Back to 2001

[Randy from Boise]

I was playing around with the archived "Nostalgia Wikipedia" today and found a couple interesting tidbits for people interested in WP history...

1. Sanger and Wales as "Co-Founders."

The link https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedians refers to Larry Sanger as "cofounder of Wikipedia and editor-in-chief of Nupedia" and Jimbo Wales as "the other cofounder of this great project." These descriptions were as such on the oldest extant version, Nov. 20, 2001. That would seem to be a very early consensus description of the two.

2. Birth of the concept "The Wikipedia Community."

The same link also notes "There are currently 192 confessed contributors. This arguably makes a community."

3. Early self-description.

The essay "The Wikipedia Community" link is worth quoting:

The Wikipedia community is:

• diverse. There are all kinds of people here: philosophers, history buffs, scientists, artists, religious people, generalists, specialists. Moreover there is communication between all those kinds of people; there are attempts to understand each other, despite differences in language or culture. Also, there are as many approaches and interests as there are people. But see united.
• knowledgeable. See [[brilliant prose]]
• personal. This may seem strange: after all, the goal is to create entries which are as objective and without personal bias as possible. But the openness of Wikipedia allows total self-expression within those bounds (and even without it in the personal pages); Wikipedians define themselves within the context of the project through their interests and goals. This brings both benefits and complications--Wikipedia takes advantage of personal qualities like trust, insight, imagination, idiosyncracy and empathy which bureaucratic institutions cannot; but it cannot do so without also having some of the downsides, including confusion, bias, mistakes, and hurt feelings. A healthy community doesn't eliminate the problems, but it understands how to deal with them.
• fragile. The success of the community depends on a large part on the presence of good wikipedians. Scare those elements away and the project will lose much of its appeal.
• unique. Are there other communities out there that combine the above attributes? Wikipedia has a unique mission, which shapes the community uniquely: it is a wiki (and hence very open), open content (and hence free), and an encyclopedia project. There is nothing like this in the world.

4. Bomis as copyright holder.

The earliest iteration of WP conceived as Bomis Inc. as the copyright holder link, which freely licensed WP content to the general public. Copyright was thus not vested in each contributor, but theoretically signed over to a single entity for redistribution. I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on TV, but this seems significantly (and perhaps importantly) different than the current notions of copyright underlying WP.

5. Free as in "open source software" free.

The whole "free as in jazz not free as in needles" BS represents an evolution of the notion that WP content was intended to be what I describe as "free as in open source software free." link The draconian restrictions against fair use illustrations, etc., seem to have mutated from this — the fact that WP as a literary creation did not use the copyright laws of publications (which would have allowed fair use to its fullest extent) but rather attempted to conceive of WP as open source, freely replicable, freely alterable software — which would imply a far more restrictive interpretation of fair use law with respect to graphics. It was a project by slashdot techies and they forced the liquid metal into the mold with which they were most comfortable — with unfortunate results, I would argue.

6. During Sanger's tenure (2001), WP and Nupedia existed in tandem.

The link https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad ... to_Nupedia indicates that as early as March 2001 (i.e. 3 months in) Larry Sanger was won over to the idea of "working more closely with Wikipedia, or else setting up a Nupedia wiki." The relationship which evolved by the fall of that year, we see here, was an effort for the submission of WP articles to Nupedia — which was, it would logically seem, still conceived as the "higher level" or more permanent encyclopedia project. "A case can be made that Wikipedia and Nupedia need each other; Wikipedia needs the rigor of Nupedia's editorial process, and its expertise, while Nupedia needs Wikipedia's open, vigorous dynamic," the page reads.

This relationship is further detailed in Josh Grosse's March 3, 2001 page "How does Wikipedia relate to Nupedia?" link, which states in full:

Nupedia.com is an open content, international, peer reviewed project run by Larry Sanger, who got the idea of supplementing Nupedia with a less formal "wiki" encyclopedia project. So there is a historical connection between the projects. Both Nupedia and Wikipedia are originated by Bomis, a WebPortal company. So there is a management connection.

There is no editorial connection between the projects, however. The participants in Nupedia do not necessarily condone the contents or methods of Wikipedia--and vice-versa!

We hope the projects will be complementary.

