This page combines the timeline Wikipedia Timeline by Derktar and Anthony dePierro’s timeline, plus other material sourced by WPOV.
1989
• 1992-1996: Jimmy Wales runs "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy", where Tim Shell and Larry Sanger also participate
1993
• April 22, 1993: NCSA Mosaic released.
• October 22, 1993: Rick Gates proposes Rick Gates proposes Interpedia, "The Internet Encyclopedia" which never leaves the planning stages.
1994
• Computer programmer Ward Cunningham begins work on the software 'WikiWikiWeb' which became the first 'Wiki'. Cunningham later wrote the book Wiki Way describing the process, and remains a member of Wikimedia's Advisory Board.
• March 22nd Larry Sanger, who is an occasional contributor to Wales's Ayn Rand list, writes a 'manifesto' on his own online mailing list (eventually named the Association for Systematic Philosophy). Sanger writes: "The history of philosophy is full of disagreement and confusion. One reaction by philosophers to this state of things is to doubt whether the truth about philosophy can ever be known, or whether there is any such thing as the truth about philosophy. But there is another reaction: one may set out to think more carefully and methodically than one’s intellectual forebears."
• Jimmy Wales employed by Michael Davis at Chicago Options Associates
1996
• May 1996: Brian Dowling files suit against Chicago Options Associates and Michael Davis seeking a portion of COA's profits, plus interest
• November 7, 1996: Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis form Bomis, Inc., a Delaware Close Corporation
• November 15, 1996: bomis.com created. The team are based in Chicago.
• Wales meets Christine at a party
1998
• December – Bomis moves to San Diego - 4455 Lamont St. San Diego, CA 92109
1999
• Software freedom activist and creator of the GNU project Richard Stallman calls for development of a free on-line encyclopedia through the means of inviting the public to contribute articles. He describes this in his essay The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource.
• April 1999: h2g2 founded.
• October 29, 1999: nupedia.com and nupedia.org created.
• Jimmy Wales begins thinking about a “volunteer-built” online encyclopedia to be funded by Bomis. [?evidence?]
2000
• Larry Sanger sends Jimmy Wales a business proposal for what is in essence a cultural news blog.
• January 2000: Wales invites Sanger to work with him on his free encyclopedia project.
• January 24, 2000: jimmywales.com] created.
• February 2000: Sanger arrives in San Diego.
• February 10, 2000: gnupedia.com and gnupedia.org created.
• March GNU Free Documentation License version 1.1 released.
• March 9th Nupedia founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. Sanger becomes 'Editor in Chief' and states his wish to make Nupedia "the world's largest encyclopedia." Nupedia plans to be a formally constructed online encyclopaedia establishing a verification system to ensure that the expert contributors are experts.*June 2000: Sanger gets his PHD, and a rise.
• On March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ index peaks at an all-time high of 5,048.62. "The decline from this peak signaled the beginning of the dot-com bubble burst."
• July The 'Nupedia Advisory Board' is installed. 'Atonality', believed to be the first Nupedia article, is published after peer review.
• December 21, 2000: Nuevo Proyecto: GNUPedia is posted on Barrapunto
• December 24, 2000: Álvaro Tejero Cantero asks "¿Habéis pensado en diseñar un Wiki específico para el trabajo de pulir los módulos-entradas?. Muchos proyectos de Software están considerando aprovechar la dinámica "Document-mode" de los Wikis como una alternativa a las "message boards" que permite una documentación persistente, no repetitiva e hipertextualmente articulada de los temas que se van tratando a petición de los usuarios."
• December 26, 2000: Jimmy Wales' daughter is born. He names her 'Kira', after Kira Argounova in Ayn Rand's novel 'We The Living'. (p.32)
2001
• January 2, 2001: The conversation at the taco stand
◦ January 2nd Ben Kovitz (computer programmer and polymath) explains the basic concept of a wiki to Larry Sanger over dinner . Sanger considers the wiki format as suitable for the Nupedia project. (See Sanger's memoirs)
• January 10, 2001: Let's make a wiki [3]
• January 10th Larry Sanger launches a wiki. According to Sanger, "It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not."
• January 11th Sanger coins the name "Wikipedia" for the Wiki project.
• January 12, 2001: wikipedia.com registered.
• January 13, 2001: wikipedia.org registered.
