Editing History of Wikipedia (section)

===Formulation of the concept===
Wikipedia was initially conceived as a feeder project for the Wales-founded [[Nupedia]], an earlier project to produce a free online encyclopedia, volunteered by [[Bomis]], a web-advertising firm owned by Jimmy Wales, [[Tim Shell]] and [[Michael E. Davis (businessman)|Michael E. Davis]].<ref name="thehive" /><ref name="Jonathan Sidener">{{Cite news |last=Sidener |first=Jonathan |date=6 December 2004 |title=Everyone's Encyclopedia |work=[[The San Diego Union-Tribune]] |url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041206/news_mz1b6encyclo.html |url-status=dead |access-date=25 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090221005820/http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041206/news_mz1b6encyclo.html |archive-date=21 February 2009}}</ref><ref name="memoirofwiki" /> Nupedia was founded upon the use of qualified volunteer contributors and a considered multi-step [[peer review]] process.<ref>Kaplan Andreas, Haenlein Michael (2014) Collaborative projects (social media application): About Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Business Horizons, Volume 57 Issue 5, pp. 617–626</ref> Despite its mailing list of over 2000 interested editors, and the presence of Sanger as full-time editor-in-chief,<ref name="resignation">{{Cite web |title=My resignation – Larry Sanger – Meta |url=https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/My_resignation--Larry_Sanger |access-date=16 March 2023 |website=meta.wikimedia.org |language=en |quote=I was more or less offered the job of editing Nupedia when I was, as an ABD philosophy graduate student, soliciting Jimbo's (and other friends') advice on a website I was thinking of starting. It was the first I had heard of Jimbo's idea of an open content encyclopedia, and I was delighted to take the job. |archive-date=20 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320142105/https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/My_resignation--Larry_Sanger |url-status=live }}</ref> the production of content for Nupedia was extremely slow, with only 12 articles written during the first year.<ref name="memoirofwiki" />

