This page combines the timeline
Wikipedia Timeline by Derktar and Anthony dePierro’s[1]
timeline, plus other material sourced by the Wikipedia POV [private wiki.]
1989
• 1992-1996:
Jimmy Wales runs "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy",
where Tim Shell and Larry Sanger also participate.
1993
• April
22, 1993: NCSA Mosaic released.
• October
22, 1993: Rick Gates proposes Interpedia[2],
"The Internet Encyclopedia" which never leaves the planning stages.
1994
• Computer
programmer Ward Cunningham begins work on the software 'WikiWikiWeb' which
became the first 'Wiki'. Cunningham later wrote the book Wiki Way describing
the process, and remains a member of Wikimedia's Advisory Board.
• March
22nd Larry Sanger, who is an occasional contributor to Wales's Ayn Rand list,
writes a 'manifesto' on his own online mailing list (eventually named the
Association for Systematic Philosophy). Sanger writes: "The history of
philosophy is full of disagreement and confusion. One reaction by philosophers
to this state of things is to doubt whether the truth about philosophy can ever
be known, or whether there is any such thing as the truth about philosophy. But
there is another reaction: one may set out to think more carefully and
methodically than one’s intellectual forebears."
• Jimmy
Wales employed by Michael Davis at Chicago Options Associates
1996
• May
1996: Brian Dowling files suit against Chicago Options Associates and Michael
Davis seeking a portion of COA's profits, plus interest
• November
7, 1996: Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis form Bomis, Inc., a Delaware
Close Corporation
• November
15, 1996: bomis.com created. The team are based in Chicago.
• Wales
meets Christine at a party
1998
• December
– Bomis moves to San Diego - 4455 Lamont St. San Diego, CA 92109 San Diego.
1999
• Software
freedom activist and creator of the GNU project Richard Stallman calls for
development of a free on-line encyclopedia through the means of inviting the
public to contribute articles. He describes this in his essay "The Free
Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource."
• April
1999: h2g2 founded.
• October
29, 1999: nupedia.com and nupedia.org created.
• Jimmy
Wales begins thinking about a “volunteer-built” online encyclopedia to be
funded by Bomis. [?evidence?]
2000
• Larry
Sanger sends Jimmy Wales a business proposal for what is in essence a cultural
news blog.
• January
2000: Wales invites Sanger to work with him on his free encyclopedia project.
• January
24, 2000: jimmywales.com[3]]
created.
• February
2000: Sanger arrives in San Diego.
• February
10, 2000: gnupedia.com and gnupedia.org created.
• March
GNU Free Documentation License version 1.1 released.
• March
9th Nupedia founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. Sanger becomes 'Editor in
Chief' and states his wish to make Nupedia "the world's largest
encyclopedia." Nupedia plans to be a formally constructed online
encyclopaedia establishing a verification system to ensure that the expert
contributors are experts.*June 2000: Sanger gets his PHD, and a rise.
• On
March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ index peaks at an all-time high of 5,048.62.
"The decline from this peak signaled the beginning of the dot-com bubble
burst."
• July
The 'Nupedia Advisory Board' is installed. 'Atonality', believed to be the
first Nupedia article, is published after peer review.
• December
21, 2000: Nuevo Proyecto: GNUPedia is posted on Barrapunto[4]
• December
24, 2000: Álvaro Tejero Cantero asks "¿Habéis pensado en diseñar un Wiki
específico para el trabajo de pulir los módulos-entradas?. Muchos proyectos de
Software están considerando aprovechar la dinámica "Document-mode" de
los Wikis como una alternativa a las "message boards" que permite una
documentación persistente, no repetitiva e hipertextualmente articulada de los
temas que se van tratando a petición de los usuarios."
• December
26, 2000: Jimmy Wales' daughter is born. He names her 'Kira', after Kira
Argounova in Ayn Rand's novel We The Living. (p.32)
2001
• January
2, 2001: The conversation[5]
at the taco stand
• January
2nd Ben Kovitz (computer programmer and polymath) explains the basic concept of
a wiki to Larry Sanger over dinner . Sanger considers the wiki format as
suitable for the Nupedia project. (See Sanger's memoirs)
• January
10, 2001: Let's make a wiki [3]
• January
10th Larry Sanger launches a wiki. According to Sanger, "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."
• January
11th Sanger coins the name "Wikipedia" for the Wiki project.
• January
12, 2001: wikipedia.com registered.
• January
13, 2001: wikipedia.org registered.
• January
15, 2001: Wikipedia publicly launched at Wikipedia.com after Nupedia's Advisory
Board expresses concern about a Wiki being associated with Nupedia. Wikipedia
develops a life of its own and begins to function largely independently of
Nupedia, although Sanger initially leads activity on Wikipedia by virtue of his
position as Nupedia's editor-in-chief.
• January
16th First article created on Wikipedia.
• January
17th GNUPedia, a similar project to develop a free encyclopedia, is launched
after being proposed by GNU founder Richard Stallman in 1999. Confusion between
GNUPedia and Nupedia stifles the project, not helped by the fact that Jimmy
Wales had purchased the gnupedia.org domain name.
• January
17, 2001: Slashdot: GNUPedia Project Starting
• January
20, 2001: Slashdot: "Will The Real Nupedia Please Stand Up?"
• January
2001: h2g2 is taken over by the BBC.
• January
Nupedia's mailing list grows to almost 2,000 people.
• March
Wikipedia boasts over 1300 articles.
• March
5th Jimmy Wales interviewed in Slashdot about Nupedia. He ends the interview
stating, "People who want to get started _today_ on contributing free
texts to the world can do so at Wikipedia. All the content is released under
the GNU FDL, and it already has over 1000 articles. Short, and maybe not the
high quality of Nupedia, but with time? Who knows..." *March 16th German
language and Catalan Wikipedias launched.
• March
31, 2001: earliest copy of wikipedia.com in Internet Archive [4]
• May
11th French language Wikipedia launched.
• June
26th "Wikipedia is now useful!", announces Larry Sanger.
• July
6th Larry Sanger, who still considers Nupedia to be the primary project,
proposes a backroom Wiki for Nupedia only viewable to members, where articles
can be improved and then approved for publishing by Nupedia. Wikipedia, which
is operating concurrently and has far fewer participants, is seen by Sanger as
a test case for what could be achieved on Nupedia.
• July
26th Wikipedia editor The Cunctator makes his first edit. He becomes perhaps
the first Wiki-addict.
• July
27, 2001: earliest copy of wikipedia.org in Internet Archive [5]
• September
WikiEN-l mailing list created.
• September
11 2001. The attack on the World Trade Centre provides the opportunity for
Wikipedians, including The Cunctator to provide real-time coverage of the
disaster. This set a controversial precedent for news coverage on Wikipedia
whose momentum has continued ever since.
• September
20th New York Times publishes a piece on Wikipedia called "Fact-Driven?
Collegial? This Site Wants You." Jimbo Wales: It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let
people work'.'
• October
Wikipedia grows at a rate of around 50 new editors a month.
• October
18th Jimmy Wales proposes the principles of what he terms "cabal
membership". This becomes the bureaucratic framework of Wikipedia.
• October
30th Jimmy Wales confirms that Larry Sanger had the idea to use Wiki software
for a separate project (Wikipedia) to accompany Nupedia. Later, in 2005, Wales gave
a different story stating that "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."
• December
2001: Larry Sanger gets married, and moves to Colorado.
2002
The aftermath of the dotcom
collapse brings a heavy toll upon Bomis. Sanger is laid off, and the cabal cast
around for ways of making Wikipedia profitable. Sanger mentions the idea of
'advertising' and the entire Spanish Wikipedia deserts.
• January
Larry Sanger is placed on half-time pay by Bomis.
• February
1st Sanger is no longer a Bomis employee.
• February
12, 2002: Sanger announces "Bomis might well start selling ads on
Wikipedia sometime within the next few months, and revenue from those ads might
make it possible for me to come back to my old job. This would be great."
[6]
• February
26th Participants in the Spanish language Wikipedia leave the project to form
"Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español" citing statements from Bomis, Inc.
regarding advertising on all Wikipedia sites. The Spanish language Wikipedia
suffers, before overtaking the forked Wiki in article numbers in November 2004.
See Spanish_fork.
• March
1st Larry Sanger resigns as "Editor in Chief" of Nupedia and
"any position of authority I had with Wikipedia".
• April
24th Wikipedia editor Lee Daniel Crocker writes the first version of
Wikipedia's No Personal Attacks policy [6].
• May
and October 2002: the circuit court of Cook County enters judgments totaling
$817,830.45 in favor of Brian Dowling against Chicago Options Associates and
Michael Davis
• August
wikipedia.com changes to wikipedia.org.
• August
2002: Wales announces "that he would never run commercial advertisements
on Wikipedia" [7]
• August
2002: wikipedia.com changes to wikipedia.org [7][8]
• September
2002: 3Apes directory project begun.
• October
9 2002 - Nasdaq Composite reaches a low of 1114, having lost 78% of its value
from its previous high of 5046.
• October
2002: Derek Ramsey develops the first bot program which digested the results of
the U.S. census and spat them out onto Wikipedia. He adds nearly 40,000
'articles' to the existing 50,000 in 6 days, virtually doubling Wikipedia's
'content'. This makes a visible spike in the timeline of Wikipedia article
development.
• December
12th Wiktionary launched.
2003
• January
2003: ex-wife and minor children of Michael Davis move to Florida.
• February
2003: Michael Davis and his wife move from Chicago, IL to St. Petersburg, FL
• March
16, 2003: wikimedia.org registered.
• June
14th Requests for Adminship (RFA) is introduced on Wikipedia.
• June
20th Wikimedia Foundation founded. Wikiquote launched.
• July
10th Wikibooks launched.
• September
26, 2003: nupedia.com shut down.
• October
28th The first arranged meet-up of Wikipedians takes place in Munich. Since
then regular meetups of Wikipedians are held.
• November
19, 2003, Dowling files a motion in the circuit court for turnover orders
directed to Davis's stock in Bomis
• November
24th Wikisource launched.
• December
8, 2003: wikia.com registered.
• December
9, 2003: wikia.org registered.
2004
• 2004:
(Florence): A [travel] policy was set up in 2004. It allowed 1000 dollars per
trimester per board member, 3000 dollars for the chair. This is the last
"validated one". In other words, most board members have exceeded
their "validated" trimester allocation. I agree it should be
expanded, but as it was not--it has been exceeded. Am I to assume that board
resolutions regarding spending can be ignored at the discretion of the Board?
