Talk:History of Wikipedia/Archive 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Contents

[edit] Semi-protection

I request semi-protection for this article. Too many people visit it and vandalism occurs often and this page shouldn't be vandalised more so than other pages. Zuracech lordum 09:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Duplication

Unfortunately, there is an existing timeline already in Meta [meta:Wikipedia_timeline]. There, I've been focusing on improving the pre-2002 items, trying to make sure there is a consistent formatting, and every entry has a specific date and reference. It appears that the time line on this page has had more care since 2002. I think would make a lot of sense to somehow consolidate these two pages so that one as a prose history, as well as a specific timeline. Actually, I am not that fond of the timeline being in Meta since many of the links that need to be 'en:' qualified. - Reagle 15:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Note also Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people and Wikipedia:Historic debates for substantial overlap. - BanyanTree 18:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misc

I actually don't see the need for the paragraph that begins "In March 2002" if for no other reason than it seems out of place with the rest of the material. - Hephaestos 19:20 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

well that simplifies things. Martin 20:17 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wikiquote and wikibooks are not, to date, important enough for a wikipedia article, in my opinion. Martin 21:56, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This is a great article; does anyone think it should be linked up to the Main Page?? --Merovingian 09:15, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier if we added a timeline to this article, or even made the article consist of but a timeline, and there are links for the different stages if more information is required. Ludraman 20:50, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's inappropriate to say little about the history in the main article. The article lengths are such that chunks of this article would fit in the main wikipedia article. How about just leaving a timeline here and moving the rest back?

[edit] Slashdot

The project received large numbers of participants after being mentioned three times on the tech website Slashdot — two minor mentions on March 5 and March 30, 2001, and then a prominent pointer to a story on the community-edited technology and culture website Kuro5hin on July 26.

It would be very informative if those mentions on slashdot were to be linked to directly after they are referred to, which will of coures involve digging them up... -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:04, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day

Would we really need an article about Wikipedia Day? Is it encyclopedic? Fredrik | talk 05:45, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] history of the "Current Events" page

I am trying to trace the history of the "Current Events" page for Wikipedia. I am able to trace the "Current Events" page back to the archive of January of 2002. Did the "Current Events" page exist in 2001? Was it archived? Can anyone confirm if this was originally on the "Current Events" page? --Memenen 2 July 2005 23:24 (UTC)

Prior to that, the history was lost. I can find http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_events. Notice, however, that nostalgia is a snapshot of how things were in the older software, and it lost history every few weeks. --cesarb 2 July 2005 23:37 (UTC)
Other resources
Wikipedia:Wikipedians_in_order_of_arrival - gives you a clue who to ask
Blank Google search for current events inurl:2001 site:mail.wikipedia.org shows that no-one talked about it much :)
This URL shows with a high degree of confidence that Topics removed from current events began in November 2001. If I was a gambling man, I would say that current events started in September 2001. Maybe The Cunctator would be a good person to ask. Pcb21| Pete 3 July 2005 00:25 (UTC)
I just explored the Internet Archives, my results suggest that the events of September 11 may have been what lead to the start of the Wikipedia Current Events page. --Memenen 3 July 2005 01:15 (UTC)

[edit] Censorship?

Why does the "F*lun Gong" article title have to be censored? Will spelling it out cause mainland China to block Wikipedia? Would pipelinking it help? — JIP | Talk 5 July 2005 06:22 (UTC)

I don't know. I'm not really sure how their Internet censorship system works. I pipelinked to the article, but left the title censored just in case. Ikusawa 01:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
I've made it plaintext. WP:NOT censored for Chinese users. Revert if you have a good reason to do so, but please state it on this page. ral315 00:18, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Most recent block from mainland China

I don't know whether this is accurate, but Reporters without Borders indicates access has been blocked since October 18th in some areas (it names Shanghai). Also, is information on the status of Wikipedia access in the PRC really best placed in this History overview article? Should it be spun off into a separate article? It seems a little strange to see it tacked on at the end of the timeline there, is all. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 14:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I got it from the Chinese Wikipedia... it says "October 19, 5pm (UTC+8)". It might have been earlier, though.
I suppose we can also make the section its own article. The Chinese Wikipedia has a separate article already, which is also very detailed. I might translate it later tonight. -- ran (talk) 17:26, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Article to update!!! Wikipedia is partially unblock (except the chinese version and some english article...) please see Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China Froggy helps ;-) 08:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LL B,B,

[edit] Article count milestones

Do we really have to list every article count milestone ever made in the english wikipedia? It's just banal trivia for anyone but the most wiki-obsessed. I can understand maybe leaving the 100,000 and 500,000 milestones, but let's get rid of the rest of them. Kaldari 22:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I like the article count data because I'm going to use this data for some work I'm doing. The charts on this page only go up to 2002. BTW, I would like to have a page filled with stats: history of # users, articles by language, # words, #edits, etc.

[edit] Image selection vote

Around October 15, 2003, the current Wikipedia logo was installed. The logo concept was selected by a voting process, which was followed by a revision process to select the best variant. The final selection was created by David Friedland based on a logo design and concept created by Paul Stansifer.

Could we have a wikilink to that historical vote? - RoyBoy 800 17:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia calendar

Please take a look at Wikipedia:2003, Wikipedia:2004 from Category: Wikipedia years. Wikipedia as community deserves to keep track of its own history, of events which may be not very encyclopedic in the world scale, but of interest to wikipedians.

This may help declutter this, History of Wikipedia, article, in particular, to address the concern posted above, in #Article count milestones, while retaining the info.

I understand that today, of only 5 years of history, the "calendar" may seem redundant, but I seriously hope for wikipedia to live and grow.

Potential additions:

  • start dates of non-english wikis,
  • new policies introduced,
  • dates of board of directors elections,

etc. mikka (t) 20:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2005 section

I added the Nature comparative experience because I think it is an interesting point, the first true comparative experience. In that, I think this is really more usefull than the Seigenthaler controversy which was the history of the sentence "... may be involve in ..." Revert is need in some extrem cases, other way, we have to Improve article. So I will restaure this, free to every body to improve "my" sentence and to neutralise them if need. 82.244.80.175 = french User:Yug, french active editor.

