A Decade that Changed the World

Community members of all ages came together in 120 countries to celebrate, complete with elaborate Wikipedia-themed birthday cakes.

Jimmy Wales greeted celebrants at more than 450 events in 120 countries by video upon the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia.

“I remember the first day Wikipedia existed. And I thought about what was to come and of course I really didn’t know what was to come. (O)ver the years I had many opportunities to (meet) with Wikipedians in India, in China, in South America, really all around the world. (And) it turns out that we tend to be very much the same even though we come from very different cultures. We share the same values, the same ideals, the things we are working for, a free encyclopedia for every person of the planet written really by thoughtful people, (who) try to be neutral, try to be honest. It’s still as exciting for me today as it was in the very early days. We’ve still got a lot of work left to do. So, thank you again and happy birthday to Wikipedia!”

The gathering at the Stockholm City Library was one of many held at major cultural institutions across Europe and around the world.

Timeline

2001 - Wikipedia is launched on January 15.
2002 - First release of the MediaWiki software, on which Wikipedia and its sister projects are still running today.
2003 - Jimmy Wales hands over operation of Wikipedia to the newly founded Wikimedia Foundation.
2004 - Wikimedia Commons is founded as a central repository of free media.
2005 - The first Wikimania (the annual global conference of Wikimedians) takes place in Frankfurt, Germany.
2006 - There are Wikimedia chapters — local organizations supporting the mission — in seven countries.
2007 - An independent study finds the German Wikipedia to be more accurate, complete and up-to-date than the longstanding German print encyclopedia Brockhaus.
2008 - The ten millionth Wikipedia article is published, a biography of 16th-century painter Nicholas Hilliard in the Hungarian Wikipedia.
2009 - Wikimedians vote to adopt the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license (CC BY SA) as the primary license for Wikipedia and its projects, allowing much wider reuse of the content.
2010 - The Wikimedia projects reach 1,000,000,000 (one billion) edits.
2011 - Wikipedia celebrates 10 years of sharing the sum of all knowledge.