RfB

[EricBarbour]

• diverse. There are all kinds of people here: philosophers, history buffs, scientists, artists, religious people, generalists, specialists. Moreover there is communication between all those kinds of people; there are attempts to understand each other, despite differences in language or culture. Also, there are as many approaches and interests as there are people. But see united.
• knowledgeable. See [[brilliant prose]]
• personal. This may seem strange: after all, the goal is to create entries which are as objective and without personal bias as possible. But the openness of Wikipedia allows total self-expression within those bounds (and even without it in the personal pages); Wikipedians define themselves within the context of the project through their interests and goals. This brings both benefits and complications--Wikipedia takes advantage of personal qualities like trust, insight, imagination, idiosyncracy and empathy which bureaucratic institutions cannot; but it cannot do so without also having some of the downsides, including confusion, bias, mistakes, and hurt feelings. A healthy community doesn't eliminate the problems, but it understands how to deal with them.
• fragile. The success of the community depends on a large part on the presence of good wikipedians. Scare those elements away and the project will lose much of its appeal.
• unique. Are there other communities out there that combine the above attributes? Wikipedia has a unique mission, which shapes the community uniquely: it is a wiki (and hence very open), open content (and hence free), and an encyclopedia project. There is nothing like this in the world.

In late 2001, this was accurate. There were almost no administrative overhead and no "bureaucracy" at first -- almost everyone wrote content and concentrated on content. Even after the first Slashdot story, vandalism was minimal and confined to the front page. Things started to deteriorate in December when Jimbo and Larry began to fight, and more vandals showed up. This was also, coincidentally, around when those premium assholes Cunctator, Bauder and Moeller started to raise hell and mess things up. Late 2002 was the "tipping point". Then was when Moeller started posting rants about child sexuality, and Bauder (who showed up in in early 2002, was quickly made an administrator by Jimbo with no notification or discussion, and did very little content work) was accusing Larry, a PhD in philosophy, of incompetence -- on the "Reality" article.

The earliest iteration of WP conceived as Bomis Inc. as the copyright holder link, which freely licensed WP content to the general public. Copyright was thus not vested in each contributor, but theoretically signed over to a single entity for redistribution. I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on TV, but this seems significantly (and perhaps importantly) different than the current notions of copyright underlying WP.

The Creative Commons license didn't exist yet, and they weren't as concerned with posting images anyway. Should it need repeating, I will repeat: Jimbo and Larry didn't really know what they were doing. And why should they? No one had ever attempted this before.

It should be no wonder that the WMF now has close links to the Creative Commons group -- without CC licenses, Wikipedia would be in a world of legal shit right now.

Nupedia.com is an open content, international, peer reviewed project run by Larry Sanger, who got the idea of supplementing Nupedia with a less formal "wiki" encyclopedia project. So there is a historical connection between the projects. Both Nupedia and Wikipedia are originated by Bomis, a WebPortal company. So there is a management connection.

There is no editorial connection between the projects, however. The participants in Nupedia do not necessarily condone the contents or methods of Wikipedia--and vice-versa!

We hope the projects will be complementary.

Around when Larry was getting married in November 2001, things were quickly going to hell on Nupedia. Traffic on the Nupedia-l mailing list dropped to near-zero in December. Some of the Nupedia people had already expressed their dislike of Wikipedia, there or on Wikipedia-l, or in emails, and were all ignored by everyone except Larry. By 2002 Larry was the last person posting anything on Nupedia-l.

In 2003 some of the Nupedia articles were merged and some of the contributors had already moved to WP. By November it was gone, and nobody at Wikipedia really cared. The records of what happened are extremely shredded.

I might add that Fred Bauder's early edit history is total crap, completely unreliable and missing large chunks. And again, nobody cares.

[eagle]

Wikipedia takes advantage of personal qualities like trust, insight, imagination, idiosyncracy and empathy which bureaucratic institutions cannot; but it cannot do so without also having some of the downsides, including confusion, bias, mistakes, and hurt feelings. A healthy community doesn't eliminate the problems, but it understands how to deal with them.

The Wikipedia editor had remarkable insight. Too bad that after 13 years of searching for understanding, the Wikipedia "community" still does not understand how to deal with those problems.

[Vocal]

I might add that Fred Bauder's early edit history is total crap, completely unreliable and missing large chunks. And again, nobody cares.

He had another account in the early days: Fredbauder (T-C-L).