[edit] Some omitted history

This article seems remarkably light on the part of Wikipedia's history in which its fundamental principles and habits were established--its first year. Why is that? --Larry Sanger 00:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Just like you, I'm not going to touch this article. I "left" Wikipedia before you did, and my editing could be construed as controversial. However, I think the current article's main problem is that it is a "chronicle" (as poets would write for their kings) and not history writing. This is a list of events tracked by the people who experienced them, it would be "original research" (not allowed here!) if only it were "research". Any proper "history of X" article should probably start with a section on historiography (who has written history about this? which conflicting theories are there about this history? Marx vs Adam Smith? Larry Sanger vs Jimbo vs that public toilet guy?). This criticism can be made of many "History of X" articles in Wikipedia, and the "History of Wikipedia" will probably be researched a lot later than the "History of the Internet" or the "History of computers", all of which are quite poor. I think you (and others) should go and do the history research, and publish somewhere where it matters. Then others might be able to reference your work in a future version of this Wikipedia article. --LA2 00:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Class action

Should this class-action suit be mentioned in the article? It's linked at the bottom of Jimmy Wales. --zenohockey 07:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I think this : It appear than Britanica stay of a better quality than its concurrent, but not so much, which can confirm the " de facto " concurrence between Britannica and the new alternative Wikipedia. have to be in the 2005 Nature' article analyse. Yug (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] With user:Dmytro :

have you a source to write "However, some of the Wikipedia articles were found poorly organized and confusing." [1] All what I have read was something such as "both have mistakes and organized confusions" (about the 50 articles look by Nature). If you talk about "some of the Wikipedia articles" out of this 50, please correct your sentence. Yug (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One millionth English article

When is this projected and how will it be marked? It is a very notable achievement in the development of the web. Perhaps a 'plaque' on the 1000000th article?[[Btljs 13:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)]]

I like the idea that when 1,000,000 is reached, creation of new articles be blocked for a month while Wikipedia does nothing but work on improvement of existing articles. --JWSchmidt 02:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
This never happened, it looks like. --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 17:48, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki:Monobook.css and MediaWiki namespace editing

Dates on which administrators could edit these from Wikipedia:Administrators. --JWSchmidt 02:32, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link please

I dare not edit this page ;-) so could someone please put up a link to User:Larry Sanger/Origins of Wikipedia? TIA. --Larry Sanger 02:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Larry. We usually do not link to anything outside the main namespace from articles. --Phroziac . o º O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!) 01:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Hey Larry, careful now, Jimbo could just erase u from wikipedia, he calls the shots here, ultimately. The article already says you are cofounder, and most reasonable people dont think Jimbo was sole founder. Jörg Vogt 10:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] #s

Hundreds of thousands of contributors. Over 100k logged in with at least 10 edits. +sj + 23:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The name "Wikipedia"

It'd be interesting to find the first instance of the name "Wikipedia". I found this response from Larry Sanger to his own thread on nupedia-l (!) called "Let's make a wiki". Could anyone confirm whether this is it? Cormaggio @ 18:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that link should be [2] - the previous link is to the beginning of the thread. Cormaggio @ 20:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The removal of self-references (wikilinking to non-main namespace pages)

When the self-references were removed, some links with nicer look-like names were changed to a not-as-good naming style -- the page you end up on. Shouldn't the better names return? I ask since I don't feel like it right now. --WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 17:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "The free encyclopedia" - trivia question

Does anyone know when and how the slogan "The free encyclopedia" began to be used? Who suggested it? Was there ever a discussion or a vote? Or was it just self-evident?

I looked at the "nostagia Wikipedias" listed at the bottom of the article, and they don't have the slogan. On the other hand, look here to see "The Free Encyclopedia Project" used quite early by Richard Stallman.

My own hunch: This was just so self-evident that it began to be used at some point early on, and then when it was coded to appear at the top of each page it began universally recognized and accepted.

Does anyone else have additional ideas or information? Dovi 17:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources!

This page has been frustrating me for a long time. A key principle of the Wikipedia is verifiability. Sadly, on a page where we should be employing our own principles, we ignore them completely. Who says that "On January 4, the English language version of Wikipedia arrived at the 900,000 article mark." What is the source? How I know this was a legitimate contribution? For this page to be credible, all of these statements need to be sourced. This should not be hard as these announcements are typically made in an e-mail list, the Wiki zine, the signpost, etc. as I mentioned before, I tried to do this with the meta timeline, to go back and find sources, but it was a very difficult and time-consuming process. So please, do this when you add something. I almost think we should start reverting any edit that doesn't have a source.

[edit] ® type things

show me 10 articles with ® used to designate trademarks and you'll have a better case, reverting... JoeSmack Talk 17:06, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Second language?

In Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination and Catalan Wikipedia put that the second language was Catalan, created in March of 2001. Is it false? Llull 10:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

In the Creation history there is Catalan as the second to be created. Llull 17:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it seems a "Spanish" and a French Wikipedia were set up together with the German one in March, 2001 [3]. But were any articles written there? What proofs are there? You should expand the article Catalan Wikipedia to the same level of detail as the article about the German Wikipedia. --LA2 22:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Cronological facts:
  • Fri Mar 16 01:24:53 UTC 2001 Jimmy Wales says here that he wants to set up some alternative language wikipedias.
  • Fri Mar 16 01:38:55 UTC 2001 Jimmy Wales says he has created deutsche.wikipedia.com wich has only a few words in english.
  • 01:41, 17 març 2001 (Sat Mar 17 01:41 UCT 2001) an anonymous makes the first contribution in catalan to the catalan wikipedia.
  • 13:37, 30. Mai 2001 (May 30 2001) first contribution in german in the german wikipedia.
Therefore: I would write in the article that the first domain reserved for a non english wikipedia was deutsche.wikipedia.com followed in the same day by the catalan and probably also the french and the spanish (how could the anonymous contribute some hours after in the catalan wikipedia if it was still not created?), and the first colaboration in a non-English wikipedia was an article in catalan.
In any case, catalan wikipedia can not be created in may as it says in the article, because in march it already had some editions.
To sum up, I would rewrite the paragraph as follows:

Early in Wikipedia's development, it began to expand internationally. The first domain reserved for a non-English Wikipedia was deutsche.wikipedia.com (on 16 March 2001)[1], followed in the same day by the Catalan and probably also the French and the Spanish. The first contribution in a non-English article, however, is in the Catalan Wikipedia [2]. The first reference of the French Wikipedia is from 23 March[3] and then in May 2001 it followed a wave of new language versions in Chinese, Dutch, Esperanto, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. They were soon joined by Arabic and Hungarian[4][5] In September, a further commitment to the multilingual provision of Wikipedia was made.[6] At the end of the year, when international statistics first began to be logged, Afrikaans, Norwegian, and Serbian versions were announced.[7]

Please, make any suggestion/correction if you find any mistake or you can improve the style. If you feel it's ok, please, change the article with this more accurate description of the events. Thanks.--Xtv - (my talk) - (que dius que què?) 23:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] review all external links

I have upgraded all external links to <ref> tags so that we can see all of these external links together and ask ourselves if they are appropriate and scholarly. -- 75.24.111.205 11:51, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Current censorship of Wikipedia in the world

I'd like to ask a (perhaps) simple question: is Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) only censored (blocked) in PRC? --Fitzwilliam 04:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 15th January

This diff is curious (and, while true, I've reverted it for the moment). The 15th of January is commonly known as "Wikipedia day" - this is when (as the article said) Wikipedia was formally founded. Further information and context can be added, but this date needs to be recognised. Just a thought, but if a mini-timeline could be created on the first days of Wikipedia, that would be a better substitute for removing the date entirely. Cormaggio @ 13:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First inkling of a WikiPedia ?

wiki:WikiPedia here?


