Chapter 20. The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir


Larry Sanger

An impassioned debate has been raging, particularly since about the summer of 2004, concerning the merits of Wikipedia and the future of free online encyclopedias. This discussion has not benefited by much detailed, accurate consideration of the origins of Wikipedia and of its parent project, Nupedia. Yet those origins are crucial to forming a proper judgment of the current state and best future direction of free encyclopedias.

Wikipedia as it stands is a fantastic project; it has produced enormous amounts of content and thousands of excellent articles, and now, after just four years, it is getting high-profile, international recognition as a new way of obtaining at least a rough and ready idea about many topics. Its surprising success may be attributed, briefly, to its free, open, and collaborative nature.

This has been my attitude toward Wikipedia practically since its founding. But in late 2004, I wrote an article critical of certain aspects of the Wikipedia project, "Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism,"[1] which occasioned much debate. I have also been quoted, as co-founder of Wikipedia, in many recent news articles about the project, making various other critical remarks. I am afraid I am getting an undeserved reputation as someone who is opposed to everything Wikipedia stands for. This is completely incorrect. In fact, I am one of Wikipedia's strongest supporters. I am partly responsible for bringing it into the world (as I will explain), and I still love it and want only the best for it. But if a better job can be done, a better job should be done. Wikipedia has shown fantastic potential, and it is open contentand so if the project has aspects which will keep it from being the maximally authoritative, broad, and deep reference that I believe it could be, I firmly believe that the world has the right to, and should, improve upon it.

[1] Posted December 31, 2004, at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25. All URLs in this chapter were accessed April 5, 2005.

Wikipedia's predecessor, which I was also employed to organize, was Nupedia. Nupedia aimed to be a highly reliable, peer-reviewed resource that fully appreciated and employed the efforts of subject-area experts, as well as the general public. When the more free wheeling Wikipedia took off, Nupedia was left to wither. It might appear to have died of its own weight and complexity. But, as I will explain, it could have been redesigned and adaptedit could have, as it were, "learned from its mistakes" and from Wikipedia's successes. Thousands of people who had signed up and who wanted to contribute to the Nupedia system were left disappointed. I believe this was unfortunate and unnecessary; I always wanted Nupedia and Wikipedia working together to be not only the world's largest but also the world's most reliable encyclopedia. I hope that this memoir will help to justify this stance. Hopefully, too, I will manage to persuade some people that collaboration between an expert project and a public project is the correct approach to the overall project of creating open content encyclopedias.

I am not writing to request that Nupedia be resuscitated now, as nice as that would be. But I would like to tell the story of Nupedia and the first couple of years of Wikipedia as I remember it. I present this as a memoira personal viewnot as an authoritative history. The "overall project of creating open content encyclopedias" is something about which I have been writing since at least 2001. For example, in July 2001, while still working on both Wikipedia and Nupedia, I wrote, "If some other open source project proves to be more competitive, then it should and will take the lead in creating a body of free encyclopedic knowledge."[2] Since Wikipedia is open content and hence may be reproduced and improved upon by anyone, I have always been cognizant that it might not end up being the only or best version. My personal devotion has always been to the ideal project as I have envisioned it, not necessarily to particular incarnations of Nupedia or Wikipedia; and I think this attitude is fully consistent with the (very positive) spirit of open source collaboration generally.

[2] "Britannica or Nupedia? The Future of Free Encyclopedias," posted July 25, 2001, at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/25/103136/121.

This being said, let me also emphasize strongly that, throughout this discussion, I am not suggesting that Wikipedia needs to be replaced with something better. I do, however, think that it needs to be supplemented by a broader, more ambitious, and more inclusive vision of the overall project.



Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution
ISBN: 0596008023
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 217

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