User:Trevor MacInnis/sandbox/Book research

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The purpose of this is to compile a "behind the scene" history of Wikipedia. Not the dry encyclopedic entry but a history with a heartbeat. Feel free to edit, but just remember, I'm hoping for style over NPOV (while at the same time keeping the facts straight).


Contents

[edit] Questions for users

  • Favorite discussion.
  • Favorite quotes
  • Users:
  • Projects (prosperous and defunct)
    • Wikimania
    • wikiprojects
    • Portals
    • Advice
    • Rules
    • newuser limits
    • admin controversy

[edit] Sources

[edit] Introduction

Wikipedia should not, if you think about it, be as popular as it is. Let's imagine for a moment, an energetic entrepreneur walks into a website creators office:

  • "I'd like to create a website"
  • "Ok sir what will it do?"
  • it will be an online encyclopedia"
  • Ok, and who will write it?"
  • "I dunno....people"
  • "And how will you make money on this site?"
  • "um. We won't. It's free"

etc...

You can see the problem.


For all the promise of the Internet, it has generally found its niche as a purveyor of Spam, Ads and porn. It was touted as the promise of the future, a better way to do thing to improve productivity, and make the world a smaller place. But most people don't use it to do anything they couldn't before, and almost no one uses it to improve other peoples lives. Until now. Today thousands of people will log on and impart their own knowledge to the world. They will do this without recognition from the people in their lives, without financial compensation, without recompense of any sort, other than the idea that they are helping to create the largest repository of knowledge the world has ever seen.

What began as an experiment....

[edit] Wikipedia Day

Throughout the majority of the world, (Date) passes without much fanfare. But in some circles, this day marks the anniversary of the creation of one of the most extensive projects in Internet history. 6 years and 97+ million edits later, an experiment has emerged to become.....