My question, to this esteemed Wiki community, is this: Do you think that a Wiki could successfully generate a useful encyclopedia? -- JimboWales

Yes, but in the end it wouldn't be an encyclopedia. It would be a wiki. -- WardCunningham

(see also: WikiWikiWeb, Wiki, Ward Cunningham, Jimbo Wales

-- Kim Bruning 21:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits by possible banned editor and other vandalisers

I reverted a set of edits made on August 3 by someone editing from IP 75.26.2.210. This address is similar to others that have been used by a banned editor who has been very active on Wikipedia lately. We need a mini-project to find reliable sources for the history of Wikipedia and then this article needs to cite those sources. Since Wikipedia should always "look outward", it might be best to move this article to a different wiki. --JWSchmidt 05:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
      I reverted a couple of edits too regarding name-changes. Can this page be protected so that access to new users like me and others are restricted? -- Zurcech Lordum 09:30, 23 November 2006

[edit] 1,500,000th article

The one-millionth article is linked from the article. What's article #1,500,000? --zenohockey 22:42, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Kanab Ambersnail. Pepsidrinka 13:32, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The facts according to Wikipedia press releases and page histories

I'd like to point out, for the benefit of those working on this article and related articles, that according to Wikipedia's own first three press releases, until 2004--including two press releases that I didn't have anything at all to do with--I was billed as a founder of Wikipedia. See:

Also, until 2004 or 2005, all of the articles about me, Wikipedia, History of Wikipedia, and even Jimmy gave me billing as co-founder of Wikipedia. Just thought it might be useful to point this out for those who weren't aware of it. --Larry Sanger 20:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links of interest

To the best of my knowledge, I was first described as co-founder of Wikipedia back in September 2001 by The New York Times. That was also my description in Wikipedia's own press releases from 2002 until 2004. With my increasing distance from the project, and as it grew in the public eye, however, some of those associated with the project have found it convenient to downplay and even deny my crucial, formative involvement. In fact, in the early years of the project, my role was not in dispute at all.

The following links have come to light, and they should dispel much of the confusion:

http://www.larrysanger.org/roleinwp.html

--Larry Sanger 22:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Those of us who were there...

I was a member of the core group of editors back in 2001 - there were only about 30 of us. I arrived in early Sept.

Frankly - to assert that Larry was not a co-founder of the Pedia is patently absurd. Jimbo was the driving force behind the Internet-based encyclopedia concept, which became Nupedia. Larry proposed and convinced Jimbo that a wiki-based concept was worthwhile.

Larry remains (in my opinion) the single most important individual in the history of the actual Wikipedia, and his structural and philosophical influence remains apparent to this day. (FWIW, IMHO the second most important individual is Daniel Meyer whose name is completely absent from this history.) Jimbo is certainly up there, but from personal experience of what actually transpired in the micro and macro evolution of the site, this is how I see it.

Myabe one day I'll write my own verion of events. Manning 02:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. That's how I see it too. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Were you really there? What you are saying contradicts what Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia said on the bomis talk page[4] Jörg Vogt 23:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

oh actually you might be right, according to wikipedia's 2001 website [5]. Jörg Vogt 00:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Was I really there? That's easily verified by examining the archived version. I even created the Wikiproject concept Manning 01:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is pretty bad...

This article is not too good a resource, it's missing some vital facts. When did Wikipedia switch from usemod to phase 2 to phase 3? What else happened in 2006?(come on, I know at least a few thigs did, with the election and all) -- Chris is me (u/c/t) 16:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. A lot of things are missing from the 2006 section, and I'm not sure the sections are arranged as nicely as they could be anyway. I've stuck a to-do list at the top of the page, and I'll work on the things in it at some point – Qxz 09:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I've added brief details of the Phase I/II/III transitions, based on information in Wikipedia – Qxz 10:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German Version

Was looking at the german version of this article and it seemed that the way it started out is a lot better than ours, or at least contains more info. See here. Unfortunately I'm next to useless at reading german (even though my family comes from germany... drat!), so can't see exactly how much better it is or easily add parts in from there. But am posting here in the hopes a german reader could? Mathmo Talk 13:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes the german version of most things is better. Normally I would volunteer, but I am having computer problems at the momentJörg Vogt 03:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Xrefer

is claimed (in it's article) to have been one of Wikipedia's main competitors as an open access encyclopedia between 2000 and 2003. Is That true? Would it fit in the article? -- 172.158.230.125 01:41, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2006 fundraiser

Hi. There was a fundraiser in late 2006 or early 2007, I'm not sure when exactly. it raised over a million dolars US for the foundation. Other fundraisers are mentioned, why not this one? Should it be added? Please respond. Thanks. AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 17:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Daniel Meyer

I've raised this before, but it's worth raising again. As I've said, I would rate Larry Sanger as the single most important person in the history of the 'pedia.

However, the second most important person is (in my opinion) Daniel Meyer, also known as Maveric149. Why his name is missing from this article eludes me completely. Daniel was the leader of the "second wave" of editors who arrived early in 2002, and his handiwork is evident in almost every aspect of the current 'pedia's architecture. Daniel effectively ran the entire site for nearly a year after Larry's exit. Those of us who were here then can vouch for that. Manning 04:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Please do not defy Jimbo. Nothing good will come of it. Its surprising how many people try and pull down the great man, he deserves the credit, Plus he could delete any one of us out of existence you know.Jörg Vogt 10:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to "pull Jimbo" down. Jimbo was certainly crucial to Wikipedia - he provided the money and the hardware. But he was really not involved in the 'pedia's day-to-day development for the first two years. My own involvement diminished in mid 2002 and has remained 'infrequent' since that time, but I know what went on before that, as I was heavily involved (a fact easily verified by checking the archived versions). Larry was the chief driving figure prior to February 2002. After that, Daniel Meyer became the chief driving force (without ever being formally appointed to the role I might add). Manning 01:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
His name is spelled Mayer. Note the Dec 2006 entry "In late February 2004 a coordinated new look for the Main Page appeared. On February 25, the listing of important overview articles, was replaced by a single link to Template:WikipediaTOC. Hand-chosen entries for the Daily Featured Article, Anniversaries, In the News, and Did You Know rounded out the new look. On February 26, 2004, User:maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) implemented the first entries of an automated archive for the Selected anniversaries which appear on the Main Page. This feature updates daily on the Main Page of the English Wikipedia." I happen to know this because I assisted mav on an anonymous basis in the early days of Selected Anniversaries; mav is the one who encouraged me to get a username. --Ancheta Wis 23:50, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nature study

hey all, i was doing a project on wikipedia recently and in the process i came across somethin i thought i should bring to your attention

unless nature.com messed up it's page i think our page is wrong

i added the totals up in excel and the totals are different instead of 123/162 for brittanica/wiki respectively i came to the totals of 121/157 for britt/wiki respectively along with the average per page, wiht the posted being 2.92/3.86 per page (brit/wiki) compaired to the calculated 2.95/3.82(brit/wiki) per article that i calculated

let me kno if this is all confusin or what not and i'll try 2 better explain it... peace:)Ancientanubis, talk 04:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming conv.

Shouldn't the name be [The] history of wikipedia, because ther is just the one and only. Peacekeeper II 08:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Refactor of page

I've restructured the article and transferred existing information. Hopefully people'll like it.