• January 15, 2001: Wikipedia publicly launched at Wikipedia.com after Nupedia's Advisory Board expresses concern about a Wiki being associated with Nupedia. Wikipedia develops a life of its own and begins to function largely independently of Nupedia, although Sanger initially leads activity on Wikipedia by virtue of his position as Nupedia's editor-in-chief.
• January 16th First article created on Wikipedia.
• January 17th GNUPedia, a similar project to develop a free encyclopedia, is launched after being proposed by GNU founder Richard Stallman in 1999. Confusion between GNUPedia and Nupedia stifles the project, not helped by the fact that Jimmy Wales had purchased the gnupedia.org domain name.
• January 17, 2001: Slashdot: GNUPedia Project Starting
• January 20, 2001: Slashdot: Will The Real Nupedia Please Stand Up?
• January 2001: h2g2 is taken over by the BBC.
• January Nupedia's mailing list grows to almost 2,000 people.
• March Wikipedia boasts over 1300 articles.
• March 5th Jimmy Wales interviewed in Slashdot about Nupedia. He ends the interview stating, "People who want to get started _today_ on contributing free texts to the world can do so at Wikipedia. All the content is released under the GNU FDL, and it already has over 1000 articles. Short, and maybe not the high quality of Nupedia, but with time? Who knows..." *March 16th German language and Catalan Wikipedias launched.
• March 31, 2001: earliest copy of wikipedia.com in Internet Archive [4]
• May 11th French language Wikipedia launched.
• June 26th "Wikipedia is now useful!", announces Larry Sanger.
• July 6th Larry Sanger, who still considers Nupedia to be the primary project, proposes a backroom Wiki for Nupedia only viewable to members, where articles can be improved and then approved for publishing by Nupedia. Wikipedia, which is operating concurrently and has far fewer participants, is seen by Sanger as a test case for what could be achieved on Nupedia.
• July 26th Wikipedia editor The Cunctator makes his first edit. He becomes perhaps the first Wiki-addict.
• July 27, 2001: earliest copy of wikipedia.org in Internet Archive [5]
• September WikiEN-l mailing list created.
• September 11 2001. The attack on the World Trade Centre provides the opportunity for Wikipedians, including The Cunctator to provide real-time coverage of the disaster. This set a controversial precedent for news coverage on Wikipedia whose momentum has continued ever since.
• September 20th New York Times publishes a piece on Wikipedia called Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You. Jimbo Wales: It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work'.'
• October Wikipedia grows at a rate of around 50 new editors a month.
• October 18th Jimmy Wales proposes the principles of what he terms "cabal membership". This becomes the bureaucratic framework of Wikipedia.
• October 30th Jimmy Wales confirms that Larry Sanger had the idea to use Wiki software for a separate project (Wikipedia) to accompany Nupedia. Later, in 2005, Wales gave a different story stating that "Larry Sanger was my employee working under my direct supervision during the entire process of launching Wikipedia. He was not the originator of the proposal to use a wiki for the encyclopedia project."
• December 2001: Larry Sanger gets married, and moves to Colorado.
2002
The aftermath of the dotcom collapse brings a heavy toll upon Bomis. Sanger is laid off, and the cabal cast around for ways of making Wikipedia profitable. Sanger mentions the idea of 'advertising' and the entire Spanish Wikipedia deserts.
• January Larry Sanger is placed on half-time pay by Bomis.
• February 1st Sanger is no longer a Bomis employee.
• February 12, 2002: Sanger announces "Bomis might well start selling ads on Wikipedia sometime within the next few months, and revenue from those ads might make it possible for me to come back to my old job. This would be great." [6]
• February 26th Participants in the Spanish language Wikipedia leave the project to form Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español citing statements from Bomis, Inc. regarding advertising on all Wikipedia sites. The Spanish language Wikipedia suffers, before overtaking the forked Wiki in article numbers in November 2004. See Spanish_fork.
• March 1st Larry Sanger resigns as "Editor in Chief" of Nupedia and "any position of authority I had with Wikipedia".
• April 24th Wikipedia editor Lee Daniel Crocker writes the first version of Wikipedia's No Personal Attacks policy [1].
