NARRATOR: A history of Wikipedia

in two and a half minutes.

The history of Wikipedia
actually begins with this man,

Ward Cunningham,

who in 1994 created a new
website model known as a Wiki.

Wikis are websites that allow users

to create an edit information

on the site in real time.

Now, even though Wikis have
been around for awhile,

only recently have they been used widely.

Now they're revolutionizing
the way people collaborate

and share ideas and
information on the internet.

Fast forward the March of 2000,

when these two guys, Jimmy
Wales and Larry Sanger

decided that they wanted to create

a free online encyclopedia,

that would rival the
likes of Microsoft Encarta

or the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Wales and Sanger called
their project Nupedia,

Nupedia was a for-profit venture

that required its articles to undergo

a strict peer review process,

before being published for public access.

Contributors to Nupedia had to be experts

in their respective fields,

and PhDs were generally preferred.

Unfortunately, in the early 2000s

the internet was experiencing
some growing pains,

and many upstart dot-coms were failing.

Nupedia wasn't immune
to the online economy,

and its lack of resources,
lack of direction

and cumbersome review process,

caused the project to go belly up in 2003,

in its three year existence,

Nupedia produced only 24 articles.

Now around the same time Nupedia started,

Wales and Sanger used Wiki technology

to create Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was launched in January of 2001

and was intended to be a discussion forum

where the public could
suggest and edit content

for potential submission to Nupedia.

Now, unlike Nupedia anyone
could create, edit and discuss

the content on Wikipedia.

After Nupedia's failure in 2003,

Wales and Sanger looked at Wikipedia,

now in comparison to
Nupedia's 24 articles,

Wikipedia had produced
a little over 20,000,

surprised by the popularity
and success of Wikipedia,

Jimmy Wales decided to abandon
Nupedia peer review model

and focus on encouraging
the anyone can edit model

on Wikipedia.

Larry Sanger did not
approve of this decision

and left the project altogether.

Since 2003, Wikipedia has grown to include

over 10 million articles in 260 languages,

nearly 3 million articles
in English alone.

Wikipedia continually ranks

in the top 10 websites on the internet,

in terms of page views,

and its popularity has
actually encouraged Google News

to start linking directly
to Wikipedia's content

from within it's news articles,

and through it all,

Wikipedia has kept it's
anyone can edit mantra.

Wikipedia has had its share
of praise and criticism,

triumphs and controversies,

and though the future of the project

may not be completely certain,

one thing is for sure, whether
you love it or you hate it,

Wikipedia has drastically affected

how we access and share
information on the internet.