Share
For those who would like to celebrate the tenth anniversary, but who can't attend or organize a real-world event, what can we do that will be both fun and memorable? We'd like to use this wiki to share what this event means to you.
Photos
Be sure to check out the photo gallery for pictures of anniversary events around the world. See record our history for a guide to taking great photos, video, and other media that document what we're doing to celebrate.
A Wikipedia timeline
What are the most important events of the last ten years? We're building a Wikipedia timeline to tell the story. Help us! Include any important milestones that are missing, or fix anything that's inaccurate. In just a decade, we grew from obscure website to the biggest reference work in history. One of the biggest challenges in conceiving of the size and growth of the project is to pick out a simple and yet impressive timeline of the key events in our first double-digit Wikipedia Day.
Note: much of the raw material for this exists already in places such as Meta and History of Wikipedia. The point of this timeline would be to pick out only the most essential elements to present for reflecting on our first decade. Not to create an encyclopedia article.
Wikipedia in the Beginning
In December 2010, Tim Starling found the long-lost files documenting the first edits to Wikipedia. Here's one of the edits:
"This is the new WikiPedia! The idea here is to write a complete encyclopedia from scratch, without peer review process, etc. Some people think that this may be a hopeless endeavor--that the result will necessarily suck. We aren't so sure. So let's get to work!"
While excavating the historical files, share some of the important/interesting/moving information here. Try to include user names and timestamps if you can.
Our Musical Tributes
The Wikipedia Song was composed and performed by members of Building 25, a young and emerging Australian theatre collective, in celebration of Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary.
Wikipedia by the numbers
There are stats and size comparisons available already, but we should collect as many as we can or create new ones to share. Strong infographics, like Wikipedia as books, help us reflect on our accomplishments over the last ten years.
- How long would it take to read Wikipedia in its entirety?
- How much would it cost to write Wikipedia?
- Number of words, edits, total contributors over the last ten years.
- Number of words/unique articles compared to traditional encyclopedias of the past.
- What percent of towns/cities have their own articles? What percentage of towns/cities are missing?
- What percentage of colleges/universities have an article?
Wikipedians celebrating their tenth WikiBirthday
Who has been around all ten years? Are there people who don't edit much anymore, but who we can include in a celebration of the Wikipedians who have stuck with us all ten years? Remembering our history and the people who got us started early on is both valuable and fun to think about.
Images that express our vision
If you're interested in visually expressing our vision and mission, be sure to share what you think our 10 year images should be.
Wikipedia's Top Ten
Let's try to gather list of the top ten most interesting/funny/popular/well-written articles from our first decade. This is a big, subjective task, so feel free to create your own personal list(s). Feel free to revive "bad jokes and other deleted nonsense" style lists as well.
Other ideas for top tens:
- Top ten most edited articles (perhaps include the top 100)
- Top ten most popular articles (include the top 100)
- Top 10 funniest/most interesting/unusual Wikipedia pages (For English: Unusual articles)
- First 10 articles in various languages (include first 100)
- 10 things you never knew about Wikipedia, like disambiguation was a term invented by Wikipedians for Wikipedia [citation needed].
- 10 sectors of the society which have been influenced profoundly by Wikipedia
- 10 things Wikipedia looks forward to embed into its current web structure in future
- When Wikipedia made it into the top 10 websites
- Top 10 most vandalized articles
Time capsule
Share your thoughts, wishes, ideas and messages for the future! Drop a line in our time capsule.
If you have other ideas for event organizing tips or ways to celebrate the tenth, be sure to put them on on the Ideas page (ideas are fine, please don't add birthday wishes there). You can discuss things related to the wiki itself on the Village pump.
