Stallman invented Wikipedia

Something not widely recognised that my thesis research turned up is “Stallman invented Wikipedia,” and here’s a video from 1999 showing it:

(The caption at the start says 1996 but this was in fact filmed in 1999.)

There is also an article at gnu.org/encyclopedia/ with full details of Stallman’s idea.

(Original youtube page, and I recommend using youtube-dl to save it.)

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The Stallman invented Wikipedia by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
September 8, 2008 | Filed Under Personal Thoughts 

Comments

3 Responses to “Stallman invented Wikipedia”

  1. ribalba on September 8th, 2008 22:45

    I am very sorry but I have to disagree. The nifty thing with Wikipedia is that it is a wiki and that lots of people write one page. Not ‘one person’ writes ‘one page’.

  2. David Crossland on September 9th, 2008 0:49

    Hi Didi! This totally predates Wikipedia.

    Wikipedia started off a Nupedia; it wasn’t originally a wiki where lots of people could write one page - it was going to require formally qualified experts to write each article. One of the Wikipedia founders firmly believes in this approach and now runs Citizendium.

    So for Stallman to say in 1999 that one person with some low qualifications like a schoolteacher could write one page is reasonable :-)

  3. No on November 1st, 2008 3:32

    Stallman did not invent Wikipedia.

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