The article as it existed was mostly a few sections on specific themes, pluus a list of "things that happened". As a pure list, there was little cohesion, it was hard to get a sense of development in any given area, and left another few years it would just be a stack of unconnected miscellany bordering on breaching WP:NOT.

What I've done is this:

  1. Founding of Wikipedia is in one section. Before it was in two sections, the concept origins being at the bottom of the article, the rest at the top.
  2. Added "organization" as a section in the overview.
  3. Summaries of main changes in each year in one short section
  4. Detailed changes grouped by theme, so that activity and growth in any given area (size, foundation activities etc) can be easily followed.
  5. 3 significant missing items added -- the policy creations of late 2005 were all in the wake of Brandt and Seigenthaler, so this is noted; the creation of WP:BLP was also in response but omitted; and the use of Wikipedia as a source for the F1 trademark case was overlooked.
  6. Specific incidents are given a section to themselves
  7. Images are given a gallery "Wikipedia history in images", which adds impact and a resource, whilst ensuring they don't cause the rest of the page to comprise long thin columns.


I haven't actually changed the bulleted points from the original, except when information was missing (above), and so there is still some stuff to do:

  1. Add "notable people" - left as placeholder as I don't know enough to add this.
  2. Probably heavily brevify the incidents sections, to a short paragraph each, since each of these are well documented in their own articles.
  3. Add missing info re 2000 and 2001
  4. Trim down long lists and summarize in prose form. Much of this doesn't need precise dates, or bullet format. Normal textual format as per most articles might be better for some parts. But I haven't touched this so far, just left it "as it was".
  5. Assorted other cleanup


Hope it gets a thumbs up!

FT2 (Talk | email) 18:28, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conrad Burns

It seems clear to me that the Conrad Burns incident was in early 2006, not January 1, 2007, so I am taking out the line about the "two similar incidents" in the 2007 section of "Historical overview by year" — the other being the Rick Jelliffe incident — because the juxtaposition is not appropriate. They are both listed in the "Controversies" section.--76.220.203.140 08:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikipedia:" namespace links

I am pretty sure that we are not supposed to be pointing to "Wikipedia:" namespace pages such as WP:BLP as a WikiLink because "Wikipedia:" stuff does not get copied when the encyclopedia is exported. We are supposed to, if needed, make them a URL.--76.220.203.140 08:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense. The link to BLP is valid (verification of claim) but you're right, I missed that it needs to be a perm URL, not a wikilink. Thanks for catching that one! FT2 (Talk | email) 10:59, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit questions

The following have been added, I've moved them here to discuss:

  • "November 2005: The Bogdanov Affair demonstrates how Wikipedia suffers from many of the same problems as Usenet."

My concerns here are as to whether these are handled appropriately. If they are, then I'd put them back in, but I want to discuss and check first. FT2 (Talk | email) 18:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


As promised I have checked these again:

1. The Bogdanov Affair seems not to have been a major issue for Wikipedia. It was a major POV war, but POV wars are ten a penny. Wikipedia itself was not in the media over it, nor did the Affair center around Wikipedia. It doesnt look like it "demonstrated" anything except that POV warriors come here, too. I can't find sources saying it was memorable in Wikipedia's history.

2. Much of the former is non-neutral. Page blanking and courtesy blanking is not, as implied, a wrongdoing in most cases. banned users will naturally continue to grow as Wikipedia expands and more people use it, this doesn't show anything unusual. The comment on BRD is an assertation, alleging admin bias and misuse of powers, but it needs citing, or citing that there is a notable controversy or minority view sufficiently relevant for a history of Wikipedia. And so on. As it stands this seems to contradict WP:NPOV.

Comments? FT2 (Talk | email) 18:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm also a bit concerned at some of the recent trimming. Articles have to stand on their own merits, to an extent. They need citing, not just reference to other articles presumed to have the cites (removal of cites from Taner Akçam, Microsoft, Essjay and Benoit) and they need some actual description (more than just "The congressional staffer edits to Wikipedia biographies of politicians comes to light"). Also, Nature is not notable. Its one of many studies into Wikipedia accuracy, so what? It only deserves a mention because it followed on from the Seigenthaler incident, and is an epilogue to that story. I'd likle to revert several of these edits. FT2 (Talk | email) 19:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay, try that. I've renamed the scandal to "political aides" and made clear it's 2 events ("In a separate but similar incident...") . That way it covers both cases in one item. FT2 (Talk | email) 19:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, the "flip side of the coin" paragraph is a bunch of kibbles and bits. But I still think that a coherent paragraph can be written using at least some of these items to show the official deletionist half of the dynamic equilibrium that is the actual Wikipedia process.--76.203.48.177 20:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I guess that what this line of thought might lead to is a slightly deeper look at semi-protection and its actual usage as well. The initial concept was that it would be used on 30 articles but now it is more than 1000 and it seems like that number can only grow.--76.203.48.177 20:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that the huge footnote for the congressional staffer thing is ugly, but in time I will simply acclimate to it.--76.203.48.177 20:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

If you're trying to describe changes to the balance and attitudes of Wikipedia culture, then thats tricky. With so many active editors, a lot of it will either be statistics, or OR... and it's hard to tell whether (for example) deletions and protections are because of growth, because of attitude change, because of whatever reason. if you can think of a way to document how Wiki culture's changed with evidence, I'd say fine, but I don't know what you're trying to show, or where we might get information that isn't just personal guesswork what various stats might mean. And yeah - I agree on the footnote. A better layout wouldnt hurt, but at least its in a note where it belongs, not the text. Should we use a footnote table, maybe?? FT2 (Talk | email) 21:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay - take a look at the footnote now! Better? FT2 (Talk | email) 21:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

When I talk about the process and, for instance, the proliferation of semi-protected pages, the Katefan0/Gator1 outings and list of banned users, I suppose I am really talking about the Wikipedia community and the process. Like it or not, that is what many lighter news articles about Wikipedia seem to focus on. Even though Jimbo still calls the shots, is there anything that can be said about the community while being NPOV, NOR and all that? You can talk about isolated incidents where Wikipedia played a role and you can talk about the technology, but I have to wonder if anything else has spontaneously qualitatively changed about the community since, say, 2004. By "spontaneously", I guess I mean without necessarily being embodied in policy. Perhaps each person's experience is unique, but I question things like:

  • What drives deletion? Is is different now than in 2004?
  • Is there anything different about anonymity now? Certainly the community seems more methodical about dealing with potential libel and defamation.
  • Has anyone had, perhaps, a hospitalization, divorce or death because of their wikiholism? I ask that because of the similarities between the Scientology, Objectivism, hippie communes and the Wikipedia community in that the real power is concentrated in one or few central figures and their entourage and such environments often breed such outcomes.
  • Is the current publicity changing the kind of new Wikipedian that becomes active? Some who have left claim that the vast majority of Wikipedians have a variety of strange hidden agendas of one sort or another that drive their participation beyond just building the encyclopedia..

