Wikipedia is Now an Adult

OEGlobal Plaza
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We are a two days late but January 15 was a key anniversary for Wikipedia- it is now 21 years old!

The first edits to the wiki were made around January 15, 2001… and as typical, the history and archives of the wiki itself provide a trove of details to pick through. Because the UseMod wiki software Jimmy Wales first deployed did not have full backups, there are questions about what that first edit actually was

though it seems to be, no surprise, “Hello World” edited in at January 15, 2001 at 6:29pm.

Thus Wikipedia is now 21, legally an adult.

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Wikimedia Commons 21st Birthday Cake image by Gustavo86 shared under a CC BY-SA license

And fitting as it is with what is happening in 2022, that first edit (and the Strawberry iMac it was authored on) is being offered for sale as an NFT

Look! You can see the edit yourself, and when you buy it from Christies, you can launch that iMac and edit it yourself

Hello, Wikipedia in 2001, from 2022…

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If educators here ever want to have a chat on using [editing] Wikipedia as part of their courses, because of those ever-so-sweet evergreen assignments, I’m happy to help in that conversation!

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Thanks Vahid, I’d love to set up something like that here, sort of an Ask Me Anything style chat? Maybe something to run during Open Education Week???

I’m “open” to ideas/suggestions.

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That’s a format that could work! Maybe run it for a 2-days conversation during the OEWeek?