[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> For those of you who were around when it kicked off... when it 
> went live, was it intended to become a reference tool *on the 
> web* like it has now, or was the web process intended to be 
> somewhat less obvious than it became (a top-40 site, eek)? 
> Open, yes, freely editable, yes, but a live "proper" 
> encyclopedia from Year One?

My first edit was on 2 January 2002. Boy was the place a mess (have you seen
UseMod ; ugly ; en.wikipedia had less than 20,000 articles and Larry Sanger was
still around). But I loved it since there was so much to do. Almost every
article I saw was obviously a work in progress. We were still working out basic
rules and conventions. WikiProjects were just getting underway. Just about
anybody could have a major influence on policy formation and the direction of
WikiProjects. 

At the time we thought it would take us 5 years to to reach our initial goal of
100,000 articles. All the focus I saw was on development, not use in the near
to mid term. I don't think anybody, except maybe Jimbo, could have dreamed we
would get so popular so fast, or so useful.

Now when I look around, most articles that cover subjects encyclopedias should
cover look fairly complete. Articles on technology, popular culture, and
current events are even better on average.

Wikipedia becoming useful; well, that is something that kinda snuck up on me
while I was helping make it useful. I'm sure it also surprised many other old
timers as well. The idea seemed too far in the future to even think about. 

There were fewer than 20 reads per write when I started. Now  there are now
more than 200 reads per write.  I guess now somebody has to work on sorting the
wheat from the chaff for our readers. Heck, let them do it through an article
validation feature. We have an encyclopedia to write. :) 

-- mav


		
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