• May and October 2002: the circuit court of Cook County enters judgments totaling $817,830.45 in favor of Brian Dowling against Chicago Options Associates and Michael Davis
• August wikipedia.com changes to wikipedia.org
• August 2002: Wales announces "that he would never run commercial advertisements on Wikipedia" [7]
• August 2002: wikipedia.com changes to wikipedia.org [7][8]
• September 2002: 3Apes directory project begun
• October 9 2002 - Nasdaq Composite reaches a low of 1114, having lost 78% of its value from its previous high of 5046.
• October 2002: Derek Ramsey develops the first bot program which digested the results of the U.S. census and spat them out onto Wikipedia. He adds nearly 40,000 'articles' to the existing 50,000 in 6 days, virtually doubling Wikipedia's 'content'. This makes a visible spike in the timeline of Wikipedia article development.
• December 12th Wiktionary launched.
2003
• January 2003: ex-wife and minor children of Michael Davis move to Florida.
• February 2003: Michael Davis and his wife move from Chicago, IL to St. Petersburg, FL
• March 16, 2003: wikimedia.org registered.
• June 14th Requests for Adminship (RFA) is introduced on Wikipedia.
• June 20th Wikimedia Foundation founded. Wikiquote launched.
• July 10th Wikibooks launched.
• September 26, 2003: nupedia.com shut down.
• October 28th The first arranged meet-up of Wikipedians takes place in Munich. Since then regular meetups of Wikipedians are held.
• November 19, 2003, Dowling files a motion in the circuit court for turnover orders directed to Davis's stock in Bomis
• November 24th Wikisource launched.
• December 8, 2003: wikia.com registered.
• December 9, 2003: wikia.org registered.
2004
• 2004: (Florence): A [travel] policy was set up in 2004. It allowed 1000 dollars per trimester per board member, 3000 dollars for the chair. This is the last "validated one". In other words, most board members have exceeded their "validated" trimester allocation. I agree it should be expanded, but as it was not--it has been exceeded. Am I to assume that board resolutions regarding spending can be ignored at the discretion of the Board?
• January Arbitration and Mediation Committees announced, compared to Parliament by Jimbo.
• January 4th David Gerard welcomed to Wikipedia on the day he makes his first edit.
• February 2nd The 200,000th article on the English Wikipedia is created.
• February 13th Angela Beesley welcomes Everyking to Wikipedia on the day he makes his first edit.
• March 2nd Yahoo! announces that Wikipedia content will be indexed more often and featured prominently on Yahoo! pages.
• April 20th The 250,000th article on the English Wikipedia is created. The latest 50,000 articles have been created in just 78 days.
• August 20th One of the most notorious vandals in Wikipedia history, Willy On Wheels, begins his antics around this day.
• October 7: wikicities.com registered.
• November 15th Former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica Robert McHenry writes The Faith-Based Encyclopedia, an article critical of Wikipedia, which gains some attention.
• November 28th Voting ends on the topic of implementing a new rule known as the 'three-revert rule' policy. In future, anyone reverting content to a previous state three times on the same article can face sanctions.
• December 21st Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley form Wikia, Inc. as a Florida Corporation
◦ Tim Starling and Brad Patrick worked for Wikia before being employed by the Wikimedia Foundation.
• December 29th Kelly Martin is welcomed to Wikipedia two days after her first edit.
• December 31st Wikipedia enters Alexa's list of the top 100 English-language websites for the first time.
2005
Throughout 2005 the number of active and very active editors shows a marked increase. Wikipedia begins to be visible to the internet community.
• January 4th Editor SlimVirgin discusses the use of a citation attributed to Daniel Brandt as an article source on the (now deleted) article 'John Train Salon'. This is the first mention of Brandt in relation to Wikipedia who at this time is unaware of the site. SlimVirgin writes: "I removed Daniel Brandt. He's not a credible source..." and shows familiarity with Brandt. SlimVirgin deletes the article and talk page three months later.
• February 14th Wikipedia is accused of being the source of misinformation which found its way into a Washington Post article on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
• March 1st The first on site fundraising effort ends raising $94,000.
• March 7th MediaWiki developers activate a feature which ends the ability of new user accounts to perform page moves. This is implemented after a spate of mischievous page moves by notorious activist Willy on Wheels .
• March 18th English Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles.
• March 21st Wikipedia editor 'Snowspinner', real name Philip Sandifer decides to become a "self-appointed prosecutor" against other Wikipedia editors. Sticking to his pledge, he brings many new requests to be judged by the Arbitration Committee, including accusations against long term editor Everyking. Sandifer sows significant discord among Wikipedians, and sets off a myriad of bitter feuds between users that last for several years.