• January
Arbitration and Mediation Committees announced, compared to Parliament by
Jimbo.
• January
4th David Gerard welcomed to Wikipedia on the day he makes his first edit.
• February
2nd The 200,000th article on the English Wikipedia is created.
• February
13th Angela Beesley welcomes Everyking to Wikipedia on the day he makes his
first edit.
• March
2nd Yahoo! announces that Wikipedia content will be indexed more often and
featured prominently on Yahoo! pages.
• April
20th The 250,000th article on the English Wikipedia is created. The latest
50,000 articles have been created in just 78 days.
• August
20th One of the most notorious vandals in Wikipedia history, Willy On Wheels,
begins his antics around this day.
• October
7: wikicities.com registered.
• November
15th Former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica Robert McHenry writes
"The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", an article critical of Wikipedia, which gains
some attention.
• November
28th Voting ends on the topic of implementing a new rule known as the
'three-revert rule' policy. In future, anyone reverting content to a previous
state three times on the same article can face sanctions.
• December
21st Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley form Wikia, Inc. as a Florida Corporation
• Tim
Starling and Brad Patrick worked for Wikia before being employed by the
Wikimedia Foundation.
• December
29th Kelly Martin is welcomed to Wikipedia two days after her first edit.
• December
31st Wikipedia enters Alexa's list of the top 100 English-language websites for
the first time.
2005
Throughout 2005 the number of
active and very active editors shows a marked increase. Wikipedia begins to be
visible to the internet community.
• January
4th Editor SlimVirgin discusses the use of a citation attributed to Daniel
Brandt as an article source on the (now deleted) article 'John Train Salon'.
This is the first mention of Brandt in relation to Wikipedia who at this time
is unaware of the site. SlimVirgin writes: "I removed Daniel Brandt. He's
not a credible source..." and shows familiarity with Brandt. SlimVirgin
deletes the article and talk page three months later.
• February
14th Wikipedia is accused of being the source of misinformation which found its
way into a Washington Post article on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
• March
1st The first on site fundraising effort ends raising $94,000.
• March
7th MediaWiki developers activate a feature which ends the ability of new user
accounts to perform page moves. This is implemented after a spate of
mischievous page moves by notorious activist Willy on Wheels .
• March
18th English Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles.
• March
21st Wikipedia editor 'Snowspinner', real name Philip Sandifer decides to
become a "self-appointed prosecutor" against other Wikipedia editors.
Sticking to his pledge, he brings many new requests to be judged by the
Arbitration Committee, including accusations against long term editor
Everyking. Sandifer sows significant discord among Wikipedians, and sets off a
myriad of bitter feuds between users that last for several years.
• March
22nd 'Snowspinner' alongside arbitrators Raul654 and Ambi creates the short
lived "District Attorney's Office" group which aims to
"prosecute" other editors more efficiently. Snowspinner declares
himself "dictator", with other participants being designated as
partners. The unpopular venture creates further disharmony and is shelved.
• March
28th Several Wikipedia editors in the UK meet to discuss the possibility of a
UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. The group is led by Australian, David
Gerard , and 'Vampwillow '. Vampwillow is later revealed to be Alison Wheeler
using two admin accounts against policy, and secretly campaigning to keep her
own biography on Wikipedia. (Bio since deleted and replaced by that of a
notable singer with the same name)
• April
7th The Wikimedia Foundation approve a privacy policy to protect the
identification of IP addresses and anonymous users' real life information.
• April
16th The Wikimedia Foundation announce that it has officially been recognized
as a tax-exempt charitable organization in the United States.
• April
18th Larry Sanger publishes his "memoirs" of setting up Wikipedia and
Nupedia.
• May
16th Jimmy Wales announces the appointment of seven people to official
positions in the Wikimedia Foundation. These are; Brion Vibber as Chief Technical
Officer; Domas Mituzas as Hardware Officer; Jens Frank as Developer Liaison;
Erik Möller as Chief Research Officer; Danny Wool as Grants Coordinator;
Elisabeth Bauer as Press Officer; Jean-Baptiste Soufron as Lead Legal
Coordinator
• May
26th (Seigenthaler controversy) Brian Chase, a delivery manager in Tennessee,
creates a Wikipedia biography of journalist and writer John Seigenthaler. It
includes hoax claims that Seigenthaler was "directly involved in the
Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby".
• June
Wikimedia servers are transported to a new location in Tampa, Florida.
• June
27th English Wikipedia now has 500 administrators.
• July
4th Moderators of Wikipedia's mailing list clamp down on what they claim is
"disruptive behavior" by other subscribers. Complaints by Wikipedia
administrators Jayjg, Ambi and David Gerard lead to moves by Gerard to moderate
new subscribers "by default".
• July
18th Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard are re-elected to the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
• July
25th A Wikipedia Arbitrator immediately deletes (out of process and without
discussion) a new article on the book The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble
Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. The book details the
writer's experience of reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica. The article
is later restored per process.
• August
12th Ezperanza launched. This is a sub-group created within Wikipedia to
"indirectly support the encyclopedia by providing support and other assistance
for Wikipedians in need, and by strengthening Wikipedia's sense of
community". The organization is disbanded in January 2007.
• August
29th Massive spate of mischievous edits by the allusive "Willy On
Wheels". Willy, who may be one person or a team of collaborators, manages
to change the multiple-language portal at www.wikipedia.org for over an hour,
altering the Wikipedia logo on WikiCommons to a picture referencing himself.
• September
(Seigenthaler controversy) Victor S. Johnson, Jr., discovers the hoax Wikipedia
entry on John Seigenthaler. After Johnson alerted him to the article,
Seigenthaler e-mails friends and colleagues about it.
• September
4th Wikipedia editors attempt to get an article on the controversial internet
entity Gay Nigger Association of America "featured" and on the site's
Main Page.
• Also
on September 4th Jimmy Wales edit wars on his own Wikipedia biography to change
the words "softcore pornography" to "adult content", in a
section detailing his involvement in "Bomis Babes".
• September
21st A day after the death of Simon Wiesenthal, a holocaust survivor who helped
track down more than 1000 Nazi war criminals, Wikipedia is discovered to have
been displaying outrageous false information about Wiesenthal, claiming he
partook in oral sex acts in Austria with other men. The Council of Australian
Jewry go public with their complaints.
• September
28th Wikipedia editor SlimVirgin starts a biography on Daniel Brandt.
• October
(Seigenthaler controversy) John Seigenthaler contacts Jimmy Wales, who took the
then-unusual step of having the affected versions of his biography history
hidden from public view in the Wikipedia version logs. Mirror websites not
controlled by Wikipedia continue to display the older and inaccurate article.
• October
5th Scottish call-center worker Alan Mcilwraith creates a hoax biography on
himself depicting a bogus life as a decorated war hero. The biography lasts
until the media break the hoax in April 2006.
• October
11th Jimmy Wales personally appoints editors Mindspillage (Kat Walsh) and Kelly
Martin to the Arbitration Committee.
• October
12th SlimVirgin responds to Brandt's complaint that he was not notified about
his biography with "we tend not to do that." Brandt begins editing
the article himself making corrections. SlimVirgin asks that he ceases.
• October
13th Daniel Brandt launches Wikipedia Watch. On the site, Brandt publishes an
open letter requesting that Jimmy Wales "lock down" the article, who
replies that this is "...an impossible and absurd request."
• October
16th SlimVirgin agrees to delete the Daniel Brandt biography entirely.
• October
18th Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski runs the article, "Wikipedia founder
admits to serious quality problems" in The Register, which is highly
critical of the site.
• October
24th The Wikimedia Foundation announce an increased partnership with
Answers.com. Answers.com provides direct scrapes of Wikipedia articles. In
return, Wikipedia and Answers.com will split advertising revenue from the
Answers.com website
October 26th-29th Philipp Lenssen,
a pro-Google blogger antagonistic towards Brandt's anti-Google investigations,
restores Brandt's biography. It is immediately deleted for a second time.
Lenssen blogs about the situation, and gains support from readers prepared to
challenge Brandt. The biography is recreated by administrator Canderson7 who
asserts to Brandt that "resistance is in fact futile". The article is
filled with increasingly hostile edits.
• October
28th Jimmy Wales edits his own biography to remove mention of Larry Sanger as
co-founder of Wikipedia.
• November
4th Daniel Brandt's biography is protected, unprotected, deleted several times
and finally restored. Brandt participates in the discussions maintaining his
position that he is a private figure and the article is an invasion of privacy.
Multiple anonymous administrators goad Brandt with derisory statements
including "Poor baby", "He can cry about this until the cows
come home", and suggestions that everyone "point and laugh" at
Brandt's open letter to Jimmy Wales. Brandt is blocked from the site.
• November
5th First incarnation of Wikipedia Review launches.
• November
7th First Article-for-Deletion debate on the biography of Daniel Brandt ends in
a "keep".
• November
9th Jimmy Wales edits his own biography to remove mention of Larry Sanger as
"setting up" Wikipedia. This is the second time Wales has removed
Sanger from the article.
• Also
on November 9th Brandt also launches Hivemind, which lists the real life
identity of prominent Wikipedia administrators. Brandt later describes Hivemind
as a service "because someone, somewhere, has to take responsibility for
the content on Wikipedia".
• November
11th The English article on Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg falsely
asserts that he had been in prison for pedophilia. Norwegian media publish
stories describing Wikipedia's error.
• November
13th Due to reservations from several Wikipedians, Daniel Brandt's biography is
put up for deletion for a second time. The result is keep.
• November
29th (Seigenthaler controversy) USA Today publishes an op-ed written by John
Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler describes his Wikipedia defamation experience and
calls Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool."
• December
(Seigenthaler controversy) Daniel Brandt locates the IP address responsible for
the Seigenthaler biography hoax to a company in Tennessee.
• December
1st Jimmy Wales edits his own biography again to remove "co" from
"co-founder" and demote Larry Sanger's role in the founding of
Wikipedia. Wales's revision directly contradicts statements he had made two
years earlier.
• December
5th (Seigenthaler controversy) John Seigenthaler appears on CNN. He criticizes
Wikipedia and US Congress for passing Section 230 of the Communications Decency
Act which protects ISPs and web sites from being held legally responsible for
disseminating content provided by their customers and users, "unlike print
and broadcast companies."
