“We realized that we weren’t just a little side project on the internet. We’re having an impact on the world.”
Published in
Jan 15, 2021
That’s founder Jimmy Wales on the turning point for Wikipedia, which marks its 20th anniversary today. Author Tom Roston interviewed Wales and other company leaders for OneZero’s oral history of the site, including its origins as collection of links about Pamela Anderson, it’s rise in the aftermath of 9/11, and its decision to become a nonprofit that ultimately helped the company take off, convincing an army of nearly 300,000 Wikipedia editors to “volunteer their time to write, edit, block, squabble over, and scrub every corner of the sprawling encyclopedia.”
