[WikiEN-l] "Hello world?"

[David Lindsey]

Assuredly, Gardner is just repeating what Wales has told her as she was not
involved in the early stages of Wikipedia.  This leaves us with Wales's
word.  Uncharitably, you can assume that this is just a half truth or
falsehood designed to advance the sole founder theory; however, it is
possible that the purported edit happened not on Wikipedia but on the
short-lived wiki hosted at Nupedia, which would not even have been called
Wikipedia at the time.  Unless (until?) a full backup of that wiki surfaces,
we have nothing to go on.

All that I can find of the old NupediaWiki is a version preserved on the new
Wikipedia within the Starling archive.  The text "Hello World!" is not found
in that version, though it's quite possible that someone else removed it
after Wales added it.

Either way, "Hello World!" was not the first Wikipedia edit.  It may have
been the first NupediaWiki edit, but that's not quite the same thing.



On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Joseph Reagle <joseph.2008 at reagle.org>wrote:

>
> I've seen both Wales and Gardner (e.g., [1]) note that Wikipedia began with
> Wales typing in "Hello World".
>
> [1]:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/12/wikipedia-internet
>
> That's a neat historical fact, but is there a source? From the Starling
> archive it appears the first contribution was from office.bomis.com at
> Mon, 15 Jan 2001 19:27:13 +0000 .
>
> [[
>
> HomePage|979586833
> 1c1
> < Describe the new page here.
> ---
> > This is the new WikiPedia!
>
> ]]
>
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