• Also
on December 5th In light of the Seigenthaler contoversy, Jimmy Wales announces
that the creation of new Wikipedia articles will be restricted for accounts
that have not set up a user name.
• December
9th (Seigenthaler controversy) Brian Chase confesses to the John Seigenthaler
hoax and resigns from his job. Seigenthaler receives a hand-written apology and
speaks with Chase on the phone.
• December
11th A Wikipedia biography is created on Brian Chase.
• December
14th Former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica Robert McHenry writes a
follow-up piece to his 2004 critique "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", to incorporate
the Seigenthaler controversy called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Blinks."
• December
17th Wikipedia agrees on a new guideline, 'Biographies of living persons'
(BLP). Editorial restrictions are introduced on the creation of new Wikipedia
articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people are
implemented.
• Also
on December 17th, a biography is created of Brian Peppers, a 37 year old
American who had become an "internet meme" due to his extreme
physical malformations caused by Crouzon syndrome. The article was "speedy
deleted" the following day, before being restored with 66% support. The
article is deleted and restored several times before being deleted unilaterally
by Jimmy Wales on 22nd February 2006. The comings and goings of the article
cause considerable dispute between opposing camps.
• December
22nd "Semi-protection" enabled on Wikipedia. This allow
administrators to prevent edits from IP addresses and newly created accounts on
specific articles.
• December
24th New York Times covers Jimmy Wales's controversial edits to his own
biography, and recaps the Seigenthaler controversy.
2006
• At
the beginning of January 2006, the number of 'very active' editors (more than
100 edits a month) leaps dramatically to over 3,000.
• January
10th Wikipedia becomes a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation.
• January
12th Kelly Martin resigns from the Arbitration committee.
• January
15th 'Communications committee' formed to handle media inquiries and emails
received for the foundation and Wikipedia via the newly implemented OTRS (a
ticket handling system).
• January
19th A German Court orders the German-language version of Wikipedia shut down
after the family of deceased phreaker/hacker “Tron” sued Wikimedia Deutschland
e.V. for using the deceased’s full name in an entry.
• January
22nd Voting ends for elections to the Arbitration Committee. Mindspillage ,
Charles Matthews and Jayjg are appointed among others (Jayjg had already served
several months). Fred Bauder is reelected.
• January
28th (Naked Short Selling controversy) 'Mantanmoreland' makes his first edit to
Wikipedia. Formerly, the IP address 70.23.85.112 , suspected of being
Mantanmoreland, had been editing the article Naked Short Selling and writing
that the practice was a "nonissue".
• February
6th Jimmy Wales redirects a Wikipedia biography of Brian Chase, the
Seigenthaler hoaxer. He reasons that Daniel Brandt "violated this man's
privacy severely by releasing his name and identity to the press". Brandt
defends his position stating that he told the press he was "uncomfortable
with Wikipedia putting up a dedicated page on Mr. Chase" and that it was
actually Seigenthaler who put Chase's name into print. Brandt's own biography
continues to be a source of contention and shows no signs of being similarly
redirected.
• Also
on February 6th Five Wikipedia administrators are removed of their
"duties" by Jimbo Wales after a Wikipedia-War erupts over userboxes.
Userboxes are decorative images that editors use to identify themselves on
their editor pages. A userbox was created by User:Paroxysm and stated that the
user "identifies as a pedophile". Wikipedia libertarians who
supported the userbox battled against those who found it distasteful.
• February
26th Second incarnation of Wikipedia Review launches.
• March
1st The Wikimedia Foundation announce the creation of the 1,000,000th article
in the English language edition of Wikipedia
• March
10th New York venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners invests $4 million
to help Wikia.
• March
12th New York Times publishes critical article "Anonymous Source Is Not the Same
as Open Source."
• March
13th Danny Wool, in his new role implementing "Office actions" blanks
and protects an article on Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney and activist, for
legal reasons. The article had been criticized for its overwhelmingly negative
portrayal of Thompson, and its lack of sources. In its last version before it
was blanked, the article contained at least 21 uncited statements.
• March
24th BBC and other media outlets cover Encyclopaedia Britannica's debunking of
the pro-Wikipedia 2005 Nature study. Britannica say the study contained "a
pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant
errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results".
• Also
on March 24th Guardian journalist and TV presenter Mark Lawson describes how
his life was changed after being erroneously depicted as Jewish in his
Wikipedia biography.
• March
26th Wikitruth launched. Wikitruth is a satirical Wiki hosting criticisms of
Wikipedia and reposting deleted articles from the site.
• March
28th Bessemer Venture Partners and the investment group of eBay Inc. announce
that they are participants in a $4 million initial round of investment in Wikia
Inc.
• April
4th Administrator Sam Korn deletes a controversial image described as a
"sexualized drawing of minor female" and is taken to task by a number
of Wikipedians for "censorship". Jimmy Wales comments, "Sam
rocks. For something like this it is far better to err on the side of tastefulness
and respect. Let us not let the pedophile trolls set the standard for our
debates."
• April
5th Articles for deletion/Daniel Brandt (3rd nomination) ends in another keep.
• April
11th Jimmy Wales controversially adds a new tool intended to bring revenue to
Wikipedia from advertising on a partner site, Answers.com. Eric Möller calls
for the partnership to be cancelled.
• April
14th (Naked Short Selling controversy) "Mantanmoreland" creates a
Wikipedia biography of Gary Weiss.
• April
19th Danny Wool indefinitely blocks Eric Möller (Eloquence ) for "reckless
endangerment -- OFFICE". After some too-ing and fro-ing, Jimmy Wales
unblocks Möller the same day. Wool, a paid employee of the Wikimedia
Foundation, had "stubbed" and protected two articles while representing
WP:OFFICE, which means that he is acting under the authority of the Wikimedia
Foundation to resolve urgent legal problems. Möller, a researcher for the
Wikimedia Foundation and partner of board member Angela Beesley, unprotected
the same articles without discussion.
• April
24th A "Paid editor job board" is proposed by an editor, which is met
by controversy, but later morphs into the Reward Board which is still running.
• April
29th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Mantamoreland, using another account
name of Lastexit , adds significant negative material to the biography of
Patrick Byrne. Byrne is a vocal critic of the controversial market practice of
Naked Short Selling.
• April
30th The mainstream media notes Wikipedia's capacity to be "a remarkably
useful for political dirty tricksters", citing a number of cases including
a recent controversy when a US Republican campaign manager reworked an
opponent's biography to add scurrilous claims.
• May
22nd Professor Juan Cole, outspoken critic of US foreign policy, describes his
negative experiences with his Wikipedia biography, "I gave up trying to
correct facts on various issues and now just actively warn students that
Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for research projects or even casual
knowledge".
• May
24th Influential blogger Nicholas Carr pronounces"The death of
Wikipedia".
• May
28th Wikipedians discuss the growing influence of Wikipedia Review. One
administrator writes "The Foundation should take one of these trolls and
use the legal system and/or the press to crucify him. The value of a troll's
head on a pike as a deterrent to other trolls would be worth the cost and
difficulty. "
• June
Historian Roy Rosenzweig publishes an indepth look at Wikipedia for The Journal
of American History.
• June
2nd Resolution:CEO passes, letting Jimmy Wales name the new Chief Executive
Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Ant, Jimmy, Tim, and Michael approve.
Angela Beesley opposes.
• June
16th Brad Patrick, heretofore a practicing attorney engaged in some pro bono
work with the Foundation starting in the fall of 2005, was named as general
counsel and interim executive director; in the latter capacity, Patrick was
designated to assist the Board in its search for a permanent executive
director.
• June
19th Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch attempts to clarify bad edits made to his
biography and is confronted by an anonymous editor KSmrq who writes, "You
do not get to choose whether or not an article on you appears in Wikipedia, and
you have no veto power over its contents. The article can cast you as a genius
or an imbecile, a respected scientist or a crackpot. [...] Wikipedia does not
operate by your rules, but by its own
conventions; I suggest you learn to accept it. " Haisch described his
experience in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. [7]
• July
4th Jimmy Wales releases his Mission Statement for the new site Campaigns
Wikia. Wales announces that "This can be the start of the era of
net-driven participatory politics".
• July
7th Angela Beesley resigns from the Wikimedia Foundation board.
• Also
on July 7th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Judd Bagley, an associate of
Patrick Byrne and later Communications Officer for Byrne's company
Overstock.com, identifies Mantanmoreland and another account (Lastexit) as
journalist Gary Weiss. Bagley's account, Wordbomb, is blocked indefinately from
Wikipedia by SlimVirgin for "appearing to try to out another
Wikipedian".
• July
12th Angela Beesley attempts to have her Wikipedia biography removed for the
third time. "I'm sick of this article being trolled. It's full of lies and
nonsense." The article is kept despite a significant number of delete
votes.
• July
22nd A Nebraska private school files a lawsuit to determine the identity of the
person or persons responsible for edits to the Wikipedia article about the
school.
• July
26th Essjay affair. Daniel Brandt starts a thread on Wikipedia Review asking
"Who is Essjay?" 'Essjay' is a prolific Wikipedia editor with
extraordinary bureaucratic powers on the encyclopedia. 'Essjay' boldly claims
on his user page to be a tenured professor at a Catholic College in the US.
Essjay Media Watch.
• Also
on July 26th, Judd Bagley makes his first post on Wikipedia Review as Wordbomb.
(Naked Short Selling controversy)
• Also
on July 26th The Onion run a spoof article mocking Wikipedia inaccuracies.
Several high profile Wikipedia editors call for significant changes to
Wikipedia's registration process in light of the ridicule meted out in the
article.
• July
27th A professor at the University of Oklahoma explains that 16 students
plagiarised sections of their final papers for a history of science course.
Nine of those students, the professor found, had copied entries on Wikipedia
virtually verbatim.
• July
31st (Essjay Controversy) The New Yorker publishes an article on Wikipedia,
written by Stacy Schiff, which features an interview with 'Essjay'. Essjay
repeats his claims that he is a tenured professor.
• August
1st Stephen Colbert segment on Wikipedia where the word wikiality is first
coined. Colbert runs a story on the Wikipedia article "Elephant"
urging the public to change the details, which causes panic on the site.
• August
2nd Numerous dates of death are mischievously added to biographies of living retired
US baseball players. The falsehoods are discovered only after shocked relatives
had contacted players themselves.
