[WikiEN-l] "Hello world?"

[Tim Starling]

On 14/01/11 07:49, Joseph Reagle 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 .

There was a wiki created on January 10, said to be a test wiki, which
was later deleted. Presumably it was the one referred to here:

<http://web.archive.org/web/20030425173342/www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000678.html>

It's possible Jimmy's "Hello World" edit was made to that wiki. But we
can be pretty sure that the first edit to the surviving UseModWiki
instance was "This is the new WikiPedia!"

-- Tim Starling