[WikiEN-l] An open letter to Jimmy Wales

[Fred Bauder]

>
> What would *really* interest me, and what I consider
> to be the seminal moment - even the foundational moment -
> in creating the wikipedia we all know; is when somebody
> made the conceptual breakthrough to the vision of
> wikipedia as something sui generis, and freestanding.
>
> I am betting there were hold-outs fairly long into the
> last days of Nupedia, who still thought it should be
> revivified in some form. I think for anyone who really
> wants to put a face on the founding of wikipedia, it
> would serve well if we revisited that particular period,
> and gave credit to who ever it was that first suggested
> that Wikipedia was *it*, and Nupedia wasn't. If that
> was Larry Sanger, I *do* think he deserves the credit,
> though that would clearly make him an apostate, since
> he has clearly spent much of his time lately arguing that
> no, after all, wikipedia _wasn't_ *it*.
>
> Yours,
>
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

When I came on in 2002, Nupedia was still alive, had half a dozen
articles, including one in development. Essentially it was dead, but
Sanger had not given up on it. Anything you contributed that was not
approved by an expert in the field was just lost. There was not even a
transparent way to communicate with that expert. See
http://www.starfishandspider.com/index.php?title=Wikipedia for more of my
observations.

What really made Wikipedia was free publicity from Slashdot and The New
York Times during 2001. I don't know if I could find the initial
Slashdoting, but here are the links to the two New York Times articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/technology/fact-driven-collegial-this-site-wants-you.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/magazine/the-year-in-ideas-a-to-z-populist-editing.html

So I would say at least some of the credit goes to folks who recognized a
good idea and alerted the rest of the intellectual and internet community
to it.

Fred Bauder