• March 22nd 'Snowspinner' alongside arbitrators Raul654 and Ambi creates the short lived "District Attorney's Office" group which aims to "prosecute" other editors more efficiently. Snowspinner declares himself "dictator", with other participants being designated as partners. The unpopular venture creates further disharmony and is shelved.
• March 28th Several Wikipedia editors in the UK meet to discuss the possibility of a UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. The group is led by Australian, David Gerard , and 'Vampwillow '. Vampwillow is later revealed to be Alison Wheeler using two admin accounts against policy, and secretly campaigning to keep her own biography on Wikipedia. (Bio since deleted and replaced by that of a notable singer with the same name)
• April 7th The Wikimedia Foundation approve a privacy policy to protect the identification of IP addresses and anonymous users' real life information.
• April 16th The Wikimedia Foundation announce that it has officially been recognized as a tax-exempt charitable organization in the United States.
• April 18th Larry Sanger publishes his "memoirs" of setting up Wikipedia and Nupedia.
• May 16th Jimmy Wales announces the appointment of seven people to official positions in the Wikimedia Foundation. These are; Brion Vibber as Chief Technical Officer; Domas Mituzas as Hardware Officer; Jens Frank as Developer Liaison; Erik Möller as Chief Research Officer; Danny Wool as Grants Coordinator; Elisabeth Bauer as Press Officer; Jean-Baptiste Soufron as Lead Legal Coordinator
• May 26th (Seigenthaler controversy) Brian Chase, a delivery manager in Tennessee, creates a Wikipedia biography of journalist and writer John Seigenthaler. It includes hoax claims that Seigenthaler was "directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby".
• June Wikimedia servers are transported to a new location in Tampa, Florida.
• June 27th English Wikipedia now has 500 administrators.
• July 4th Moderators of Wikipedia's mailing list clamp down on what they claim is "disruptive behavior" by other subscribers. Complaints by Wikipedia administrators Jayjg, Ambi and David Gerard lead to moves by Gerard to moderate new subscribers "by default".
• July 18th Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard are re-elected to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
• July 25th A Wikipedia Arbitrator immediately deletes (out of process and without discussion) a new article on the book "The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World". The book details the writer's experience of reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica. The article is later restored per process.
• August 12th Ezperanza launched. This is a sub-group created within Wikipedia to "indirectly support the encyclopedia by providing support and other assistance for Wikipedians in need, and by strengthening Wikipedia's sense of community". The organization is disbanded in January 2007.
• August 29th Massive spate of mischievous edits by the allusive "Willy On Wheels". Willy, who may be one person or a team of collaborators, manages to change the multiple-language portal at
http://www.wikipedia.org for over an hour, altering the Wikipedia logo on WikiCommons to a picture referencing himself.
• September (Seigenthaler controversy) Victor S. Johnson, Jr., discovers the hoax Wikipedia entry on John Seigenthaler. After Johnson alerted him to the article, Seigenthaler e-mails friends and colleagues about it.
• September 4th Wikipedia editors attempt to get an article on the controversial internet entity Gay Nigger Association of America "featured" and on the site's Main Page.
• Also on September 4th Jimmy Wales edit wars on his own Wikipedia biography to change the words "softcore pornography" to "adult content", in a section detailing his involvement in "Bomis Babes".
• September 21st A day after the death of Simon Wiesenthal, a holocaust survivor who helped track down more than 1000 Nazi war criminals, Wikipedia is discovered to have been displaying outrageous false information about Wiesenthal, claiming he partook in oral sex acts in Austria with other men. The Council of Australian Jewry go public with their complaints.
• September 28th Wikipedia editor SlimVirgin starts a biography on Daniel Brandt.
• October (Seigenthaler controversy) John Seigenthaler contacts Jimmy Wales, who took the then-unusual step of having the affected versions of his biography history hidden from public view in the Wikipedia version logs. Mirror websites not controlled by Wikipedia continue to display the older and inaccurate article.
• October 5th Scottish call-center worker Alan Mcilwraith creates a hoax biography on himself depicting a bogus life as a decorated war hero. The biography lasts until the media break the hoax in April 2006.