So I guess I am looking for trends in the community, if they can be discerned. I noticed that WP:100K has at the end of it a hard-hitting reality check. It will be interesting to see which there are more of a year from now: Featured Articles or semi-protected articles. The current trends seem to favor the latter.--76.203.48.177 23:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


Some interesting questions there. A lot of them are the kind we can think about, if we put them in a different context.
Suppose we were writing "History of Denmark", and we wanted for completeness to comment on the state of the community. We ask if the culture of modern day Denmark was changing or different. We would be reluctant to guess, and we'd probably not make it a central part of the national history, but it's relevant. We would not put in cites from one or two polls or individual emigrants views. But if there were reliable surveys and stufdies on social metrics, we might summarize some facts from those. We wouldn't try to sensationalize or editorialize though, by filling it out with partial information.
Thats kind of where I'd be at here, too. Any use? FT2 (Talk | email) 02:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Claims reworded

We don't know enough to cast an impression on semi-protection, so I've reworded it with the facts - it has proven more successful or popular than anticipated originally.

In the same vein I've removed the unsourced and probably non-notable assertion that "Wikipedia's name becomes associated with the word truthiness".

Last, I've reworded the clumsy wording about use of redirects instead of bio articles. FT2 (Talk | email) 09:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More specific please

Quote from article: 'On March 19, following a vote, the Main Page of the English language Wikipedia featured its first redesign in nearly two years.'

March 19 of what year? It needs filling in. Lradrama 19:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The monster footnote is growing... GROWING....

This is the "History of Wikipedia" article! The Congressional staffer edits to Wikipedia has its own article. We now have an entire infobox embedded within the footnotes about the Congressmen whose Wikipedia biographies where edited. This is painful. I feel that the incident deserves little more than a wikilink and a timeframe (early to mid 2006) in this History article.--75.37.12.168 19:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Can't completely disagree there. If you want, might be best to suggest a wording for the bullet and footnote here, and discuss it briefly, makes it easier to discuss? FT2 (Talk | email) 21:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Userboxes?

Would the massive growth in userboxes and the so-called "Great 2006 New Year's Day Userbox Purge" and the subsequent deletion of a lot of userboxes be worth mentioning in the 2006 and 2007 sections of the article? - • The Giant Puffin • 22:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I object. The userboxes conflicts never managed to get back out to the Real World and has little or nothing to do with encyclopedic content creation. That makes the userbox thing a self-reference best avoided in this article.--75.37.12.168 22:49, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
With respect, disagree. The subject is "History of Wikipedia". Since Wikipedia is a community and an encyclopedia, that means that the history of wikipedia as a community is an intrinsic and integral aspect of the article. The things which were notable as a community are part of Wikipedia's history, since almost every reliable source on Wikipedia structure emphasizes the integral nature of the community, its structure, consensus, and culture. Those are notable aspects too.
It isn't all about article count and functionality enhancements, so to speak. Much of what is notable in the History of Wikipedia in the community aspect, isn't about "encyclopedic article creation". Documenting the cultural aspects of Wikipedia's history where it can be reliably documented, is relevant too - trends, notable major policy changes, notable internal regulatory or sentiment changes, notable internal communal matters, new project areas, and so on are all potentially notable aspects too, if they can be reliably evidenced and are verifiable. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:12, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A mild concern

To the IP user on this article...

I have some mild concerns about the edits you're adding in some places. A lot of the edits are good, but some give quite a non-neutral effect and give rise to concern. Some examples:


  1. Addition of "In a small internal controversy, the maturity of Wikipedian volunteers is challenged" History of Wikipedia [6]
    WP:OR, this is a personal view.
  2. Addition of The Wikipedia Story "whether or not Wikipedia is a valuable source of knowledge, or if it is a symptom of mediocrity and the devaluation of expertise and research ... Wales suggests that he has no more authority within his organization than the Queen of England does within hers — an asssertion that some might take exception with"
    WP:OR, WP:WEASEL - opinion.
  3. Addition of "The worldwide project, with over one million registered user accounts, continues to produce about one English "featured article" per day." [italics in original] to Essjay controversy where its relevance and effect is rather questionable at best [7]
    WP:NPOV WP:POINT - Low relevance, undue weight and non-neutral impression in the context, and pointy.
    I guess I was trying to put the importance of the whole incident into perspective with something Important enough to give a sense of finality and discourage trivial media references to the Essjay controversy from the continuing debate over the credibility of Wikipedia from creeping back into the timeline. I suppose I am being a bit of a realist or perhaps a pessimist, but it seems to me that the rate of 1 FA per day is going to hold for the next several years and that WP:100K is a long way off.--76.203.126.39 01:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
  4. Addition of "Jimmy Wales continues to intervene in biographies as he sees fit with "courtesy blankings" or editing on behalf of celebrities who contact him nicely such as he did for Bianca Jagger about her past dating of Billy Joel. This list of administrators who continue to revert, block and ignore anyone that they do not like continues to grow and the list of banned users continues to grow." to History of Wikipedia [8]
    WP:NPOV, some of these are factually correct but leave a non-neutral impression, for example the ban list might grow simply as the community grows, as Wikipedia becomes more popular, or even as a quality control measure (less tolerance for gamesters). But as stated, it implies a quite different meaning.
  5. Addition of "The Bogdanov Affair demonstrates how Wikipedia suffers from many of the same problems as Usenet" to History of Wikipedia. [9]
    WP:OR WP:NPOV - Affair doesn't appear to show anything of the kind, when examined.
  6. And others I haven't got to yet, probably...


The number of good quality edits added far outweighs these, though :) However, I'm thinking it might be worth taking extra care to keep "personal interpretation" and making points, out of such edits, when it's unsure if those are neutrally presented and relevant.

Anyhow, Hopefully drawing it to attention is enough, in which case, let me know, and thanks! :)

FT2 (Talk | email) 10:39, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The Tim Pierce incident was covered in Incident archives 184 and 187. Pierce was an instructor with an MBA at NIU. Zoe draws out some of the instructors reasonsing in the earlier archive. Jimbo had already handled it over the phone and nobody blogged about it. Zoe left the project on the notion that "vandalism is evil" has no exceptions. I assume that User:Georgewilliamherbert/PierceLetter was actually sent. I guess the point is that when it comes to a conflict between "building the encyclopedia" and education, education sometimes wins. I tend to view it as the need to preserve the Foundation's 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity status as sometimes resulting in a non-intuitive outcome. Maybe there is some other large point is demonstrates or maybe it is just a tempest in a teapot. Any ideas?--76.203.126.39 01:06, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's notable, honestly. The only really solid sources for it are basically, that people on Wikipedia (Wales, Zoe etc) say it happened and they have spoken to him, and documenting his agreement it happened, so I guess that can be considered verifiable. But a teacher asks his students to modify articles to show them it can be changed, and the impact is Wales speaks to him, an administrator writes to him, and there is some discussion of editors who think he was out of line? Not really the big picture. This (as noted on ANI 184/197) is not completely uncommon, and it just doesn't seem a big part of Wiki history even for that one year. No long term effects, nobody left Wikipedia, no scandals, no media reports.....
Regarding FA's, the stats aren't really anything to do with Essjay or the controversy. Trying to make a point with FA stats as "heres something really important so don't put as much focus on this controversy" isn't really workable. There's a different mindset for encyclopedias as for media reporting. In the latter one documents anything interesting and relevant, and tries to direct attention more. In the former one focusses on encyclopedic approaches, "is this important/notable/verifiable to put in". Essjay had zero to do with FA statistics nor do the stats shed any light on the Essjay controversy. Just report Essjay's controversy, keep to whats notable and important for an encyclopedia article on it, and let it go :) FT2 (Talk | email) 08:46, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Time of creation

In the user preferences, under the "Date and time" tab, I notice the example date is the same day Wikipedia is said to have gone online (January 15, 2001). Can anyone verify if the example time (16:12 UTC) is indeed the time at which the site was created? Samuel Grant 16:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merging ("The Wikipedia Story")

I added content from the now redirected here The Wikipedia Story based on this closure, SqueakBox 21:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


(added with above not being seen):

I've removed this section.