• August
9th Jimmy Wales blocks the account MyWikiBiz . MyWikiBiz is a venture devised
by Gregory Kohs that would allow Kohs to write a comprehensive neutral
Wikipedia article at the bequest of paying businesses. Kohs insists he was
transparent about his business model.
• August
11th Jimmy Wales unblocks MyWikiBiz having reached what Wales describes as
"a very favorable agreement".
• August
28th Daniel Mayer resigns as Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia
Foundation. Tricia Hoffman hired part time as Wikimedia Foundation bookkeeper.
• September
(Carolyn Doran affair) Carolyn Doran is hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as a
bookkeeper.
• September
2nd Wikipedia now has 1000 administrators.
• September
6th A year on from the Seigenthaler controversy, the edit "On November,
22nd, 1963, John Seigenthaler, Sr. killed and ate then-President John F.
Kennedy" stays in his biography for over thirty hours before being
spotted.
• September
7th Scholar Jon Awbrey indefinitely banned from Wikipedia by a small group of
notorious editors for "wasting the community's patience" while
creating projects. Awbrey becomes prolific critic of Wikipedia.
• September
9th Wordbomb's first article on antisocialmedia.net, set up to expose Gary
Weiss' sockpuppetry and other dealings in regard to Naked Short Selling on
Wikipedia.
• September
25th Erik Möller replaces Angela Beesley on the Wikimedia Foundation board
after an election process later described as a "disgrace" by Beesley.
The election was marred by leaks, a "list of endorsement" by Möller,
and controversial interventions by Jimmy Wales.
• September
28th The Guardian publishes Seth Finkelstein's article I'm on Wikipedia, get me
out of here which describes the journalist's problems dealing with his
Wikipedia biography.
• October
The Wikipedia biography of Don Murphy, co-producer of the Transformers movies,
is repeatedly hit by malicious vandalism from fans of the series. Murphy is
forced to remove the material himself using the pseudonym ColScott and other
aliases, leading to his requests that his biography be removed from Wikipedia.
The biography is retained by Wikipedians. Murphy's accounts are later banned by
Wikipedia administrators, and thus he becomes forthright and active critic of
Wikipedia.
• October
3rd Wikipedia Weekly is launched, first episode airs the week of October 16th.
• October
4th Jimmy Wales again blocks MyWikiBiz indefinitely, for "inappropriate
use of Wikipedia name in commerce; implying that people can pay him to get
listed in Wikipedia". (More info here)
• October
17th Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger releases a press statement announcing
the creation of Citizendium, a wiki based encyclopedia that requires real name
verification to edit.
• October
22nd Jimmy Wales steps down as Chair of the Wikimedia board of Trustees to be
replaced by Florence Devouard. The remaining official roles on the board were
also filled at this time, with Tim Shell chosen as Vice-Chair, Erik Möller as
Executive Secretary, and Michael E. Davis as Treasurer.
• October
23rd Arbitrator Fred Bauder changes all the spellings of "Encyclopedia
Dramatica" to "damatica" in other people's comments during the
long MONGO Arbitration case over the 'BADSITES' issue as paranoia towards
external sites gains strength.
• October
26th The 'MONGO Arbitration case' comes to a close, and sets a precedent for
the 'BADSITES' disputes which dominate the site for two years. The decision
allows for the removal of links to sites that host criticisms of Wikipedians,
regardless of whether they were relevant or on internal project pages.
• October
27th Daniel Brandt launches the first study of plagiarism in Wikipedia that has
been undertaken, using a program he created to run a few sentences from about
12,000 articles against Google Inc.'s (GOOG) search engine. Brandt ended with a
list of 142 articles, which he brought to Wikipedia's attention. The project
gains mainstream media coverage.
• November
30th (Rachel Marsden scandal) Arbitration case concerning biased editing on TV
pundit Rachel Marsden's biography ends. Jimmy Wales is seen to intervene in the
case. 'Somey' from Wikipedia Review notes, "Maybe this could be the start
of a beautiful relationship!"
• December
4th Angela Beesley creates a mailing list and an external wiki for use
exclusively by female Wikipedia editors, called WikiChix. Due to the approved
culture of secrecy and fake identities that dominates Wikipedia, the list
inevitably becomes infiltrated by males disguising themselves as female
editors.
• December
7th Wikimedia Foundation bylaws revised, Board expanded to include Kat Walsh,
Oscar van Dillen and Jan-Bart de Vreede.
• December
17th Voting closes for elections to the Arbitration Committee.
• December
23rd Jimmy Wales makes a passing comment regarding the possibility of a
wiki-based internet search. The result is extensive media coverage publishing
the statement as an announcement, forcing Wales's Wikia company to re-brand and
relaunch its previous search engine proposal under the temporary name of
"Search Wikia".
• December
28 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Brandt (11th nomination). Nominated
by Majorly . Consensus remains "Keep".
• December
29th Wales attempts to clarify several issues regarding "Search
Wikia". He says that funding received from Amazon.com is not specific to
the search project and also restates that Wikia and Wikipedia have separate
management, even though they shared three key stakeholders.
2007
"At some point around 2007
"anyone can edit" came to mean "everyone is of equal
value". [8]
• January
1st Wikipedia temporarily blocks the entire nation of Qatar by mistake.
• January
(early) (Essjay Controversy) 'Essjay' is hired by Wikia.
• January
7th (Essjay Controversy) Essjay posts autobiographical details on his user page
at Wikia (not Wikipedia), giving his supposed real name (Ryan Jordan), age, and
previous employment history from age 19, and his positions within various
Wikimedia Foundation projects. These details differ sharply from previous
assertions on 'Essjay's' Wikipedia user page about his academic and
professional credentials.
• mid
January, 2007 - "Mid January, the board asked Brad to stop being ED at the
end of January. At that time, there was no ED, but there was already an ED
search planned, so we had high expectations to have an ED within 3-4 months,
say May or June."
• January
18th The Ottawa Citizen examines the life of Wikipedia editor and arbitrator
Simon Pulsifer, making light of the fact that he is unemployed and living with
his parents.
• January
20th It is revealed that Professor Tim Pierce of Northern Illinois University
had instructed students to vandalize Wikipedia to demonstrate how simple it is
to change information on the site, before restoring the articles to their
previous state. Pierce devised the test after he was "getting a lot of
Wikipedia cites last semester where students were citing really dubious
information from there". Wikipedia administrator Zoe shoots off several
angry emails to Pierce and the University's Office of Public Affairs claiming
the act is a "federal offense" and threatens to go to the press to
expose Pierce. The University replies that Zoe be "cautious about accusing
individuals and public academic institutions of illegal actions" and
advises that Wikipedia "consider making its website content more secure by
assuring it cannot be changed by outsiders". Jimmy Wales dismisses Zoes'
actions as "highly inappropriate". Zoe leaves the site.
• Also
January 20th Jimmy Wales reverses a previous decision ignoring two polls to the
contrary, to automatically add "no follow" tags to all outward links
on Wikipedia. Any site that used to be a destination from Wikipedia, and thus
highly ranked, will abruptly fall in search engine rankings. According to
critic Nicholas Carr: "it turns Wikipedia into something of a black hole
on the Net. It sucks up vast quantities of link energy but never releases
any."
• January
21st (Essjay Controversy) Daniel Brandt contacts the author of the New Yorker
article about discrepancies in 'Essjay's' biography. Brandt asks 'Essjay' to
explain himself on Wikipedia but receives no response.
• January
22, 2007 - "The Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of Sandra
Ordonez as Communications Manager." [11]
• January
23rd Notorious Wikipedia administrator Guy Chapman (JzG) hands out a
"community ban" to the already banned Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz for
using multiple accounts.
• January
24, 2007 – Carolyn Doran named COO, one board member votes oppose, "The
position will be re-evaluated upon hiring an Executive Director" [12]
• January
24, 2007 - "The Board authorizes hiring "Phillips Oppenheim" to
help Wikimedia Foundation in the process of finding its Executive
Director" passes with one abstention [13]
• January
24th Microsoft employees explain that the company paid a blogger to edit
certain Wikipedia pages relating to Open Office standards. According to one
Microsoft employee, the step was taken to avoid Wikipedia's Conflict Of
Interest policy, and because articles were previously "heavily written by
people at IBM, a rival standard supporter, and that Microsoft had gotten
nowhere flagging mistakes to Wikipedia’s volunteer editors."
• also
January 24th Journalist Brian Bergstein interviews MyWikiBiz founder Gregory
Kohs on his travails with Wikipedia over paid editing.
• January
28th Wikimedia Foundation announce the creation of an Advisory board. The board
includes Angela Beesley, wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, and pro-Wikipedia Tech
journalist Clay Shirky.
• January
29th It is revealed that US courts are increasingly citing Wikipedia in court
cases.
• January
31, 2007 - Board passes a hidden "Resolution:Legal tasks February March
2007"
• end
of January, 2007 - "Mid January, the board asked Brad to stop being ED end
of January"
• February
3, 2007 - Brad's departure as ED is announced [14]
• February
5th Several Wikipedia Arbitrators make a formal statement warning against the
growing power of Wikipedia's Internet Relay Chat channel for administrators.
The private channel was set up by Jimmy Wales, and is inaccessible to
non-administrators, some of whom accuse the channel of being a haven for
organized retributions against other editors.
• February
10th Wikipedia editor 'Worldtraveller' writes the essay "Wikipedia is
Failing".
• February
16th Distinguished Turkish scholar Taner Akçam is wrongly detained at the
Montreal airport on the basis of false anonymous insertions in his Wikipedia
biography. (see Wikipedia Review thread)
• February
22nd Fuzzy Zoeller sues a Miami firm due to defamatory posts made on Wikipedia.
• February
23rd (Essjay Controversy) Jimmy Wales announces the appointment of 'Essjay' to
Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). Wales later asserts that the
appointment was "at the request of and unanimous support of" ArbCom.
• Also
on February 23rd The Daniel Brandt biography is deleted five more times, and
undeleted six times in 24 hours. The article remains, but the editors are
chastised by Jimmy Wales.
