Expect an influx of traffic.

----- Original Message ----- From: system@nupedia.com To: lsanger@nupedia.com Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 10:42 AM Subject: Nupedia: system up; Wikipedia started; German and Slashdot invasion

March 22, 2000

Dear Nupedians,

It's been quite a long time since our last update (it was last

December!)--that's mainly because we've been so busy. But I'll keep this update brief and informal.

As most of you already know, the much-heralded new web-based system is

now up and running:

http://www.nupedia.com/newsystem/member.phtml To see it operate in its full splendor, you'll have to be logged in.

I have promised to add more instructions (where text is underlined) but have always seemed to lack time to finish this task. Meanwhile, the system is simple enough, with enough instructions already in place, for many people to have started using it; others, I'm afraid, might feel they've been left high and dry. My apologies; I'll try to get those instructions written. In the meantime, of course, help is available from many different people.

A conversation with a friend in early January about the so-called

"WikiWiki" software led to the creation of Wikipedia, a new encyclopedia project complementary to Nupedia:

http://www.wikipedia.com/ Basically, *anyone* can go to any page of that website and, by simply

pressing the "edit text" link, edit the text of the page. As of this moment (Thursdy, March 22, 12:57 PM Pacific Time), we have 2,953 (yes, 2,953) pages in Wikipedia. Of these, 1,816 are relatively substantial articles. We started in January, 2001, so we've made incredible progress--even we are surprised. Maybe you think that Wikipedia would end up being a rather low-quality product, since it's open to everyone. But perhaps it's the fact that it is open to everyone that makes a lot of these articles in fact not so bad, and ever-improving. We tend to cater to the highest common denominator--"lower denominators" usually don't touch articles they know nothing about.

PLEASE note: the editorial processes and policies of Wikipedia and

Nupedia are totally separate; Nupedia editors and peer reviewers do not necessarily endorse the Wikipedia project, and Wikipedia contributors do not necessarily endorse the Nupedia project. I personally am working on both projects, as are a number of Nupedia members. I think that the projects might eventually develop a very interesting symbiotic relationship. But nothing along those lines is official, and no changes are anticipated in the near future. Certainly no changes will be made without consulting Advisory-L and Nupedia-L.

In January and February, we had an enormous influx of traffic due to

coverage of Nupedia by the German press agency DPA and by the hugely popular computer programmer website, Slashdot.org (twice!). (This has led, by the way, to my getting far behind in my e-mail--something for which I apologize, but it really couldn't be helped.)

As a result, we have set up Deutsch-L, a mailing list, ably led by

Andreas Flack, which has been producing German translations of various Nupedia pages. See:

http://www.nupedia.com/de/ And as a result of *that*, we've accepted translations of the home

page in French, Italian, and Spanish (as well as German of course). We've set up Interpret-L for general translation issues, and Francais-L, a nascent French language translation project. We might soon set up Espanol-L. See this page for more information:

http://www.nupedia.com/translating.shtml

Another piece of news is that we have found an able Chief Copyeditor

who may be contacted via the following web pages:

http://www.nupedia.com/copyediting.shtml http://www.nupedia.com/newsystem/copyediting.phtml

Those, then, are some news highlights. There has been much other

news; but I did promise to try to keep this short. If you're curious, you could join Nupedia-L or simply poke around the website to see what you've been missing.

Kind regards to all, Larry

Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. Nupedia editor-in-chief lsanger@nupedia.com

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