The article itself was AFD'ed and made into a redirect (note: not redirect and merge).

This was a 1/2 hour TV documentary on WIkipedia. There have been literally hundreds of analyses of Wikipedia in the media. No notability for this specific one is claimed, and certainly doesn't seem to justify the extensive recap and analysis of it.

Whatever 3rd parties have to say on Wikipedia's history, can be added to the article and sourced. We might need a section "Third party analyses of Wikipedia's history" too, perhaps. But we almost certainly don't need plot and content recaps on individual documentaries. FT2 (Talk | email) 22:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Did you read the afd closure comment which clearly allows for merging. I'll trevert, please can we get further input, SqueakBox 22:38, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Further input'd be good.
To me, merge means, content deemed useful (by article/topic editors) is by and large kept. So for example, if the interview contains a statement that Wikipedia was created over pizza in New Mexico, then that's maybe a fact that would be kept in "founding of Wikipedia". A subsection is a different thing. Creating a new and distinct subsection for the merged text is a bit different. It says, this documentary is notable enough in the context of Wikipedia history, to have its own subsection, not just to be used as a source for facts and cites. It's the latter view I'm disagreeing with.
Does that help clarify? (And I've tweaked the section title here so in time to come we and others can easily find it). FT2 (Talk | email) 23:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I hear your points but would rather wait until others comment before clarifying my own thoughts on the matter (which certainly arent fixed on this occasion), SqueakBox 23:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. Do you want to 3O it, or RFC, or do you think we'll get enough good input without those? My own feeling is, there are other things in the article that we need more feedback on too, like overall is it balanced and are the individual sections well balanced and checked or are they just "random points in a list"? I wouldn't mind seeing a short list of questions later on for this article, if you're agreeable; I don't think this is likely to be the only question where more input would help. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
What is notable about a 1/2 hour TV documentary on Wikipedia? I don't understand.  Mr.Guru  talk  03:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Nothing that I can see. It doesn't seem to be interesting on its own. If it can't be used to source any new information, I suggest removing mention of it entirely and making sure that it is listed at WP:PRESS. - BanyanTree 07:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I suggest shortening it. This looks bad in mainspace to have such a long paragraph on a short documentory.  Mr.Guru  talk  17:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I commented it out of mainspace.[10] It needs to be drastically shortened.  Mr.Guru  talk  17:51, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Enciclopedia libre

Is the 2002 incident better described as "forking" or "breaking away" of a large number of editors of Spanish Wikipedia?

The sources seem to describe it as breaking away -- forking doesn't quite seem to capture the same sense of it. Comments? FT2 (Talk | email) 09:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] From earlier archives

I've summarized these here as they might still be useful: * Resources: m:Wikipedia timeline, Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people, and Wikipedia:Wikipedians in order of arrival.

  • There were three Slashdot mentions in 2001: two minor mentions on March 5 and March 30, 2001, and then a prominent pointer to a story on the community-edited technology and culture website Kuro5hin on July 26.

FT2 (Talk | email) 23:25, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiWix

What's happenning with WikiWix and Linterweb? Wikipedia is linking to WikiWix, WikiWix is advertising Linterweb Wikipedia CD's, and Linterwebs' Wikilink is a redirect to this page, with no further info about them. Wikipedia itself seems to have no information on WikiWix, and when I created a page on it with what little info I could find on the web, it was successfully created, appeared on WikiWix itself as a new page, and then got eliminated and disappeared even from my ow activity history (I have it saved to disk). Since it's unlikely that I was the first person to try creating this page, does this mean that pages on a possible wikipedia affiliate are being censored?

Surely it's a fundamental principle of WikiPedia that it doesn't censor information relating to itself?

Maybe there's an innocent explanation. ErkDemon 22:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The Mysterious Wikiwix: Affiliated With Wikipedia?
The Wikiwix Wikiopedia stub page has gone, along with its history and its entry on my user history, which means that here's no obvious way to find that it ever existed. I did, however, manage to trace this:
"22:01, 18 August 2007 Splash (Talk | contribs) deleted "Wikiwix" (silly article)"
It's not listed on the editor's activity page, so presumably this was done as an admin-level action rather than as a conventional edit? ErkDemon 11:54, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo Wales Pic

Anybody else dislike the pic of Jimbo in this article? I think it's intended to make him look like a forward-thinking visionary, but it ends up looking pompous. There are several better pics at Jimmy Wales. Can we use one of those (or another good one from elsewhere) here? --Nricardo 18:56, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Support. FT2 (Talk | email) 15:11, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiality and "The Colbert Report"

Do you think that Wikiality and The Colbert Report should be mentioned in the article. Seeing as this show has had quite some history with Wikipedia, I think it is probably worthy enough to be included. ISD 10:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Precedents

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was one of the first dynamic online encyclopedias (although with a peer reviewed model), developed between 1995-1998 [11]. I'm aware of the size of the article, so I haven't gone and put it in, but wonder whether this and precedents need more attention (perhaps at the expense of some of the less notable history/incidents on this page).Mostlyharmless 04:01, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History article construction

I have created the secrtions for "up to 2006" and "2007", for editors to list as they see fit, matters that might warrant a mention in the article, or relate to the History of Wikipedia.