• February
26th (Essjay Controversy) The New Yorker publishes a correction for its July 31
issue. Jiimmy Wales is quoted on Essjay's false persona, “I regard it as a
pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
• March
3rd (Essjay Controversy) After an outpouring of rage from Wikipedians, and much
negative publicity in the major media, Wales asks Essjay to resign his
"positions of trust". Essjay promptly retires from Wikipedia
altogether and later resigns from his position at Wikia. In his initial
apology, Essjay makes an extraordinary claim that New Yorker journalist Schiff
had offered to pay him during his interview, which was flatly denied. Essjay
also suggested that his false identity was designed to protect himself from
Daniel Brandt, though it was created long before Brandt's involvement in
Wikipedia.
• March
7th Jimmy Wales gives interviews to the media announcing that Wikipedians
should only be allowed to cite some professional expertise in a subject if
those credentials have been verified.
• March
8th Jimmy Wales drafts a "Credentials Verification" policy.
• March
8th Jimmy Wales announces plans for Wikia's proposed search engine
("Search Wikia") to rival those of Google and Yahoo. According to
Wales, "The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper
rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now."
• March
9, 2007 - Resolution passes accepting Brad Patrick's "resignation".
"You, Danny, consider that the staff can very well handle itself alone,
without any ED. Actually, your opinion is that Carolyn can be the ED. At that
point, Carolyn opinion is the same. The board opinion is not the same."
• March
12th Jimmy Wales tells the New York Times that "some version of his
[credentials verification] proposal would begin on the site in a week” in an
article titled 'After False Claim, Wikipedia to Check Degrees'. The proposal is
never implemented, and now reads as "currently inactive" retained
only for "historical reference".
• March
16th Wikipedia falsely claims that US entertainer 'Sinbad' has died. Rumors
begin circulating after the posting, and Sinbad first hears about it himself
via a telephone call from his daughter.
• March
19th Cary Bass (Bastique ) is hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as Volunteer
Coordinator.
• March
20th Jimmy Wales unilaterally reverts the merger of three core Wikipedia
policies into one (WP:ATT), stating that the merger is "a monumentally bad
idea". The merger had been organized and pushed by editor SlimVirgin
causing significant controversy among editors.
• March
20, 2007? Danny Wool resigns
• March
22nd * Brad Patrick resigns as General Counsel to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Danny Wool also quits as Wikimedia Foundation "grants coordinator"
and resigns his roles on Wikipedia. Both Wool and Patrick cite disagreements
with the Board of Trustees. (Further Commentary here - broken link.)
• March
23rd Jimmy Wales unblocks Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz again saying "he asked
nicely, i think the issue is completed". Wales was apparently unaware that
MyWikiBiz had been "community banned" by notorious administrator JzG
a few months earlier.
• March
23, 2007 - Carolyn Doran signs the 990
• March
23-25, 2007: Board meeting in Florida. Jimmy Wales not present due to traveling
in Japan.
• March
29th Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz is banned again for a variety of unclear
reasons.
• Also
on March 29th Robert and Bona Mugabe BLP vandalism. See also.
• April
1st Jimmy Wales is interviewed on TV by Ellen Fanning for Australia's Nine
Network. Fanning points out a blatant falsehood in her Wikipedia biography,
which leads Wales to later complain of "getting hammered" during the
interview. Also during the discussion (audio file of interview), Wales calls
the Seigenthaler defamation "amusing" and appears to blame the
journalist for the controversy. Having heard the recorded interview,
Seigenthaler describes Wales as "duplicitous", and concludes that
"it all demonstrates again that Wikipedia is beset by flaw and
fraud".
• April
4th Wikipedia Review placed on a de facto Wikipedia blacklist. This means the
site can't be linked to from any part of Wikipedia on pain of sanctions against
any person who does so.
• April
11th Larry Sanger announces in an interview with the press that Wikipedia is
“broken beyond repair” and no longer reliable.
• Also
on April 11th UK education secretary, Alan Johnson, comes under fire from
teaching unions after recommending the use of the free online encyclopedia
Wikipedia for schoolwork. According to the general secretary of the NASWUT
union, the union itself had been the victim of scurrilous claims on Wikipedia,
and she would not recommend the site to pupils.
• April
13th John Seigenthaler gives a speech at Florida State University. Seigenthaler
details his experiences with Wikipedia, giving some 30 examples of defamation.
According to Seigenthaler, "When I explained that it was speech protected
by section 230 of the the CDA and that these defamers were hiding behind veils
of anonymity and virtually untraceable IP numbers there was astonishment."
• April
19th Wales grants ArbCom the right to review his decisions.
• April
27th Internet figure Jason Scott gives a speech to Notacon 4 in Cleveland, Ohio
focusing on the negative exploitable nature of Wikipedia.
• April
30th Backlogs of tasks needing attention continue to grow, including the number
of articles lacking any sources.
• May
7th Four administrator accounts with weak passwords are hacked. The
perpetrator(s) goes on a spree of adding erroneous content to articles, and
banning other users. A fifth administrator also "goes rogue", and is
discovered to be an account of a previously banned user who had created a new
character and surreptitiously risen up the Wikipedia hierarchy for such a
purpose.
• May
15th Citizendium, Larry Sanger's rival wiki project, decides to place NOINDEX
tags on their project pages. This means that any defamatory statements made on
talk pages are henceforth unable to be located by search engines. Wikipedia
refused to do the same until pressure mounted two years later.
• May
17th Due to edits on Wikipedia, Google's entry description for Wikipedia's much
viewed article on George Washington reads, “George Washington Had a shit on a
stick and then told people that it was ok to have unprotected sex…”.
• May
19th More BADSITES. An attempt is made (but quickly reverted) to take off a
link to Kelly Martin's blog on her user page because it contains criticisms of
individual Wikipedians.
• May
20, 2007 - Carolyn Doran arrested, pays $5000+$250 bond, apparently using the
foundation credit card for the $5000.
• May
21st The Wikipedia biography of co-founder Larry Sanger is downgraded to
"mid-importance" priority by Wikipedia's bureaucracy. This places his
article below articles on Jimmy Wales, Wikimania and even Wikipedia Review.
• May
23rd An editor is opposed for adminship after admitting he thought it
"unhelpful for editors to either add or remove links [to Wikipedia Review]
merely to make a point". The opposition is orchestrated by administrator
SlimVirgin. Her actions are described as an attempt to implement the
controversial BADSITES ban on linking to critical sites "via the
backdoor".
• May
27th Wikipedia editor Will Beback requests that all links to and mentions of
Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light be removed from Wikipedia as an
"attack site" or 'BADSITE', after an entry in one of the site's
forums criticises Wikipedia's treatment of science fiction writer Kathryn
Cramer. An edit war ensues. Will Beback also demands that the criticisms on
Making Light be removed before the links can be restored. Well known internet
figure Cory Doctorow jumps to the defense of Making Light and Cramer stating,
"You are a Wikipedia editor; this does not confer upon you the right to
edit other peoples' websites, too."
• June
1-3 Wikimedia Foundation board meeting. Sue Gardner and Mike Godwin are
visitors, and the decision is made to hire the pair.
• June
4th Disputes continue to rage over "single-incident biographies" and
their relationship to the policy of Biographies of Living People.
• June
5th Writer Andrew Keen releases the book Cult of The Amateur, a
critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user generated content, peer production,
and other Web 2.0-related phenomena including Wikipedia.
• June
7th More BADSITES incidents. An edit war attempts (unsuccessfully) to remove
links to Wikitruth from the article about the site.
• June
14th Daniel Brandt biography is finally deleted on the 14th attempt. It is not
recreated. Seth Finkelstein, who wrote "I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of
here" argues successfully to see his biography deleted the same day.
• June
15th Various links to Conservapedia within the Wikipedia article are redacted
on the basis of BADSITES.
• June
25th A statement is added to the biography of Pro-Wrestler Chris Benoit
describing the death of his wife, fourteen hours before police discovered the
bodies of Benoit and his family.
• June
26th The media reports that the German government plan to improve entries to
the German Wikipedia, via the private-sector Nova Institute.
• July
3rd Wikimedia Foundation announce Mike Godwin as the new General Counsel and
Legal Coordinator.
• July
4, 2007 - The hidden "Resolution:Carolyn Doran" is passed. According
to Danny Wool, Carolyn is fired for "misuse of credit card. Debt of $5,000
was already paid back before it was discovered."
• July
5, 2007 - Travel Policy resolution passes [15]
• July
5, 2007 - Resolution to hire Sue Gardner as "Management Consultant"
• July
6th Register journalist Cade Metz writes his first article exposing Wikipedia's
combative subculture.
• July
9th Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikipedia Foundation, states,
"It's possible one day I'll be more proud of Wikipedia than of the
kids."
• July
12th Wikimedia Board of Trustees incumbents Erik Möller (Eloquence) and
Kathleen Walsh (Mindspillage) are re-elected for a two-year term, with Frieda
Brioschi (Frieda) narrowly edging out incumbent Oscar van Dillen (Oscar) for
the third and final seat.
• mid
July, 2007 - Erik reports to the internal mailing list about his meetings in SF
the previous week, including a meeting with Roger McNamee initiated by Jimmy.
For those with access to the Internal mailing list, you will find the statement
in the last paragraph: "On Jimmy's initiative, I also met with Roger
McNamee, co founder of Elevation Partners (Bono's investment firm), who has
helped us out a number of times already." [16]
• July
26th Ludwig De Braeckeleer distributes an article on administrator SlimVirgin.
The article features Daniel Brandt's assertion that SlimVirgin (who started the
Wikipedia biography of Brandt) the user name of a former ABC News Reporter
thought to be embroiled in the investigation the Lockerbie Pan-Am terrorist
attack of 1987. The article is picked up by Slashdot and other sites, and
SlimVirgin is portrayed as a "Spy infiltrating Wikipedia".
• August
14th Episode 2 of Richard Dawkins's Enemies of Reason TV series is aired. In
the documentary, Dawkins gives a grave critique of the erosion of evidence
based thinking in front a scrolling screen of Wikipedia pages. According to
Dawkins, "Wikipedia world creates great opportunity and great
danger."
• August
17th WikiScanner released. This is a tool created by Virgil Griffith which
consists of a publicly searchable database that links millions of anonymous
Wikipedia IP edits to the organizations where those edits apparently
originated.
• August
20th Due to the newly launched Wikiscanner, the media begin to highlight edits
made from many leading organizations causing "minor public relations
disasters". The inhouse Wikipedia magazine Signpost writes; "Durova,
who works extensively with sleuthing 'the dark side' of Wikipedia, has implied
that many more major stories await tech-savvy reporters who know how to comb
Wikipedia's logs efficiently. The next generation of Wikipedia manipulation
stories may be more than just 'minor public relations disasters'."
