[Wikipedia-l] Press release is out

[Larry Sanger]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020115/latu099_1.html

Here is the text:


Free Encyclopedia Project, Wikipedia, Creates 20,000 Articles in a Year

      SAN DIEGO, Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The free encyclopedia project
Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.com ) celebrates its first anniversary
today.  In its first year, the collaborative project has created over
20,000 articles, organizers say.  Wikipedia is a so-called WikiWiki, which
means that anyone with an Internet connection can visit the website and
edit an article without signing up.  For such an open project, some may
find it remarkable that many of the articles are reasonably good and that
the project has attracted a large number of well-educated, articulate
contributors.

    Wikipedia is not only free to read, it is free to distribute.  It is
released under the GNU Free Documentation License, which ensures that
anyone may reuse the entries on the site in any way they wish, including
commercially, as long as they too preserve that right in their own
versions. Many participants are attracted to the notion that they are
contributing to a completely free resource that can be used worldwide.

    The founders of Wikipedia are Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and
philosopher Larry Sanger.  Wales has supplied the financial backing and
other support for the project, and Sanger, who earned a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from Ohio State in 2000, has led the project.  Sanger and Wales
attribute Wikipedia's success so far to the presence of a strong core
group of contributors who together maintain community standards of quality
and neutrality.  "Participants all keep a watchful eye over the 'Recent
Changes' page," Wales said.  "They edit each others' work constantly.  It
seems surprising that it works very well, but it does."

    The project began life quietly in January 2001 as an offshoot of its
more academic sister project, Nupedia ( http://www.nupedia.com ), but has
long since overtaken it in terms of size.  Wikipedia announced 10,000
articles last September, and claims to have doubled that number in the
past four months. This growth, and the project dynamics that fuel it, have
recently been the subject of articles in The New York Times, The New York
Times Magazine, and MIT's highly-respected Technology Review, as well as
technology news websites such as Slashdot and Kuro5hin.

    At present, nearly 200 people are working on the project daily, from
all around the world; organizers estimate that the project has had well
over a thousand contributors.  The success of such an open project,
staffed by such a large and diverse body of writers, is a puzzle: how can
so many people with so many different backgrounds collaborate with such
little oversight?  Project organizers say that it is partly because the
participants can edit each others' contributions easily, and partly
because the project has a strong "nonbias" policy; this keeps interaction
relatively polite and productive. Sanger explains: "If contributors took
controversial stands, it would be virtually impossible for people of many
different viewpoints to collaborate. Because of the neutrality policy, we
have partisans working together on the same articles.  It's quite
remarkable."

    What motivates a scholar to participate in such a wide-open project?
For Axel Boldt, a mathematics professor at Metropolitan State University
in St. Paul, Minnesota, the motivation to contribute dozens of mathematics
articles is "the same that motivates me to work in academia: it's fun to
teach, it's fun to learn, it's fun to interact with intelligent people."

    Sanger has been invited to speak about Wikipedia at the Stanford
University Computer Systems Laboratory colloquium on January 16;  the
press is invited to attend or to view the talk via the Internet.  Please
see http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ for details.

    Wikipedia may be found on the web at http://www.wikipedia.com .

    Interview contacts:  Larry Sanger, +1-702-631-7301 (except Jan. 16,
and until Jan. 20), lsanger at nupedia.com, or Jimmy Wales, +1-619-296-1732,
jwales at bomis.com, both of Wikipedia.

    Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.com ), 3585 Hancock St., Suite A, San
Diego, CA 92110, Tel. 619-296-1732, Fax 619-296-1754.


SOURCE Wikipedia
Web Site: http://www.wikipedia.com