10th anniversary of Wikipedia
For eight years now, I’ve been contributing a regular column on Internet issues to the magazine of the trade union Connect (now part of Prospect). Boy, have things changed online in that time. You can check out all my 64 columns here.
In October 2007, I wrote a column with the title “Is Wikipedia The Best Site On The Web?” which you can read here. The piece opens as follows:
“It is has over 8 million pages in more than 250 languages. It is by far the biggest encyclopedia ever written. And it’s all done by volunteers and free to all users. It is of course Wikipedia – the web site that shouldn’t be possible. So how has it happened?”
Today Wikipedia celebrates its 10th anniversary – see a timeline here. It now has some 17 million pages in 270 languages. In English alone, there are an amazing 3.5 million articles. I use the site all the time and I thank all its contributors who create and edit the articles.