• August
24th (Naked Short Selling controversy) A link to Judd Bagley's
antisocialmedia.net is removed per BADSITES where it was being used to display
evidence of sockpuppetry. After some edit-warring, it was replaced by a link to
a page at another URL that copied the relevant information.
• Links
to Michael Moore's official site are removed and edit warred over per BADSITES,
because the site contains criticisms of Wikipedia editor Ted Frank.
• September
4th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Spokesperson for Wikimedia UK David
Gerard blocks an IP range in Utah to prevent Judd Bagley making his case on
Wikipedia against account abuse by Mantanmoreland. Later he writes "ps.
fuck off Bagley". Gerard also blocks the IP address of a Wikipedia
contributor in Basingstoke, England as an "apparent open proxy being
abused by Judd Bagley".
• Also
on September 4th In who would become one of the most notorious vandals on
Wikipedia, Grawp, previously JarlaxleArtemis, begins his vandalism career on
this day. Due to his antics, he would later be responsible for more restrictive
measures being employed on Wikipedia.
• September
9th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Controversial administrator JzG adds Judd
Bagley's antisocialmedia.net to the English Wikipedia spam blacklist
"without any discussion whatsoever".
• September
12th Wikipedia arbitrator Fred Bauder admits "There has been extensive
discussion [about the spam blacklist addition], although not in a public forum.
We have had enough of Judd Bagley and his site." and "The group who
discussed this included the arbitration committee, the staff of Foundation, and
SlimVirgin and others who have from time to time been victims of harassment or
stalking. We listened particularly to the advice of those who have have been
harassed."
• Fred
Bauder, controversial administrators SlimVirgin, JzG, Durova and others create
a secret "Cyberstalking email list" on Wikia to discuss matters.
Included on the list are Mantanmoreland and at least one of his sockpuppets.
The list is administrated by SlimVirgin.
• September
17, 2007: audit begins [17]
• September
23rd During a heated BADSITES hearing at Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee,
founder of the committee Fred Bauder makes a formal proposal to redirect
biographies of people who maintain "external sites" which criticize
Wikipedians to the article "Clown".
• September
19th Jimmy Wales's tiny (misspelled) article entry on Mzoli's Meats, a South
African restaurant and gathering place is deleted per process as 'non-notable'.
Wales complains bitterly, and the article is restored by Wales's supporters.
Debate rages about favortism and Wales's influence over the site. (See
Wikipedia Review thread)
• October
8th Jimmy Wales explains that he gets about 10 emails a week from
"students who end up in trouble because they cited the online encyclopedia
in a paper and the information turned out to be wrong", but he has little
sympathy for them.
• October
12th A link to a Slate Magazine article is removed per BADSITES, because it
contains an interview with Daniel Brandt.
• October
20th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Durova blocks the respected editor Cla68
for making an uncontroversial edit to the biography of Gary Weiss. Jimmy Wales
approves of the block, writing: "Durova and Guy have my full support here.
No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight. No kidding, this has gone on long
enough"
• October
30, 2007 - Florence Devouard is approached by Sue Gardner about hiring Erik
Moeller as deputy director.
• November
1st Wikimedia Foundation prevail in a lawsuit brought by three people over
defamation on the French Wikipedia. According to the plaintiffs, they had
contacted the foundation to complain. But no record of their complaint could be
found.
• November
3rd - November 10th A secret "Investigations email list" is created
by prominent controversial Wikipedia administrators including Durova "to
separate discussions about general sockpuppetry from the cyberstalking
list".
• November
18th The Durova incident. Wikipedia editor!! is temporarily blocked by Durova
based on secret evidence. The incident[9]
is later nicknamed the "Durova Dustup." Documented here[10].
When asked about the block, Durova states that it cannot be discussed in public.
The Wikipedia editor turns out to be an innocent new account of a former
respected editor.
• November
21st A New Jersey Middle School begins a campaign of "Just Say No to
Wikipedia" by putting signs over the computers in the school library.
Apparently, teachers and students at the school found at least two cases of
incorrect information while using Wikipedia, and white supremacist information
in the entry for Martin Luther King.
• November
22nd A leak from the secret "Investigations email list" is published.
The leak contains Durova's incorrect rationale for the block of User:!!, and
exposes the methods a clique of administrators were using to control other
editors. Durova's "evidence" contains various fantastical claims
about Wikipedia Review tactics based on evidence of the behavior of innocent
users who were not even members of Wikipedia Review at the time. Wikipedia is
in turmoil over the revelations.
• November
26, 2007 - Resolution:Appointment of Sue Gardner as ED
• November
27, 2007 - Erik Moeller applies for his work visa. [18; broken link.]
• November
28th Sue Gardner appointed as Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation.
• December
4th The Register publishes the article "Secret mailing list rocks
Wikipedia" which describes the Durova / Secret list scandal. The story
hits the international news. More in-depth timeline here.
• December
5th Alex Roshuk, the lawyer who assisted Jimmy Wales in writing the Wikimedia
Foundation's bylaws and in setting up the Foundation as a 501-c (3)
organization, describes Wales as "flaky" and someone who "does
not keep his word".
• December
6th (Naked Short Selling controversy) The Register publishes the article
Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain which covers
Wikipedia's Naked Short Selling controversy. The piece includes interviews with
Judd Bagley, and describes the blanket bans of Overstock.com affiliated
accounts, as well as anyone who supports their point of view in the
controversy.
• December
7th According to the BBC, Jimmy Wales dismissed teachers who refused students
access to Wikipedia as "bad educators" in a speech in London.
• December
8th Florence Devouard, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation, writes, "I can not help thinking that the rather ugly
atmosphere that developped[sic] on enwiki is largely due to the very large and
uncontrolled use of the checkuser tool by a minority."
• December
9th The Guardian publishes an article by Jenny Kleeman based on statements by
arbitrator Charles Matthews which claims that Carl Hewitt, associate professor
emeritus in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, "disrupted Wikipedia". Hewitt later
complains about the article and other critics accuse Matthews of breaking
confidentiality. Matthews is also accused of "creating the news" by
contacting Kleeman himself with stories about Hewitt's editing. Matthews had
previously been interviewed by Kleeman and the journalist had become an
informal press contact.
• December
11th Jimbo Wales testifies before Congress. Before his testimony, he protected
Sen. Lieberman's article using the rationale "bad day for vandalism"
and promptly unprotected the article after the hearing was over. The article is
immediately hit by defamatory statements after unprotection.
• December
13th The Register reveals that Carolyn Doran, Chief Operating Officer of the
Wikimedia Foundation, is a convicted felon for shooting a former boyfriend, and
was still on parole for another offense. See full timeline here.
• December
16th Voting closes for elections to the Arbitration Committee. The elected
winners include Newyorkbrad, FT2 , and Sam Blacketer. Though new arbitrators
are expected to provide personal details to the Wikimedia Foundation, the
identities of the new arbitrators remain a mystery to the wider community and
outsiders.
• December
17th Erik Möller resigns from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, and
is named the Deputy Director of the Foundation.
• December
26th Wikipedia editor David Shankbone visits Wikipedia at the invitation of the
Israeli Foreign Ministry in the hope of reversing a "one-dimensional view
of Israel".
2008
• January
Wikipedia moves its headquarters from St. Petersburg to a secret location in
San Fransisco.See also [sentence fragment.]
• January
6th Jimmy Wales replies to journalist Seth Finkelstein, "Seth, you're an
idiot." Seth had questioned the viability of the about-to-be launched
Wikia Search.
• January
7th Wikia Search launched by Jimmy Wales. According to Wales, "I don't
know how long it will take to reach industry-standard quality search results,
but I'd say at least two years."
• January
22nd Boy scouts are for spanking - Thread about an inappropriate wiki site
hosted by Wikia, later shut down due to outcry about the content hosted.
• January
25th Danny Wool's first post on his blog, All's Wool that End's Wool.
• February
6th The Register publishes the story Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'
which covers the conflict of interest of prominent editor Jossi Fresco. Fresco,
the creator of the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, has been involved in a
cult-like organisation and engaged in edits relating to that organisation that
violate conflict of interest rules. The story comes directly from a Wikipedia
Review thread.
• February
7th Notorious administrator User:JzG makes a number of changes to the biography
of Rachel Marsden.
• February
13th Two major encyclopedias, the German Brockhaus and the French Quid announce
the end of print production citing Wikipedia as the reason for falling sales.
• February
14th JoshuaZ sockpuppeting post. Notorious administrator JoshuaZ is discovered
to have been using several accounts to stack up votes against biographical
subjects who wished to see their articles deleted.
• February
17th Emerald Group release a study revealing inaccuracies in eight of nine
Wikipedia articles examined, and major flaws in at least two of the nine
Wikipedia entries. Overall, Wikipedia's accuracy rate was 80 percent compared
with 95-96 percent accuracy within other encyclopedia sources.
• February
29th Valleywag reveals that Jimmy Wales has been having a relationship with Fox
TV reporter Rachel Marsden. Wales intervened in her Wikipedia biography back in
2006, as was noted by Wikipedia Review, and the intervention reportedly led to
an in-person meeting. Valleywag also publishes "transcripts of Wikipedia
founder's sex chats" with Marsden. (More information here)
• March
1st Former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool blogs that Jimmy Wales used
to boast about several affairs extra-marital affairs during his time at the
organization. Wool also alleges that Wales "was certainly not frugal in
his spending on his endless trips abroad" and that Wales was
"careless" with his receipts while using money donated to the
Foundation in good faith. Wool also alleges that Wales spent donation money on
a massage parlour in Moscow, spent $650 of donors cash on two bottles of wine,
and thought he needed a limousine "because I am like a rockstar too."
Associated Press report that WMF Chair Florence Devouard castigated Wales,
"I find (it) tiring to see how you are constantly trying to rewrite the
past. Get a grip!"
• Valleywag
publishes a timeline of the Wales / Marden affair. According to Valleywag,
Wales "sent a mass email to a 'special' Wikipedia list of admins at the
beginning of February" ordering that Rachel Marsden's article be cleaned
up right before he was set to spend the weekend with Marsden in Washington DC.
• Jimmy
Wales writes a statement on Wikipedia announcing, "I am no longer involved
with Rachel Marsden."