• October 11th Jimmy Wales personally appoints editors Mindspillage (Kat Walsh) and Kelly Martin to the Arbitration Committee.
• October 12th SlimVirgin responds to Brandt's complaint that he was not notified about his biography with "we tend not to do that." Brandt begins editing the article himself making corrections. SlimVirgin asks that he ceases.
• October 13th Daniel Brandt launches Wikipedia Watch. On the site, Brandt publishes an open letter requesting that Jimmy Wales "lock down" the article, who replies that this is "...an impossible and absurd request."
• October 16th SlimVirgin agrees to delete the Daniel Brandt biography entirely.
• October 18th Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski runs the article, "Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems" in The Register, which is highly critical of the site.
• October 24thThe Wikimedia Foundation announce an increased partnership with Answers.com. Answers.com provides direct scrapes of Wikipedia articles. In return, Wikipedia and Answers.com will split advertising revenue from the Answers.com website
• October 26th-29th Philipp Lenssen, a pro-Google blogger antagonistic towards Brandt's anti-Google investigations, restores Brandt's biography. It is immediately deleted for a second time. Lenssen blogs about the situation, and gains support from readers prepared to challenge Brandt. The biography is recreated by administrator Canderson7 who asserts to Brandt that "resistance is in fact futile". The article is filled with increasingly hostile edits.
• October 28th Jimmy Wales edits his own biography to remove mention of Larry Sanger as co-founder of Wikipedia.
• November 4th Daniel Brandt's biography is protected, unprotected, deleted several times and finally restored. Brandt participates in the discussions maintaining his position that he is a private figure and the article is an invasion of privacy. Multiple anonymous administrators goad Brandt with derisory statements including "Poor baby", "He can cry about this until the cows come home", and suggestions that everyone "point and laugh" at Brandt's open letter to Jimmy Wales. Brandt is blocked from the site.
• November 5th First incarnation of Wikipedia Review launches.
• November 7th First Article-for-Deletion debate on the biography of Daniel Brandt ends in a "keep".
• November 9th Jimmy Wales edits his own biography to remove mention of Larry Sanger as "setting up" Wikipedia. This is the second time Wales has removed Sanger from the article.
• Also on November 9th Brandt also launches Hivemind, which lists the real life identity of prominent Wikipedia administrators. Brandt later describes Hivemind as a service "because someone, somewhere, has to take responsibility for the content on Wikipedia".
• November 11th The English article on Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg falsely asserts that he had been in prison for pedophilia. Norwegian media publish stories describing Wikipedia's error.
• November 13th Due to reservations from several Wikipedians, Daniel Brandt's biography is put up for deletion for a second time. The result is keep.
• November 29th (Seigenthaler controversy) USA Today publishes an op-ed written by John Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler describes his Wikipedia defamation experience and calls Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool."
• December (Seigenthaler controversy) Daniel Brandt locates the IP address responsible for the Seigenthaler biography hoax to a company in Tennessee.
• December 1st Jimmy Wales edits his own biography again to remove "co" from "co-founder" and demote Larry Sanger's role in the founding of Wikipedia. Wales's revision directly contradicts statements he had made two years earlier.
• December 5th (Seigenthaler controversy) John Seigenthaler appears on CNN. He criticizes Wikipedia and US Congress for passing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects ISPs and web sites from being held legally responsible for disseminating content provided by their customers and users, "unlike print and broadcast companies."
• Also on December 5th In light of the Seigenthaler contoversy, Jimmy Wales announces that the creation of new Wikipedia articles will be restricted for accounts that have not set up a user name.
• December 9th (Seigenthaler controversy) Brian Chase confesses to the John Seigenthaler hoax and resigns from his job. Seigenthaler receives a hand-written apology and speaks with Chase on the phone.
• December 11th A Wikipedia biography is created on Brian Chase.
• December 14th Former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica Robert McHenry writes a follow-up piece to his 2004 critique The Faith-Based Encyclopedia, to incorporate the Seigenthaler controversy called The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Blinks.
• December 17th Wikipedia agrees on a new guideline, 'Biographies of living persons' (BLP). Editorial restrictions are introduced on the creation of new Wikipedia articles; and new tracking categories for the biographies of living people are implemented.
