since libertarians are opposed to initiating force, they are also unwilling to force their way onto the public stage. www.nolanchart.com is a way to provide a venue in which libertarian ideas can appear on equal footing with conservative, liberal, statist, and even moderate (centrist) ideas. Walt's expectation is that this will help elevate libertarian thinking to the prominent place in American politics that it so richly deserves. With any luck, instead of trying to change the major media, this site will (hopefully) become a part of the major media!

In its first year the site has reached 3.5 million reads. Today, it's one of the 30,000 most visited websites in the United States of all kinds, and in the top 100 political websites in America.