The Nupedians discussed various ways to create content more rapidly.<ref name="Jonathan Sidener" /> Wikis had been used elsewhere on the web to organize knowledge,<ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-01-12 |title=From the archives: Highland Park teen is finalist in web competition |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2013-01-12-chi-archives-aaron-swartz-20130112-story.html |access-date=2023-08-21 |website=Chicago Tribune}}</ref> and the idea of a [[wiki]]-based complement to Nupedia was seeded by a conversation between Sanger and Ben Kovitz,<ref name="Ben_Kovitz">{{Cite news |title=Ben Kovitz |publisher=[[WikiWikiWeb]] |url=http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BenKovitz |url-status=live |access-date=25 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070404030625/http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BenKovitz |archive-date=4 April 2007}} – see also Ben Kovitz'  fuller account which he links from there.</ref><ref name="Glyn Moody">{{Cite news |last=Moody |first=Glyn |date=13 July 2006 |title=This time, it'll be a Wikipedia written by experts |work=The Guardian |location=London |url=http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1818630,00.html |url-status=live |access-date=25 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070222023201/http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1818630,00.html |archive-date=22 February 2007}} – While casting around for a way to speed up article production, Sanger met with Kovitz, an old friend, in January 2001. Kovitz introduced Sanger to the idea of the wiki, invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham: web pages that anyone could write and edit. "My first reaction was that this really could be what would solve the problem," Sanger explains, "because the software was already written, and this community of people on WikiWikiWeb" – the first wiki – "had created something like 14,000 pages". Nupedia, by contrast, had produced barely two dozen articles. Sanger took up the idea immediately: "I wrote up a proposal and sent it [to Wales] that evening, and the wiki was then set up for me to work on." But this was not Wikipedia as we know it. "Originally it was the Nupedia Wiki – our idea was to use it as an article incubator for Nupedia. Articles could begin life on this wiki, be developed collaboratively and, when they got to a certain stage of development, be put into the Nupedia system."</ref><ref name="Origins_of_Wikipedia">{{Cite news |last=Sidener |first=Jonathan |date=23 September 2006 |title=Wikipedia co-founder looks to add accountability, end anarchy |work=[[The San Diego Union-Tribune]] |url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060923/news_lz1n23wiki.html |url-status=dead |access-date=25 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071017041126/http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060923/news_lz1n23wiki.html |archive-date=17 October 2007 |quote=The origins of Wikipedia date to 2000, when Sanger was finishing his doctoral thesis in philosophy and had an idea for a Web site.}}</ref> and by another between Wales and Jeremy Rosenfeld.<ref name="Ben_Kovitz" /> Kovitz was a [[computer programmer]] and regular on [[Ward Cunningham]]'s revolutionary wiki "the [[WikiWikiWeb]]". He explained to Sanger what wikis were, over a dinner on 2 January 2001.<ref name="Ben_Kovitz" /><ref name="Glyn Moody" /><ref name="Origins_of_Wikipedia" /><ref name="the hive">{{Cite magazine |last=Poe |first=Marshall |date=September 2006 |title=The Hive |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia/3 |url-status=live |magazine=[[The Atlantic Monthly]] |page=3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061110160718/http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia/3 |archive-date=10 November 2006 |access-date=25 March 2007}} – "Over tacos that night, Sanger explained his concerns about Nupedia's lack of progress, the root cause of which was its serial editorial system. As Nupedia was then structured, no stage of the editorial process could proceed before the previous stage was completed. Kovitz brought up the wiki and sketched out 'wiki magic,' the mysterious process by which communities with common interests work to improve wiki pages by incremental contributions. If it worked for the rambunctious hacker culture of programming, Kovitz said, it could work for any online collaborative project. The wiki could break the Nupedia bottleneck by permitting volunteers to work simultaneously all over the project. With Kovitz in tow, Sanger rushed back to his apartment and called Wales to share the idea. Over the next few days, he wrote a formal proposal for Wales and started a page on Cunningham's wiki called 'Wikipedia.{{'-}}"</ref> Wales stated in October 2001 that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software" for people bored by Nupedia process,<ref name="Wikipedia-l-000671">{{Cite news |last=Wales |first=Jimmy |date=30 October 2001 |title=LinkBacks? |publisher=Wikimedia |format=Email |url=http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000671.html |url-status=dead |access-date=25 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140620072830/http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000671.html |archive-date=20 June 2014}}</ref> and later stated in December 2005 that Rosenfeld had introduced him to the wiki concept.<ref name="Wired News">{{Cite magazine |date=3 May 2007 |title=Assignment Zero First Take: Wiki Innovators Rethink Openness |url=https://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/05/assignment_zero_citizendium |url-status=dead |magazine=[[Wired News]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140328235925/http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/05/assignment_zero_citizendium |archive-date=28 March 2014 |access-date=1 November 2007}} Wired.com states: "Wales offered the following on-the-record comment in an e-mail to NewAssignment.net editor [and NYU Professor] [[Jay Rosen]] ...' Larry Sanger was my employee working under my direct supervision during the entire process of launching Wikipedia. He was not the originator of the proposal to use a wiki for the encyclopedia project – that was Jeremy Rosenfeld'."</ref><ref name="cadenhead">{{Cite web |last=Rogers Cadenhead |title=Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1 |url=http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2828/wikipedia-founder-looks-out-number-1 |access-date=15 October 2006 |archive-date=26 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080926103410/http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2828/wikipedia-founder-looks-out-number-1 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="rosenfeld">Also stated on Wikipedia, on Friday 2 December 2005 [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Wales&diff=next&oldid=29849184 permanent reference] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210311054329/https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Wales&diff=next&oldid=29849184 |date=11 March 2021 }}</ref><ref>Stated on Wikipedia on Monday 14 March 2005: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=11139857 reference] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210222221915/https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=11139857 |date=22 February 2021 }}</ref> Sanger thought a wiki would be a good platform to use, and proposed on the Nupedia [[mailing list]] that a wiki based upon [[UseModWiki]] (then v. 0.90) be set up as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Under the subject "Let's make a wiki", he wrote:<ref>{{Cite news |last=Larry Sanger |author-link=Larry Sanger |date=10 January 2001 |title=Let's make a wiki |publisher=Nupedia mailing list |url=http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000676.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000676.html |archive-date=14 April 2003}}</ref>

{{blockquote|No, this is not an indecent proposal. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not... As to Nupedia's use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE "open" and simple format for developing content. We have occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. It seems to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly, need very little maintenance, and in general, are very low-risk. They're also a potentially great source of content. So there's little downside, as far as I can determine.}}
Wales set one up and put it online on Wednesday 10 January 2001, under the nupedia.com domain.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Larry Sanger |author-link=Larry Sanger |date=10 January 2001 |title=Nupedia's wiki: try it out |publisher=Nupedia mailing list |url=http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000678.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030425173342/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000678.html |archive-date=25 April 2003}}</ref> This moved to a new wiki under the wikipedia.com domain on 15 January. On 17 January, the [[Free Software Foundation]]'s (FSF) [[GNUPedia]] project went online, potentially competing with [[Nupedia]],<ref>{{Cite web |date=17 January 2001 |title=Slashdot Comments &#124; GNUPedia Project Starting |url=http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9990&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=502603 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220612010030/https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9990 |archive-date=12 June 2022 |access-date=13 April 2010 |publisher=Slashdot.org}}</ref> but within a few years the FSF encouraged people "to visit and contribute to [Wikipedia]" instead.<ref>{{Cite web |year=2012 |title=The Free Encyclopedia Project |url=https://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121221000617/http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/ |archive-date=21 December 2012 |access-date=20 December 2012 |publisher=GNU.org |orig-year=1999}}</ref>