Today, January 15, 2021 is the 20th anniversary of the launching of Wikipedia.
It would be easy to pass it over, but few innovations amongst the millions over the past 20 years, would have had such an impact on so many people as Wikipedia.
The evolution of Wikipedia has democratised knowledge in a manner only approached by one other innovation in history I can think of: the printing press.
I can remember being envious of those kids at school who had Britannica on their bookshelves. It was way too expensive for my parents to buy, and besides, it was out of date the day the latest version was published.
The creation of Wikipedia came out of the fertile, original mind of Jimmy Wales.
Working in finance, Wales played around with early web portals and video games, recognising the power of the net to connect people. In the mid-nineties, he was fascinated by the idea of a web-based encyclopedia, replacing the hugely expensive monolithic offerings then available. In 2000 with a couple of friends, and funding from his modest success with the web portals, he founded Nupedia, which aimed at consolidating articles written by experts voluntarily, and peer reviewed, with advertising as the revenue generator needed to make a profit.
It bombed.
The academic status quo standards for peer review almost ensured that submitting an article for the review was akin to waiting for feedback on an academic paper submitted for review, a lengthy and undefined time, with no chance of a no revision acceptance.
In early January 2001, as an experiment, Wales and co-founders Ben Kovitz and Larry Sanger created a ‘wiki’, at that time a new technology, that aimed at removing the academic barrier by opening articles to anyone to review and edit in real time.
The academics involved with Nupedia would have nothing to do with it, but such was the response, that a week later, on the 15th, the Wiki, by then named Wikipedia, was launched on a separate domain.
The idea of an open source, editable encyclopedia had its challenges, some of which remain today. However, the original vision of Wales and Sanger to ‘Imagine a world where every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge‘ has been largely realised.
Wikipedia continues to evolve, managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded for that purpose by Wales in 2003. Wales remains a critical voice in its management.
Can you imagine the last year, disconnected, without Wikipedia as a source?
Happy 20th Wikipedia.
Thanks Allen for, as always, zeroing in on what is truly valuable. Personally I think and feel wikipedia is one of the highest acheivements of the internet.
Thanks Bruce,
It is positive feedback like yours that keeps me going.
Have a great 2021, although the benchmark to beat of 2020 was a low one..