Talk:Wikimedia Quarto/Retro
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Hmmm... More than three years, then I obviously qualify (I'll be at four at the end of this month...)
One thing to remember (as a negative) is phase 2 software. Only en: has had this, I'm not sure what it was based on, but it was SLOW. I don't know any more when it was in used, but from the graphs on the size and growth of Wikipedia, it will probably have been the first half year plus of 2002.
On a more personal note, I would like to mention en:Jean-François de La Pérouse. The reason is, that I discovered this page once, and noticed that it was a copyright violation. I did not rollback, because the reason I was so sure was that it was my own copyright that was being violated....
One other thing that always will stay in my memory (unfortunately, perhaps) are the fights. I have ran away with slamming doors four or five times by now, but somehow I'm too much addicted to stay away more than a week or two. And it's not the least people I have had fights with either... Jimbo, Erik, twice theCunctator... I guess I can shrug over some newbie acting strange, but get ballistic when disagreeing with other regulars.
The enormous growth of this project, which I think noone can really imagine. I can still remember that we had two servers, one of which was not running its full capacity. That's less than 1 1/2 years ago. Where are we now? 20? And then we held a donation drive, trying to get $15,000 (IIRC). I can remember thinking, $15,000, they'll never make that. But they did. And now we go for $75,000, and break off less than halfway because we far overshot the goal! 150,000 articles it was said at the beginning, one day we will have 150,000 articles. Then we will have a real, great encyclopedia. But when will that be? By 2004? 2005? 2010? We're over 500,000 now at en: alone, and are still growing. I don't dare to predict where we will be in 1-1 1/2 years. Anyone who in the first two years would have predicted our current size would have been considered a dreamer. And it keeps growing. Fast. Too fast for anyone to keep up with.
But, no pain, no gain. With the growth came pains. And in Wikipedia, with the growth something was lost too. We used to be a small, friendly group. Now most of the people you are working with you don't even know by name. It also used to be manageable for a single person to keep up with. In the beginning I went to Wikipedia every day - and then looked what changes had been made that day (see http://web.archive.org/web/20010602104918/www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?RecentChanges to see what recent changes looked like at the time). Nowadays even if you don't have to sleep and just are on wikipedia 24/7, you cannot do that. I know it took me a few *months* to get back to normal when I found that I could not keep up with all changes on nl:, about one year ago.
What else? I don't know yet. Maybe when some others have given their things, I find something more to talk about. - Andre Engels 19:21, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not qualifying exactly for this (a few months are missing to the three years), I think the first fundraising drive under its special conditions (christmas, nooo wikipedia, server broken, goal reached in less than 24 hours) should maybe be in the list. Ah, and btw, what was the story behind the klingon wikipedia? --Elian 03:33, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
People have already mentioned, most of the things i remember, things have certainly changed. One of the first articles I wrote was en:nucleon it was a substub "A proton or neutron" Nowadays a 3 word article would probably be speedy deleted. Automatic image uploading was a great move forwards. In the old days you had to email images to a developer to get them up. Oh an TeX, though that was a lot later. There were no tutorials in the beginning, I used to write "help me" in the edit summary or even on the page itself "I want this a to be an alpha but don't know how to do it" someone would come along, make the change and delete the comment. The thing that really strikes me is the quality of the articles. in the beginning, most articles were a bit rubbish. This was great because people like me felt that we could at least do better than that! Some articles now are so good I wonder if I was newbie now, would I ever have joined in. Mind you we still have plenty of awful articles left but for how much longer? One thing I always knew, even from the first day i joined was that Wikipedia would be great. I believed then that we would become the biggest and best encylopedia, and i thought then and still think today that one day wikipedia will be bigger than anything. We are still a long way from that at the moment. Theresa knott 22:41, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
OK, I'm far too young for this page, but I came across Historical Wikipedia pages/Community. Apparently, the Wikipedia logo used to be the US flag. Hmm. Matt Crypto 02:34, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
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