Hopefully this will be a Good Idea -- there are many matters and if left they get overlooked, but if added immediately the article becomes just a list. Hopefully listing them here will mean that over time we can consider and check consensus what is genuinely significant, and what is not. All items need sourcing and explaining. FT2 (Talk | email) 23:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible omitted items from earlier years

[edit] Possible updates for 2007

  1. [12] New York Times admits to same problem in its archives that Wikipedia has noted - old pages can preserve outdated information, especially for BLP purposes. FT2 (Talk | email) 23:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  2. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 August 26 -- BLAODN deleted, after many xFDs. Final argument was on the basis that these 99 humor pages, some of the oldest on Wikipedia, had become a "monument to vandalism" and that denyying glorification of vandalism outweighed humor value. FT2 (Talk | email) 23:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  3. [13] South African govt official "arrested on charges of vandalism" and "suspended from his duties" after repeated deletion from Wikipedia's entry on South Africa's HIV crisis. FT2 (Talk | email) 23:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  4. China reblocked [14] FT2 (Talk | email) 21:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
  5. Trust becomes a focus, first with Flagged revisions, then Wikiscanner, then trusted edits analysis:
    • Wikipedia:Flagged revisions begins to be discussed, as Mediawiki approaches testing of flagged revisions on the German Wikipedia. Initially some mainstream media misreport this as "Wikipedia abandons open editing" [15]; these reports are later corrected.[16][17] FT2 (Talk | email) 23:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Wikiscanner emerges, a number of well known companies and bodies embarrassingly exposed as editing their own articles. Seems that heads roll in some cases. (eg [18][19][20][21][22][23]) FT2 (Talk | email) 21:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
    (And I seem to remember at least one freedom of information lawsuit to find who made some edits in one case) [24] FT2 (Talk | email) 20:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Software to detect trusted edits is designed. [25] FT2 (Talk | email) 21:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
  6. The community sanctions noticeboard is removed -- deemed an experiment that failed. Its intent was to allow focus on serious cases;in practice it marginalized them away from mainstream discussion. (Signpost Volume 3, Issue 42, "Community_sanction_noticeboard_closed")
  7. First "adminbot" (automated program to be granted administrative access) is created after searching inquiry over the risks and benefits. (Signpost Volume 3, Issue 42, "Bot_is_approved_to_delete_redirects")
  8. Wikimedia commons reaches 2 million files (Signpost Volume 3, Issue 42)
  9. Landmark case - defamation case against Wikimedia in France dismissed. [26]
  10. John Wiley incident - book publisher found to have copied text from Wikipedia verbatim without attribution in one of their books. The same publisher had previously "touched off a fair use brouhaha earlier this year when they threatened to sue a blogger who had reproduced a chart and a table (fully attributed) from one of their journals". [27] FT2 (Talk | email) 11:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  11. Debate over "secret information" and its various corollaries.
  12. Veropedia launches; same article covers the debate over COI editing which seems to stabilize somewhat [28] FT2 (Talk | email) 14:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  13. Rollback is discussed for non-admins, and page cration for anons. Wikipedia:Rollback for non-administrators Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Anonymous page creation. FT2 (Talk | email) 14:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  14. The Carolyn Doran COO news breaks Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-12-17/Former COO -- Jimmy states that the audit shows (at present) no problems but any losses will be made good from his pocket. (his talk page) FT2 (Talk | email) 14:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  15. A lot of academic research on reliability and such - see Reliability of Wikipedia. FT2 (Talk | email) 14:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  16. Jimbo testifies on Wikipedia at senate (also info on founding of WP) [29] -- senate response [30]. FT2 (Talk | email) 00:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  17. Citizendium chooses licence - Sanger clarifies view of Wikipedia. [31] FT2 (Talk | email) 17:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  18. See summary of 2007 in "signpost" (3 part series) Jan 2008. FT2 (Talk | email) 03:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible updates for 2008

  1. Jan 21 - Wikipedias longest lived hoax article, on a purported outdated term in Hinduism, finaly deleted after 3.5 years of "remarkable" stability. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brahmanical See. FT2 (Talk | email) 03:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "the greatest story ever told"

should redirect to this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.182.171.164 (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BYOP/BYOB

BYOP: Some paintballers might know because it means br your own paint. If the feild lets you thats what their website might say sor their add.

BYOB: Fans of BBQ's or Fams of System of a Down might know what this is. Bring you own beer or Bring your own Bombs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben608 (talk • contribs) 20:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagreement and roles - section title

Extra views sought. We have hit a slight disagreement. The section on Sanger and Wales disagreement is fine, but the title of it is the subject of reversion and disagreement. [32]

  • I've selected "Disagreement over early roles of Wales and Sanger"; the section is not about their early roles, which would be part of describing how Wikipedia operated and who did what.... it's specifically about the disagreement over their early roles. To my mind just calling it "roles of..." is a mis-titling, it doesn't actually say what the section is about.
  • QuackGuru has selected "Early roles of Wales and Sanger". I can't speak for his view, but if I understand his edit summary, his view in his own words is "undue weight, shorten long header, keep it simple, this is an encyclopedia and not a tabloid print".

My concern is that this is a subsection specifically on their disagreement. To not describe it as such is unhelpful and misleads users reading the contents (And, "early roles of X" is not an incident, whereas "disagreement between X and Y" is, and is the subject of the section.)

Quackguru - your comments welcomed? And anyone else - comments and views which works best? FT2 (Talk | email) 20:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

No comments per se, but this might be an amusing read...
I changed "founder of Wikipedia" to "founder of Wikimedia Foundation". The former is a subject of some dispute, of course, with Larry Sanger going around spreading his self-appointed title, and we don't need to take a stand on that. In this context, the important thing is Wikimedia, and it is undisputed that I am the (sole) founder of the nonprofit organization. (Larry had been fired long before the Foundation started.)--Jimbo Wales 15:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Huh?

The concept of gathering all of the world's knowledge in a single place goes back to the ancient Library of Alexandria and Pergamon - how is that relevant to Wikipedia? Wikipedia is not based on that concept - indeed, it has policies which preclude it doing any such thing. -PinkEllie 11:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It was added earlier by an editor, as a precedent. The notion of a collection of information led to encyclopedias that led to wikipedia. Thats not about policy, its about context. FT2 (Talk | email) 21:08, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Article review

I've reviewed the article and made a few edits, summarized below:

  1. The header disambiguation link to the Wikipedia story has been improved. The page Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story now disambiguates betyween the encyclopedia article here and the community's page on the documentary in project space. The DAB link is no longer needed and gives this documentary undue prominence. It's now safely moved to "see also" where all other project space resources are shown.
  2. Reinstate both claims about origins of idea. Both are cited, and the text used to characterize and describe this rather than assert one or the other.
  3. Remove statement that Sanger attributed departure to trolls. Sources at the time and in the article clearly show he stated at the time that it was due to loss of financial support for the position and other reasons.
  4. Remove apparently pointless comment " With Devouard as Chair and ArbCom operating, the word "troll" ceases to have any operational meaning (it was formerly defined by Wales)." -- if anyone can convincingly explain what this means and why it's encyclopedic, please reinstate.
  5. Checkuser - remove redundant/excess description that it's written in PHP (all of mediawiki is) and what a sockpuppet is (that can be looked up), and merge the references to keep the main article tight.
  6. Clarify what Nature's "refusal to apologize" to Brittanica was about.
  7. Wales/Sanger:
    • This section has been modified to push one viewpoint out of two, rather than both competing claims and their evidence (original version current version). I've reverted, but included the cites and information which were useful in the 'pushed' version.
    • In addition, that version cited many pages for Sanger's claims. These included revision history of talk pages, and of the Wikipedia article, press releases, and media publications. I've removed all the former -- the risk of a self-ref is huge. The talk pages and Wikipedia articles were edited by many people, so we would be insane to try and cite a specific Wikipedia page version or a poage revision history to "prove" any specific status quo was the case. (A specific diff would be different of course.) Press releases and media publications are likely to be fairly solid however, so I've used those instead, they're more reliable and all that's needed.
    • Fixed up cites on suggestion of the idea, as above in 1st section (see #2). And replace POV word "concedes" with neutral word "states" -- even though former is actually correct use in this context, it adds a "flavor" of POV. Better removed.
  8. China blocks - many occasions now. It's getting impractical to list them all in this article, so reword to note multiple occasions and that this section will list major ones one. See the existing subarticle for the full list.
  9. Minor edits - removing <small> etc

