On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Tyler <programmer651(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> How come, when I go to the edit history of the main page, I can't find a revision from 2001? Only 2002. Is it because of that software change?
You hit the nail on the head. Revisions from the UseModWiki days are
sketchy at best; many of them were converted, but it wasn't a 100%
reliable process, and iirc much of the revision history simply wasn't
kept (by design).
I love your enthusiasm, Tyler, and I don't want to tread on that. You
should absolutely keep learning about Wikimedia's history, because if
you want to contribute, there's no such thing as too much background
knowledge.
I do, however, feel the need to point out that this isn't really the
forum for the questions you've been asking over the past couple of
weeks. I'm sure there are tons of people who'd be happy to help you
out with these sorts of questions, and if you haven't already
discovered it I'd like to point you to IRC[1], where there are lots of
old-timers with a plethora of institutional knowledge. Most of your
questions can be answered with a link to an article on Meta, or in the
Wikipedia namespace on the English Wikipedia, and you're probably best
off finding people who know where to direct you.
Cheers,
Austin Hair
Foundation-l Administrator
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC
On 8 March 2010 01:14, Tyler <programmer651(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> That's not what I asked. I said, in 2001, Wikipedia was founded, right? The earliest edit in edit history is 2002. What was the home page in 2001 then?
Since you are talking about the software, MediaWiki, maybe you ought
to look that up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_release_history
Seems the first release was in 2003. I bet that means the software
was first written for Wikipedia around 2002. Also, some revisions was
lost, I've heard.
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Tyler <programmer651(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> That's not what I asked. I said, in 2001, Wikipedia was founded, right? The earliest edit in edit history is 2002. What was the home page in 2001 then?
>
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Some revisions from a long time ago don't exist anymore.
Such is life.
-Chad
That's not what I asked. I said, in 2001, Wikipedia was founded, right? The earliest edit in edit history is 2002. What was the home page in 2001 then?
Very early on in the history of the project, there was only one server and
it was shared with the parent company (Bomis). Once it filled up it was
simply cleared out. Unfortunately, this means that the earliest edits to the
English Wikipedia are now lost :-( Ward Cunningham did the same thing with
the first ever Wiki.
Unfortunately, people never know what is going to be interesting to the
future and discard seemingly unimportant things only to discover their value
later on - the archivists' perpetual problem.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
and also http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePage (how the website used
to look).
-Liam [[witty lama]]
wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
On 8 March 2010 11:07, Tyler <programmer651(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> How come, when I go to the edit history of the main page, I can't find a
> revision from 2001? Only 2002. Is it because of that software change?
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
How do you edit Wikipedia anonymously? When I click "edit this page", a blank edit box appears, and the page, including wiki markup, appears below the box. And, just for my info, how many of you on this list have heard of Uncyclopedia?
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen writes:
It should be noted that the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse - which
> is the closest thing to a accessible public record of such notices - does
> not appear to hold more than 3 (count them, three) notices that
> deal with content on wikimedia sites. Notably it appears that none
> of them appears to have been entered by the WMF - with the caveat
> that perhaps the one involving German Wikipedia may have had some
> chapter involvement, though likely not.
>
> I would be interested to hear from some knowledgeable person in a
> position of responsibility within the Foundation (perhaps Mike
> Godwin), whether routine reporting of these kind of notices to
> Chilling Effects Clearinghouse has been explored in any depth.
>
Two of the three notices you refer to here were forwarded to
ChillingEffects.org by me. The one dated 2004 obviously isn't from me (I
began work at WMF in 2007). There was no chapter involvement in my decision
to forward the two notices in question to ChillingEffects.org.
--Mike
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen writes:
It should be noted that the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse - which
> is the closest thing to a accessible public record of such notices - does
> not appear to hold more than 3 (count them, three) notices that
> deal with content on wikimedia sites. Notably it appears that none
> of them appears to have been entered by the WMF - with the caveat
> that perhaps the one involving German Wikipedia may have had some
> chapter involvement, though likely not.
>
> I would be interested to hear from some knowledgeable person in a
> position of responsibility within the Foundation (perhaps Mike
> Godwin), whether routine reporting of these kind of notices to
> Chilling Effects Clearinghouse has been explored in any depth.
>
Two of the three notices you refer to here were forwarded to
ChillingEffects.org by me. The one dated 2004 obviously isn't from me (I
began work at WMF in 2007). There was no chapter involvement in my decision
to forward the two notices in question to ChillingEffects.org.
--Mike