Nupedia

Nupedia was a multi-language online encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors with relevant subject-matter expertise, reviewed by expert editors before publication, and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief. Nupedia operated from March 2000[1] until September 2003. It is best known today as the predecessor of Wikipedia. Nupedia had a seven-step approval process to control content of articles before being posted, rather than live wiki-based updating. Nupedia was designed by a committee of experts who predefined the rules. It had 21 articles in its first year, compared with Wikipedia having 200 articles in the first month, and 18,000 in the first year.[2]

Unlike Wikipedia, Nupedia was not a wiki; it was instead characterized by an extensive peer-review process, designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias. Nupedia wanted scholars (ideally with PhDs) to volunteer content.[3] Before it ceased operating, Nupedia produced 24 approved articles

History

In October 1999, Jimmy Wales began thinking about an online encyclopedia built by volunteers and, in January 2000, hired Larry Sanger to oversee its development.[1] The project officially went online on 9 March 2000.[9] By November 2000, however, only two full-length articles had been published.[10]

From its beginning, Nupedia was a free content encyclopedia,[9] with Bomis intending to generate revenue from online ads on Nupedia.com.[10] Initially, the project used a homegrown license, the Nupedia Open Content License. In January 2001, it switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation,[11] who had proposed the identically licensed GNE encyclopedia in December 2000.[12] Also in January 2001, Nupedia started Wikipedia as a side-project to allow collaboration on articles before entering the peer review process.[13] This attracted interest from both sides, as it provided the less bureaucratic structure favored by advocates of the GNE encyclopedia. As a result, GNE never really developed, and the threat of competition between the projects was averted. As Wikipedia grew and attracted contributors, it quickly developed a life of its own and began to function largely independently of Nupedia, although Sanger initially led activity on Wikipedia by virtue of his position as Nupedia's editor-in-chief.

Besides leading to discontinuation of the GNE project, Wikipedia also led to the gradual demise of Nupedia. Due to the collapse of the internet economy at that time, Jimmy Wales decided to discontinue funding for a salaried editor-in-chief in December 2001,[1] and Sanger resigned from both projects shortly thereafter.[14] After Sanger's departure, Nupedia increasingly became an afterthought to Wikipedia; of the Nupedia articles that completed the review process, only two did so after 2001. As Nupedia dwindled into inactivity, the idea of converting it into a stable version of approved Wikipedia articles was occasionally broached, but never implemented. Nupedia's server crashed in September 26, 2003.[15] Nupedia's encyclopedic content was assimilated into Wikipedia.[16]

screenshot	Nupedia 20030808 screenshot.png
screenshot size	250px
type	Online encyclopedia
language	English · German · Spanish · French · Italian
owner	Bomis (formerly)
author	Jimmy Wales · Larry Sanger
dissolved	September 26, 2003
launch date	March 9, 2000
url	nupedia.org

History

Editorial process

Software development

See also

Further reading

External links

References