• March
2nd Rachel Marsden places a stained T-shirt belonging to Jimmy Wales on ebay in
apparent revenge for Wales's announcement on Wikipedia the previous day.
• Rachel
Marsden releases more private chats between herself and Jimmy Wales to
Valleywag. The chats suggest that Wales violated Wikipedia's rules to encourage
favorable changes to Marsden's Wikipedia profile.
• March
4th Jimmy Wales debates with Wikipedia critic Andrew Keen at the Commonwealth
Club, which is broadcast on ForaTV.
• Started
by Privatemusings, the first episode of NotTheWikipediaWeekly is launched
(later renamed to Wikivoices in November of 2008).
• March
5th The mainstream media universally cover both Jimmy Wales's Rachel Marsden
debacle, and the allegations from Danny Wool that Wales misused money donated
to the Wikimedia Foundation.
• March
22nd Jimmy Wales is photographed on vacation with Richard Branson and Tony
Blair.
• March
23rd Rachel Marsden, using the alias 'Bramlet Abercrombie', posts a scathing
attack on Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia talk page. She writes, "You couldn't
have cared less about my Wikipedia entry until we started sleeping together,
Jimmy."
• March
24th Wikimedia Foundation announce that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have
awarded a grant of US$1,000,000 yearly for the next three years, for a $3
million total grant.
• April
4th Weekly podcast show NotTheWikipediaWeekly features interviews with
Wikipedia Reviewers Judd Bagley, Gregory Kohs, Barry Kort (Moulton) and site
chieftain 'Somey'.
• April
7th Release of the documentary The Truth According to Wikipedia which
interviews supporters and critics including Larry Sanger and Andrew Keen.
• April
14th A professor of information systems at Deakins University says that
Wikipedia is "fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking
information". She also criticises the unaccountability of Wikipedia and
the creation of a "new and anonymous elite".
• April
19th A student in California is arrested on suspicion of making criminal
threats against students via the Wikipedia article on his school.
• April
21st A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group
CAMERA are exposed. The emails detail a concerted effort to manipulate
Wikipedia content.
• April
29th Arbitrator NewYorkBrad leaves Wikipedia after his real life identity is
revealed by Daniel Brandt on Hivemind. Jimmy Wales writes; "I consider it
a tragedy when trolls drive good people away from charity work by engaging in
underhanded personal attacks." Brad returned shortly after, and was giving
interviews using his real name a year later.
• May
2nd Literary agent Barbara Bauer sues the Wikimedia Foundation in the New
Jersey Superior Court claiming that the Wikimedia Foundation is liable for
malicious additions to her biography in 2006. The judge dismissed the case in
July 2008 citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) which
protects sites from the actions of their users.
• May
5th Valleywag run a story on Erik Möller, the deputy director of the Wikimedia
Foundation titled Erik Möller, No. 2 at Wikipedia, a defender of pedophilia.
• May
6th Valleywag run a follow up story on Erik Möller, the deputy director of the
Wikimedia Foundation titled, Wikipedia leader Erik Möller: "Children are
pornography".
• May
6th WorldNetDaily publish the article Is Wikipedia wicked porn? which asks why
Wikipedia hosts pictures of "nude homosexual men engaging in sex acts and
a variety of other sexually explicit images and content." The article also
brings first attention to the Scorpion's Virgin Killer album cover which is hosted
on Wikipedia. (Virgin Killer controversy)
• May
12th Flagged revisions introduced to the German Wikipedia.
• May
16th Mike Godwin, legal council to the WMF, instructs WikiNews to remove a
story covering allegations of pornography in Wikipedia, which also referenced the
Erik Möller episode. Godwin proposes "some kind of process in which
initial versions of news stories are vetted before they're made publicly
available for further editing." This is in stark contrast to Wikipedia
policies regarding Biographies of Living People.
• May
28th (Naked Short Selling controversy) 'Mantanmoreland' is finally blocked from
Wikipedia after an investigation into abuse of multiple accounts.
• June
2nd Wikipedia critic Andrew Keen and disaffected co-founder Larry Sanger debate
the proposition that "the internet is the future of knowledge" at
Oxford University.
• June
21st Wikipedia is blamed for falling standards in Scottish education by The
Scottish Parent Teacher Council.
• June
12th The biography of NBC Journalist Tim Russert is updated only minutes after
his death, before his family had discovered the details. This was against the
wishes of NBC who had held off reporting the news for two hours so his family
wouldn't hear about it first from the media.
• July
17th Michael Snow replaces Florence Nibart-Devouard as chair of the Wikimedia
Foundation board.
• July
23rd Google Knol goes live.
• August
9th Wikimedia Foundation Counsel Mike Godwin confirms that Bruce Ivins, a
suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, was a Wikipedia editor under the account
name Jimmyflathead, and that the Foundation had been subject to a subpoena
regarding the case. Register story published on August 7th.
• August
1st News breaks of Bruce Ivin's Wikipedia edits under the account name
Jimmyflathead. Register story published a week later.
• August
24th Opinion columnist Steve Cuozzo pans Wikipedia's New York City coverage,
pointing to mistakes in a number of articles, and calls Wikipedia "the
engine of ignorance".
• August
31st A Wikipedia user called Young Trigg makes a number of complimentary
expository edits to Sarah Palin's article shortly before the announcement of
her nomination as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate.
• September
8th Wikimedia UK is disbanded by UK Chair Alison Wheeler due to lack of
interest and "problems with respect to their relationship with the
Wikimedia Foundation"
• October
5th Wikipedia Vandalism Study published. Gregory Kohs and Wikipedia Review
members methodically catalogue one calendar quarter’s worth of pernicious edits
to the 100 WP biographies about the (then) current United States Senators. This
is an effort to highlight Wikipedia's lax standards while hosting prominent
biographies.
• November
10th New York Times journalist David Rohde is kidnapped by the Taliban. The
Times requests a news blackout, which is observed by over 40 news outlets, and
approaches Jimmy Wales for assistance to keep the news out of Wikipedia. Wales
allocates the task of preventing coverage on WP to a small group of
"trusted administrators". Reports of the kidnapping added to
Wikipedia are removed by administrators. Times journalist Michael Moss re-edits
Rhode's biography to make the subject seem more sympathetic to Muslims.
• November
12th Suspicion is raised on Wikipedia Review regarding the identity of British
based elected Arbitrator 'Sam Blacketer'. Arbitrators are expected to verify
their identities with the Wikimedia Foundation.
• November
13th A German politician requests and is briefly granted a court order blocking
the German Wikipedia after malicious false allegations were added to his
biography.
• December
5th (Virgin Killer controversy) The UK Internet Watch Foundation blacklist a
Wikipedia image page showing the cover art of The Scorpions' 1976 album Virgin
Killer, due to the presence of a potentially illegal photograph of a naked
minor. The measure followed complaints from the public. UK internet providers,
who automatically act on the blacklist, fed their traffic to Wikipedia through
a small number of proxy servers. When Wikipedia admins blocked IP addresses on
other pages (as is routine), the action temporarily prevented all unlogged-in
editors using those ISPs from editing any page of Wikipedia.
• December
9th (Virgin Killer controversy) The Internet Watch Foundation rescind their
block of the Virgin Killer image.
• December
10th (Virgin Killer controversy) Wikimedia UK press spokesperson David Gerard
announces in his blog, "a small amount of gleeful dancing on the skulls of
the IWF today."
• December
14th Voting closes for elections to the Arbitration Committee. The elected
winners include Cool Hand Luke who revealed himself shortly before voting began
to be One, a long time member of Wikipedia Review.
2009
• January
Wikia relaunches a question-and-answer site called answers.wikia.com, which
Wikia informally calls Wikianswers. Unfortunately, there is already another
successful site called WikiAnswers that has no affiliation to Wikia or to any
Jimmy Wales project. Confusion reigns in the media.
• January
2nd Wikipedia holds a poll to agree a trial of "flagged revisions".
Flagged revisions, which have proved successful on the German Wikipedia, would
mean edits would be checked before being published. The proposal would
significantly combat Wikipedia's defamatory biographies problem. Supporters
include Jimmy Wales. The result is 59.6% in support, 39.2% in opposition, 1.2%
neutral.
• January
3rd New statistics on editing frequency show that the size of the active
editing community of the English Wikipedia peaked in early 2007 and is in
decline.
• January
4th A New Scientist article reports a study which discovered that although
Wikipedia is founded on the notion of openly sharing and collecting knowledge
as a community, editors scored low on agreeableness and openness.
• January
12th The Times newspaper publishes their '50 best young footballers' list which
includes a player that doesn't exist. At number 30 on the list came 'Masal
Bugduv', who was created by a Wikipedia hoax.
• January
14th The Wikimedia Foundation announce the appointment of venture capitalist
Roger McNamee to the board of advisors.
• January
21st Wikimedia Foundation announce that Wikia has agreed to sublease two of
their conference rooms to them, having "matched the best offer". This
creates speculation that the two unaffiliated organizations may be self-dealing
(which is strictly prohibited), and gives another example of the many
connections between them.
• January
21st The Washington Post reports that after Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were
both rushed away from Barack Obama's post-inaugural luncheon due to ill-health,
their Wikipedia biographies were altered to read that they had died. Jimmy
Wales asks the Wikimedia Foundation to turn on Flagged Revisions on the English
Wikipedia on his "personal recommendation". Wales cites the Kennedy /
Byrd incident. Flagged Revisions timeline.
• January
27th A 25 year old Wikipedia administrator commits suicide. The tragedy occurs
after several months of conflict between Wikipedia users.
• January
30th Sedate BBC TV celebrity Alan Titchmarsh is forced to deny claims he is a
"sex guru" after his Wikipedia biography claimed he had penned an
update to the Kama sutra.
• February
3rd The Independent newspaper publish the article "So is Wikipedia
cracking up?" The article describes erroneous edits made to the biography
of Bruce Springsteen.
• February
5th Final posting to Wikitruth. The site remains viewable but updates have been
closed.
• February
11th A false fact added to the biography of German politician Karl-Theodor zu
Guttenberg is regurgitated by the mainstream media. When editors on the German
Wikipedia attempt to remove the falsehood, it is restored on the basis that the
"fact" is cited by reliable sources.
• February
15th Akahele launched by Wikipedia Review members Greg Kohs, Judd Bagley, Paul
Wehage and Anthony DiPierro.
