Ten years ago today [1], Jimmy Wales typed Hello World! into a wiki, and Wikipedia was born.
Today, Wikipedia’s the fifth most-popular site on the internet, and the only site in the top 25 that provides a wholly non-commercial public service, backed by a non-profit. It’s the largest collection of information ever assembled in human history: free to use, and free of advertising. If you’re reading it, it’s for you :-)
The anniversary’s an opportunity for us all to reflect on Wikipedia: its social impact, and what we want to accomplish in the next ten years. There’s been a lot of thoughtful media coverage over the past few weeks: you can read a lot of it here.
What makes me happy about the coverage is that it seems like people’s attitudes towards Wikipedia have finally turned an important corner.
In its early years, Wikipedia was one of our culture’s dirty little secrets: everybody used it, but very few were comfortable saying so. For the longest time, the only people who openly admitted loving Wikipedia were early adopters and iconoclasts.
Today though, journalists, educators and culture critics are finally embracing Wikipedia, acknowledging that its strengths vastly outweigh its weaknesses, and that its fundamental premise works. (A reporter told me the other day that mocking Wikipedia is “so 2007.” LOL.)
So today, we celebrate all the people who built this extraordinary thing. The engineers who made the code. The people who write the articles, fix the typos, smooth the text, localize the software, answer readers’ mail, and fight off vandals and POV-pushers. The donors, who pay the bills.
I invite you to check out this page, where there are listed (at last count) 454 Wikipedia anniversary parties, conferences, film screenings and other events. If you can come to one –even if you’ve never edited or even ever met a Wikipedian– please do!
And if you can’t be with us in person, why not do a little celebratory editing? Wikipedia wants your help: here’s a really great place to get started.
Thank you to everyone who’s helped to build Wikipedia. What you’ve done is amazing. Happy anniversary!
[1] It’s the morning of January 15 in southeast Asia, as I write this :-)
Sue Gardner's Blog 
This is pretty metal.
Hi, I written the following piece about Wikipedia’s 10th birthday:
http://johnager.co.uk/2011/01/15/10-years-of-wikipedia/
Best wishes, John.
Ms. Gardner:
I read with interest your comments about Wikipedia going dark tomorrow in protest against the proposed SOPA legislation. While I haven’t yet formed an educated decision for or against the legislation, I do have a question for you. Why Wikipedia also practices impediments against free speech and access to information on it’s pages. There once were many links in Wikipedia to interviews on my website. These are not profiles but actual verbatim interviews with various iconic figures. While all links to my site have been erased from the pages within Wikipedia that cover those icons, in many cases, references to blogs and even church webpages remain. I’m puzzled as to why that is?
I hope that you approve comments before their posted because I really wish the dialog is between you and I and not out for the world to see. I’ve attempted to appeal the decision by your organization but haven’t received anything but a form response (if that). With my site now about to begin it’s fourth year and with over 80 direct, primary interviews either posted or soon to be posted, I would think that my site wouldn’t be considered anything less than legitimate. Should you respond, I’ll share the site name with you so that you can investigate for yourself.