# How did Wikipedia start?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 23, 2011, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171 "2011-12-23T06:56:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@obbn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obbn)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/1 "2011-12-23T06:56:42Z")
Hello,
This question is somewhat a takeoff on the other Wiki question on the board at the moment, but I didn’t want to hijack that thread. What I want to know is how did Wiki get started? There are perhaps millions of articles at the moment, but what about when it started? Did it start out with only 10 articles and users from everywhere added to that? But if that was the case, how did it attract anyone to the site? Or did it start out very rich in articles created by the person who started it? I have always wondered how that worked. Also, how did Wiki grow in the beginning? Ads to get you to the site or word of mouth?
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### Author:  [@Santos\_L\_Halper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santos_L_Halper)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/2 "2011-12-23T07:01:35Z")
Beleieve it or not, theres a Wikipedia page about Wikipedia:
> **[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia)**
>
> Wikipedia\[note 3\] is an online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system called MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and has consistently been one of the 10 most popular websites. Created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, it is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization.
> Initially available only ...
🙂
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/3 "2011-12-23T07:19:42Z")
There were Wikis before there was Wikipedia, so it kind of annoys me when people call it “Wiki” as it is entirely incorrect to do so.
I like to think of Wikipedia as being what Douglas Adams hoped the [H2G2 Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2g2) to become.
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### Author:  [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/4 "2011-12-23T08:50:46Z")
As for the term wiki itself, it was originated in 1995 by Ward Cunningham (adopted from a Hawaiian word _wikiwiki_).
[Here’s the lowdown from Mr Cunningham himself.](http://c2.com/doc/etymology.html)
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### Author:  [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/5 "2011-12-23T13:14:58Z")
It’s probably on the Wikipedia page, but the Encyclopedia Britannia, a very old edition, went off copyright, and people really just typed it in and posted it online, as a starting point for Wikipedia. So that’s how it started.
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/6 "2011-12-23T14:30:43Z")
> [@Arkcon](#):
>
> It’s probably on the Wikipedia page, but the Encyclopedia Britannia, a very old edition, went off copyright, and people really just typed it in and posted it online, as a starting point for Wikipedia. So that’s how it started.
Well, they OCRed it for the most part, but yeah, a large part of the original import was from the 1911 _Britannica_. They also used a number of public-domain data sets to generate articles from templates; the original version of the articles about every country were taken directly from the CIA World Factbook, for example.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/7 "2011-12-23T15:36:27Z")
> [@Santos\_L\_Halper](#):
>
> Beleieve it or not, theres a Wikipedia page about Wikipedia:
>
> [Wikipedia - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia)
>
> 🙂
And a wikipedia page on [The History of Wikipedia.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia) :)🙂
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### Author:  [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/8 "2011-12-23T16:33:03Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> I like to think of Wikipedia as being what Douglas Adams hoped the [H2G2 Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2g2) to become.
I like to think that as well. It’s not a 3G Kindle but I figure my smart phone connected to Wikipedia and Wikitravel is [pretty much a hitchhiker’s guide](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kindle.png).
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### Author:  [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/9 "2011-12-23T17:52:34Z")
You can really see the process in action if you look through other wikis. In a lot of cases, it’s just a matter of critical mass. Get enough people interested in the project, and it turns into a competition for who can produce the best content – or the most content.
I’ve seen wikis in the early stages with only a few dozen articles and watched them hit a point where there are hundreds per day being added.
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### Author:  [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-wikipedia-start/607171/10 "2011-12-23T21:40:13Z")
> [@Arkcon](#):
>
> It’s probably on the Wikipedia page, but the Encyclopedia Britannia, a very old edition, went off copyright, and people really just typed it in and posted it online, as a starting point for Wikipedia. So that’s how it started.
It’s not mentioned on the wikipedia page, and I was going to ask for a cite until I found this page, which lists [the ~12,000 articles that incorporate EB-1911 text](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_incorporating_text_from_the_1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica).
But I think it’s worth noting that the project to digitize the 1911 EB is separate from wikipedia.