• Also on December 17th, a biography is created of Brian Peppers, a 37 year old American who had become an "internet meme" due to his extreme physical malformations caused by Crouzon syndrome. The article was "speedy deleted" the following day, before being restored with 66% support. The article is deleted and restored several times before being deleted unilaterally by Jimmy Wales on 22nd February 2006. The comings and goings of the article cause considerable dispute between opposing camps.
• December 22nd "Semi-protection" enabled on Wikipedia. This allow administrators to prevent edits from IP addresses and newly created accounts on specific articles.
• December 24th New York Times covers Jimmy Wales's controversial edits to his own biography, and recaps the Seigenthaler controversy.
2006
• At the beginning of January 2006, the number of 'very active' editors (more than 100 edits a month) leaps dramatically to over 3,000.
• January 10th Wikipedia becomes a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation.
• January 12th Kelly Martin resigns from the Arbitration committee.
• January 15th 'Communications committee' formed to handle media inquiries and emails received for the foundation and Wikipedia via the newly implemented OTRS (a ticket handling system).
• January 19th A German Court orders the German-language version of Wikipedia shut down after the family of deceased phreaker/hacker “Tron” sued Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. for using the deceased’s full name in an entry.
• January 22nd Voting ends for elections to the Arbitration Committee. Mindspillage , Charles Matthews and Jayjg are appointed among others (Jayjg had already served several months). Fred Bauder is reelected.
• January 28th (Naked Short Selling controversy) 'Mantanmoreland' makes his first edit to Wikipedia. Formerly, the IP address 70.23.85.112 , suspected of being Mantanmoreland, had been editing the article Naked Short Selling and writing that the practice was a "nonissue".
• February 6th Jimmy Wales redirects a Wikipedia biography of Brian Chase, the Seigenthaler hoaxer. He reasons that Daniel Brandt "violated this man's privacy severely by releasing his name and identity to the press". Brandt defends his position stating that he told the press he was "uncomfortable with Wikipedia putting up a dedicated page on Mr. Chase" and that it was actually Seigenthaler who put Chase's name into print. Brandt's own biography continues to be a source of contention and shows no signs of being similarly redirected.
• Also on February 6th Five Wikipedia administrators are removed of their "duties" by Jimbo Wales after a Wikipedia-War erupts over userboxes. Userboxes are decorative images that editors use to identify themselves on their editor pages. A userbox was created by User:Paroxysm and stated that the user "identifies as a pedophile". Wikipedia libertarians who supported the userbox battled against those who found it distasteful.
• February 26th Second incarnation of Wikipedia Review launches.
• March 1st The Wikimedia Foundation announce the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia
• March 10th New York venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners invests $4 million to help Wikia.
• March 12th New York Times publishes critical article Anonymous Source Is Not the Same as Open Source.
• March 13th Danny Wool, in his new role implementing "Office actions" blanks and protects an article on Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney and activist, for legal reasons. The article had been criticized for its overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Thompson, and its lack of sources. In its last version before it was blanked, the article contained at least 21 uncited statements.
• March 24th BBC and other media outlets cover Encyclopaedia Britannica's debunking of the pro-Wikipedia 2005 Nature study. Britannica say the study contained "a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results".
• Also on March 24th Guardian journalist and TV presenter Mark Lawson describes how his life was changed after being erroneously depicted as Jewish in his Wikipedia biography.
• March 26th Wikitruth launched. Wikitruth is a satirical Wiki hosting criticisms of Wikipedia and reposting deleted articles from the site.
• March 28th Bessemer Venture Partners and the investment group of eBay Inc. announce that they are participants in a $4 million initial round of investment in Wikia Inc.
• April 4th Administrator Sam Korn deletes a controversial image described as a "sexualized drawing of minor female" and is taken to task by a number of Wikipedians for "censorship". Jimmy Wales comments, "Sam rocks. For something like this it is far better to err on the side of tastefulness and respect. Let us not let the pedophile trolls set the standard for our debates."
• April 5th Articles for deletion/Daniel Brandt (3rd nomination) ends in another keep.
• April 11th Jimmy Wales controversially adds a new tool intended to bring revenue to Wikipedia from advertising on a partner site, Answers.com. Eric Möller calls for the partnership to be cancelled.
• April 14th (Naked Short Selling controversy) "Mantanmoreland" creates a Wikipedia biography of Gary Weiss.