• February
17th Vandalism to Barack Obama's Wikipedia biography is cached by Google which
shows "NIGGA NIGGA NIGGA" on all Google searches for his name.
• February
28th Jimmy Wales is granted nearly unlimited powers project-wide.
• March
15th Wikipedia falsely claims that US TV News anchor Tom Brokaw had an affair
with ABC's Diane Sawyer. The New York Daily News who ran the story describes
the site as "wacky-pedia".
• March
17th The Abuse Filter is turned on. Prodego pens the first filter to block page
moves to "HAGGER". Two days later, NawlinWiki lends credibility to a
concern raised a few weeks earlier by enabling a poorly-written filter that
de-autoconfirms over 200 innocent users.
• Also
on March 17th The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih is published.
• March
18th (Virgin Killer controversy) The UK Internet Watch Foundation reveal that
some of its members have received "threats to their safety" from
activists after the organization acted on complaints that Wikipedia was hosting
an illegal image by displaying the Virgin Killer album cover.
• March
20th British academics are "astonished" after English Heritage
submitted a Wikipedia page as part of its evidence to the government on a key
listing case.
• March
23rd The Wikimedia Foundation complains that the Wikipedia Art website may be
violating trademark law by its use of “Wikipedia” in the domain name. Wikipedia
Art is "an art intervention which explicitly invites performative
utterances in order to change the work itself. The ongoing composition and performance
of Wikipedia Art is intended to point to the ‘invisible authors and
authorities’ of Wikipedia, and by extension the Internet,[2] as well as the
site’s extant criticisms: bias, consensus over credentials, reliability and
accuracy, vandalism, etc…"
• March
28th Shane Fitzgerald, an Irish student, finds his experimental hoax entry to
the biography of Maurice Jarre is picked up by the international media and
published in obituaries to the composer as fact.
• March
29th Microsoft pulls the plug on its MSN Encarta encyclopedia websites and
software, following Wikipedia's obliteration of the online reference market.
• March
31st Jimmy Wales "closes the doors" on Wikia Search. The site is
permanently taken offline.
• April
1st Wikipedia's biography on Russian human rights campaigner Lev Ponomarev
announces his death hours before news reports described a near fatal attack on
the same man.
• April
8th Co-founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger delivers a blistering "open
letter" to Jimmy Wales on his Wikipedia talk page after Wales gave a press
interview discussing his role at the site. According to Sanger, "The lies
and distortions it contains are, for me, the last straw". Wales duly
removed the letter. Wales also removed Sanger's follow up statement, and a post
which linked to the same letter hosted externally. Sanger's posts were also
removed several times by Wikipedia editor David Shankbone . Wikipedia critic
Seth Finkelstein describes.
• April
24th A New Jersey appeals court reverses a decision after it is discovered that
attorneys in New Jersey used facts gleaned from Wikipedia to prevail during a
case in 2008. The appeals court statement read, "A Wikipedia page doesn't
meet the legal requirement as a "source whose accuracy cannot be
reasonably questioned."
• May
12th Jayjg stripped of his flags and privileges.
• May
21st Former Dallas County judge and prosecutor Catherine Crier files a lawsuit
against a thus-far unknown editor who posted malicious edits to her Wikipedia
biography. Falsehoods included claims she was a "murder suspect, a
shoplifter, she's served jail time, she's been disbarred".
• May
26th 'Sam Blacketer' resigns from the Arbitration Committee. The elected
arbitrator is discovered to be David Boothroyd, who edited the site previously
as User:Dbiv (name changed to User:Fys in 2006). Boothroyd was reprimanded
under his previous account name and had his administrative rights removed in
2006. He made no mention of this dalliance as he rose up the ranks under his
new pseudonym of Blacketer in 2007. The media make much of his real life
position as an elected Labour Party councillor at London's Westminster Council,
highlighting pseudonymous edits he made to the biography of a rival political
Party Leader.
• June
1st Wikipedia Arbitration ban IP addresses used by the Church of Scientology.
The story, and the Arbitration committee are mocked on the Colbert Report.
• June
21st New York Times reveal the news blackout initiated in November 2008 after
the return of kidnapped journalist David Rohde. The blackout extended to Wikipedia,
through correspondence with Jimmy Wales.
• June
23rd Wikipedia critic Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz is unblocked from Wikipedia
again. Despite being blocked continuously from July 20, 2007 until June 23,
2009, The kohser maintained an active talk page. Here it is during its zenith [no link.]
• July
8th Political consultant Mark Grebner files a defamation lawsuit against three
Wikipedia editors for adding "false and libelous" material into his
biography.
• July
10th National Portrait Gallery threatens litigation over the use of its images.
• August
25th Omidyar Network donates $2 million to Wikipedia. It is also announced that
Matt Halprin, a partner at Omidyar Network, is appointed to Wikimedia's board
of trustees. More commentary here.
• November
29th David Gerard stripped of his flags and privileges. Further discussion
here.
• December
4th Actor Ron Livingstone files suit against an individual over vandalism to
his Wikipedia entry. Further commentary here.
• December
16th Voting closes for elections to the Arbitration Committee. The elected
winners include Wikipedia Review regulars Steve Smith (SarcasticIdealist) and
SirFozzie . This is the first Arbcom election to use secret ballots.
2010
• January
19th Mass deletion of unwatched BLPs occurs. See also [fragment, no link.]
• January
28th Elaborate hoax surrounding Stefan de Rothschild exposed.
• February
16th Google donates $2 million to the WMF.
• March
2nd The Mike Handel Story. A look into how a BLP hoax with Seigenthaler-like
content makes it onto the DYK section, receiving some 4300 page views. Further
analysis here - Dead link, Secondary link [Link not included in document.]
• April
27th Co-founder Larry Sanger informs the FBI that Commons is hosting child
pornography. The events are informally dubbed "Wikiporngate." Further
commentary and links here: Larry Sanger discovers "illegal
pedophilia", Jimbo to Commons!, The Board Speaks on Porn, Ten most
underreported facts about Wikiporngate?.
2011 December
Jimmy decides that, following the
apparent success of the Italian Wikipedia in protesting the Wiretapping Act[11]
by shutting down the Italian Wikipedia on 4 October 2011 and redirecting all
pages to a statement opposing the proposed legislation, he should ask the
English Wikipedia 'community' whether they should do the same thing to protest
about the Stop Online Piracy Act[12].
The SOPA bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives in
October 2011, to help copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted
intellectual property.
• 14:11,
11 December 2011[13]
"A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia community made a decision to
blank all of Italian Wikipedia for a short period in order to protest a law
which would infringe on their editorial independence. The Italian Parliament
backed down immediately. As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much worse
law going under the misleading title of "Stop Online Piracy Act' is
working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. I may be attending a
meeting at the White House on Monday (pending confirmation on a couple of
fronts) along with executives from many other top Internet firms, and I thought
this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the community feeling on
this issue. My own view is that a community strike was very powerful and
successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in this case. There are
obviously many questions about whether the strike should be geotargetted
(US-only), etc. (One possible view is that because the law would seriously
impact the functioning of Wikipedia for everyone, a global strike of at least
the English Wikipedia would put the maximum pressure on the US government.) At
the same time, it's of course a very very big deal to do something like this,
it is unprecedented for English Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added
by Jimbo Wales (talk • contribs) 07:42, 10 December 2011
• "This
is my personal request for comment in order to guide my thinking and talking
with politicians over the next few days. I am also speaking to the Foundation,
Foundation attorneys, our paid lobbyists, fellow traveller organizations, etc.
Because the Foundation has requested, reasonably due to negotiations under way
and the impact that I might have on that by accidentally creating a public
furore, I'm not able to say a lot at this time. Part of my job here is to
represent the wishes of the community to all these parties, hence the straw poll.
As I said before, nothing here is binding - if and when we would do something
like this, there would be a much more formal proposal. Right now, what I'm
thinking is that if there is a credible threat that this might happen, this
could have a positive impact on the thinking of some legislators. Do not
underestimate our power - in my opinion, they are terrified of a public
uprising about this, and we are uniquely positioned to start that. Back room
politics over cigars and promises, or a vigorous public debate? I know what I
want, and I know what the other side wants, and they aren't the same
thing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:11, 11 December 2011 (UTC)"
Not everyone was impressed:
• "A
"what the fuck?!?" Oppose. We're an ENCYCLOPEDIA. Did somebody forget
this? The purpose of an Encyclopedia is to collect knowledge, not some kind of
a means towards political advocacy. We are not a Political action committee and
honestly, this whole proposal just illustrates how out of touch with the
fundamental purpose of Wikipedia - to build an encyclopedia - a lot of editors
here are, including apparently Jimbo himself. Of course anyone is free to
support whatever kind of measures they wish on an individual level. So go
strike yourself. Put up some infoboxes on your user pages. Stop editing for a
month or two. But this whole proposal is just so fundamentally at odds of what
this project is about that it's actually mind blowing that this is being
proposed with a straight face. Wikipedia is NOT facebook. It is NOT a blog. It
is NOT a crusading newspaper. It is NOT a lobbying organization. It is an
encyclopedia. How about we go and at least try to get the "encyclopedia: a
collection of knowledge" part right first (which, given the low quality of
a lot of our content has some ways to go) and then maybe after we manage to get
that part right we can give ourselves the latitude to go off on off-topic
crusades. Stop trying to be cute, write or improve some articles first. That's
what we're here for.And oh yeah. Why this particular cause and not some other?
Volunteer Marek 01:09, 11 December 2011 (UTC)". (Some of Marek's comments
were later hatted[14]
with the comment "Volunteer Marek is explicitly requested to desist from
personal attacks on others or stay off my user page").
[1]http://knol.google.com/k/wikipedia-the-timeline#
[2]http://wiki.p2pedia.org/wiki/Interpedia
[3]http://jimmywales.com
[4]http://knol.google.com/k/anthony-dipierro/barrapunto/1m4q8jxsfv85t/6
[5]http://wiki.p2pedia.org/wiki/The_conversation_at_the_taco_stand
[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks&oldid=596665
[7]http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/24/opinion/oe-haisch24
[8]http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Iridescent&oldid=478624659
[9]http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=14011
[10]http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=next&oldid=172323794
[11]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDL_intercettazioni
[12]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
[13]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimmy_Wales#Request_for_Comment:_SOPA_and_a_strike
[14]http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=465263867&oldid=465263201
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