Diff of the above: [33]. FT2 (Talk | email) 23:01, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self-ref and self-pub

Moved from User_talk:FT2:


please provide a reference

Please provide a reference (as long as it is not a self-ref) or the uncited material will be deleted and replaced with the previous version I added.[34] I believe a self-ref cannot be used to verify the text. Do you know if self-refs can be used for context purposes when the text has already been verified by a third-party ref? Thank you.  Mr.Guru  talk  18:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

This is an unusual case; the article is History of Wikipedia and the subject is a statement placed by Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia. So the first thing is, that this is possibly an extremely unusual case, since in most articles Wikipedia itself is not the subject of the article nor the location a notable claim was published. The main problem with Wikipedia as a source is that it can be edited by anyone. However its important to distinguish text in general, from diffs and permanent references, which cannot usually be edited after submission (or can only be edited in the same sense that an archive from The New York Times or the BBC can be, ie by illicit tampering with the website).
The purpose of WP:RS is to protect ourselves from two problems: 1/ placing reliance on content that is essentially freely modified, 2/ placing reliance on claims and assertations that are not visibly and long term/permanently agreed by some credible source as being their view. In this case several features seem to suggest this diff is a reliable source:
  1. The claim being made is that "Jimmy Wales asserts that Rosenfeld told him about wikis".
  2. The evidence is a permanent record of a wikipedia diff in which Jimmy Wales' account makes an edit containing that claim, as opposed to (say) a wikipedia current page that "anyone can edit". Wikipedia diffs are usually considered a reliable archive of things that Wikipedia editors did or did not add to the wiki as their own words and statements.
  3. The diff is acting as a primary source (ie, it requires no interpretation or synthesis (WP:OR) to obtain a meaning).
  4. The reliability of the source comes from the fact that the statement is in a permanent archive which I suspect by common agreement is considered reliable for such statements. You will see that the article Wikipedia contains similarly, cites from within Wikipedia. (Strictly these should be perm references and not just page links but the principle holds - the community appears to have considered them "reliable".)
Ordinarily the difficulty would be sourcing elsewhere, since one runs the risk that a seemingly-reliable 3rd party statement is in fact 'behind the scenes' sourced by the writer from Wikipedia itself. However as it happens, after a bit of digging we do in fact by chance seem to have a third party reliable source for this claim source and a few others; I'll add it to the article since in general if a factual statement can be cited without self-ref that's indeed usually preferable. But in general, I would feel that a diff on wikipedia is a reliable source for a claim that its creator wrote the words contained. if it comes up again, though, i'd be fine RFC'ing it, since it is a tricky and exceptional situation.
Thanks for the comment - I'll go edit that article now. FT2 (Talk | email) 19:01, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AHistory_of_Wikipedia&diff=167518610&oldid=167518141#Article_review
You wrote: In addition, that version cited many pages for Sanger's claims. These included revision history of talk pages, and of the Wikipedia article, press releases, and media publications. I've removed all the former -- the risk of a self-ref is huge. The talk pages and Wikipedia articles were edited by many people, so we would be insane to try and cite a specific Wikipedia page version or a [sic] poage revision history to "prove" any specific status quo was the case.
According to you we should not use any self-refs. You deleted the self-refs I added. The self-refs I added were only used for context purposes and not used to verify the text. However, you are attempting to use a self-ref to verify the text which you wrote, we would be insane to try and cite a specific Wikipedia page version or a poage [sic] revision history...
Hmmm.  Mr.Guru  talk  19:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Correct. There is a difference between a diff (which is the work of one specific person at one specific time) and a revision of an entire page (which is the work of many people up to that time).
We can only say one of three things really: - if we have a specific diff, we can reliably say "editor/person X said Y" (a primary source so we can state this with fair confidence). If we have a permanent page link we can only reliably say "on date X the article said Y" (but we can't know if that was representative of other versions of the page five minutes earlier or later, or if it was representative of others' views not recorded on that page). If we have a current page link we can't say a thing reliably since it might change within seconds.
The cites I removed were page cites. They can't attest to any actual fact since we have no evidence that the words appearing on the 5 December 200X version of a page were typed by Wales, even though it is a permanent version. They can't attest to what the "status quo" was since the diff of 5 December 200X might well be an abberation compared to that of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th or 7th. By contrast a specific diff does testify to the words of one specific person, at one specific point in time, effectively (the community seems to agree) permanently. Hopefully this explains. Your link was to an entire page attempting (as I recall) to use it to say "this proves X was the status quo". That's not reliable evidence for the claim. The replacement was to one specific persons words, a very different matter. FT2 (Talk | email) 19:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


Afterthought: You might want to re-read WP:V again, especially the two sections on self-published sources, and self-published sources in articles about themselves. My impression is these would have answered this question as well. If you still have questions can we move this to Talk:History of Wikipedia to keep it there for others? FT2 (Talk | email) 19:41, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

FT2 (Talk | email) 19:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bad reference

I'm usually not one to complain about stuff, but This reference (note #8) from this article, is giberish and needs clean-up. Because of this I am adding the clean-up template. --AdVocare 20:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay! I think I've fixed the problem. However, if someone else could please check and make sure that everything is in good standing order that would be great. Please remove the "Clean-up" tag once you've done this. Thank you! --AdVocare 20:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo's visage

May I suggest to replace the photo? He does not look so pompous in real life. `'Míkka 17:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious

The rate of article creation is decreasing, even if the quantity of articles increases. The statistics claimed in the article demonstrate this: 1,000 to 10,000 is a ten-fold increase in only a few months whereas 20,000 to 100,000 is only a five-fold increase. Moreover, Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth purports to demonstrate how article creation is slowing by several metrics. Madcoverboy (talk) 16:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section "Other notable occurences"

I see this section rather outlandish, for a number of reasons. Below are my suggestions for its subsections. Opinions, please. `'Míkka>t 20:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sanger

The topic of "Early roles of Wales and Sanger" in fact belongs to section "Founding of Wikipedia". If there is an opinion that this long musing is indeed necessary, I suggest to move it into a separate article and put a brief summary into "Founding of Wikipedia". Otherwise the item is IMO bearing quite undue weight in this general overview of wikipedia's history. `'Míkka>t 20:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Blocking

This one is a rather independent thread of wikipedia's history and I suggest to promote the subsection one level up. `'Míkka>t 20:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Also: Uzbek Wikipedia is banned since 10 January, 2008 in Uzbekistan :( It is the second blocking. Abdullais4u (talk) 11:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest wikipedian

How old is the oldest user of Wikipedia, who has a user page? Neduvelilmathew (talk) 05:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Isnt it Jimmy Wales? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.34.37.64 (talk) 11:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)