• April 19th Danny Wool indefinitely blocks Eric Möller (Eloquence ) for "reckless endangerment -- OFFICE". After some too-ing and fro-ing, Jimmy Wales unblocks Möller the same day. Wool, a paid employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, had "stubbed" and protected two articles while representing WP:OFFICE, which means that he is acting under the authority of the Wikimedia Foundation to resolve urgent legal problems. Möller, a researcher for the Wikimedia Foundation and partner of board member Angela Beesley, unprotected the same articles without discussion.
• April 24th A "Paid editor job board" is proposed by an editor, which is met by controversy, but later morphs into the Reward Board which is still running.
• April 29th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Mantamoreland, using another account name of Lastexit , adds significant negative material to the biography of Patrick Byrne. Byrne is a vocal critic of the controversial market practice of Naked Short Selling.
• April 30th The mainstream media notes Wikipedia's capacity to be "a remarkably useful for political dirty tricksters", citing a number of cases including a recent controversy when a US Republican campaign manager reworked an opponent's biography to add scurrilous claims.
• May 22nd Professor Juan Cole, outspoken critic of US foreign policy, describes his negative experiences with his Wikipedia biography, "I gave up trying to correct facts on various issues and now just actively warn students that Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for research projects or even casual knowledge".
• May 24th Influential blogger Nicholas Carr pronounces"The death of Wikipedia".
• May 28th Wikipedians discuss the growing influence of Wikipedia Review. One administrator writes "The Foundation should take one of these trolls and use the legal system and/or the press to crucify him. The value of a troll's head on a pike as a deterrent to other trolls would be worth the cost and difficulty. "
• June Historian Roy Rosenzweig publishes an indepth look at Wikipedia for The Journal of American History.
• June 2nd Resolution:CEO passes, letting Jimmy Wales name the new Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Ant, Jimmy, Tim, and Michael approve. Angela Beesley opposes.
• June 16th Brad Patrick, heretofore a practicing attorney engaged in some pro bono work with the Foundation starting in the fall of 2005, was named as general counsel and interim executive director; in the latter capacity, Patrick was designated to assist the Board in its search for a permanent executive director.
• June 19th Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch attempts to clarify bad edits made to his biography and is confronted by an anonymous editor KSmrq who writes, "You do not get to choose whether or not an article on you appears in Wikipedia, and you have no veto power over its contents. The article can cast you as a genius or an imbecile, a respected scientist or a crackpot. [...] Wikipedia does not operate by your rules, but by its own conventions; I suggest you learn to accept it. " Haisch described his experience in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.[2]
• July 4th Jimmy Wales releases his Mission Statement for the new site Campaigns Wikia. Wales announces that "This can be the start of the era of net-driven participatory politics".
• July 7th Angela Beesley resigns from the Wikimedia Foundation board.
◦ Also on July 7th (Naked Short Selling controversy) Judd Bagley, an associate of Patrick Byrne and later Communications Officer for Byrne's company Overstock.com, identifies Mantanmoreland and another account (Lastexit) as journalist Gary Weiss. Bagley's account, Wordbomb, is blocked indefinately from Wikipedia by SlimVirgin for "appearing to try to out another Wikipedian".
• July 12th Angela Beesley attempts to have her Wikipedia biography removed for the third time. "I'm sick of this article being trolled. It's full of lies and nonsense." The article is kept despite a significant number of delete votes.
• July 22nd A Nebraska private school files a lawsuit to determine the identity of the person or persons responsible for edits to the Wikipedia article about the school.
• July 26th Essjay affair. Daniel Brandt starts a thread on Wikipedia Review asking "Who is Essjay?" 'Essjay' is a prolific Wikipedia editor with extraordinary bureaucratic powers on the encyclopedia. 'Essjay' boldly claims on his user page to be a tenured professor at a Catholic College in the US. Essjay Media Watch.
• Also on July 26th, Judd Bagley makes his first post on Wikipedia Review as Wordbomb. (Naked Short Selling controversy)
◦ Also on July 26th The Onion run a spoof article mocking Wikipedia inaccuracies. Several high profile Wikipedia editors call for significant changes to Wikipedia's registration process in light of the ridicule meted out in the article.
• July 27th A professor at the University of Oklahoma explains that 16 students plagiarised sections of their final papers for a history of science course. Nine of those students, the professor found, had copied entries on Wikipedia virtually verbatim.
• July 31st (Essjay Controversy) The New Yorker publishes an article on Wikipedia, written by Stacy Schiff, which features an interview with 'Essjay'. Essjay repeats his claims that he is a tenured professor.
• August 1st Stephen Colbert segment on Wikipedia where the word wikiality is first coined. Colbert runs a story on the Wikipedia article "Elephant" urging the public to change the details, which causes panic on the site.
• August 2nd Numerous dates of death are mischievously added to biographies of living retired US baseball players. The falsehoods are discovered only after shocked relatives had contacted players themselves.
• August 9th Jimmy Wales blocks the account MyWikiBiz . MyWikiBiz is a venture devised by Gregory Kohs that would allow Kohs to write a comprehensive neutral Wikipedia article at the bequest of paying businesses. Kohs insists he was transparent about his business model.
• August 11th Jimmy Wales unblocks MyWikiBiz having reached what Wales describes as "a very favorable agreement".
• August 28th Daniel Mayer resigns as Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Tricia Hoffman hired part time as Wikimedia Foundation bookkeeper.
• September (Carolyn Doran affair) Carolyn Doran is hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as a bookkeeper.
• September 2nd Wikipedia now has 1000 administrators.
• September 6th A year on from the Seigenthaler controversy, the edit "On November, 22nd, 1963, John Seigenthaler, Sr. killed and ate then-President John F. Kennedy" stays in his biography for over thirty hours before being spotted.
• September 7th Scholar Jon Awbrey indefinitely banned from Wikipedia by a small group of notorious editors for "wasting the community's patience" while creating projects. Awbrey becomes prolific critic of Wikipedia.
• September 9th Wordbomb's first article on antisocialmedia.net, set up to expose Gary Weiss' sockpuppetry and other dealings in regard to Naked Short Selling on Wikipedia.
• September 25th Erik Möller replaces Angela Beesley on the Wikimedia Foundation board after an election process later described as a "disgrace" by Beesley. The election was marred by leaks, a "list of endorsement" by Möller, and controversial interventions by Jimmy Wales.
• September 28th The Guardian publishes Seth Finkelstein's article I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here which describes the journalist's problems dealing with his Wikipedia biography.
• October The Wikipedia biography of Don Murphy, co-producer of the Transformers movies, is repeatedly hit by malicious vandalism from fans of the series. Murphy is forced to remove the material himself using the pseudonym ColScott and other aliases, leading to his requests that his biography be removed from Wikipedia. The biography is retained by Wikipedians. Murphy's accounts are later banned by Wikipedia administrators, and thus he becomes forthright and active critic of Wikipedia.
• October 3rd Wikipedia Weekly is launched, first episode airs the week of October 16th.
• October 4th Jimmy Wales again blocks MyWikiBiz indefinitely, for "inappropriate use of Wikipedia name in commerce; implying that people can pay him to get listed in Wikipedia". (More info here)
• October 17th Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger releases a press statement announcing the creation of Citizendium, a wiki based encyclopedia that requires real name verification to edit.
• October 22nd Jimmy Wales steps down as Chair of the Wikimedia board of Trustees to be replaced by Florence Devouard. The remaining official roles on the board were also filled at this time, with Tim Shell chosen as Vice-Chair, Erik Möller as Executive Secretary, and Michael E. Davis as Treasurer.
• October 23rd Arbitrator Fred Bauder changes all the spellings of "Encyclopedia Dramatica" to "damatica" in other people's comments during the long MONGO Arbitration case over the 'BADSITES' issue as paranoia towards external sites gains strength.
• October 26th The 'MONGO Arbitration case' comes to a close, and sets a precedent for the 'BADSITES' disputes which dominate the site for two years. The decision allows for the removal of links to sites that host criticisms of Wikipedians, regardless of whether they were relevant or on internal project pages.
• October 27th Daniel Brandt launches the first study of plagiarism in Wikipedia that has been undertaken, using a program he created to run a few sentences from about 12,000 articles against Google Inc.'s (GOOG) search engine. Brandt ended with a list of 142 articles, which he brought to Wikipedia's attention. The project gains mainstream media coverage.
• November 30th (Rachel Marsden scandal) Arbitration case concerning biased editing on TV pundit Rachel Marsden's biography ends. Jimmy Wales is seen to intervene in the case. 'Somey' from Wikipedia Review notes, "Maybe this could be the start of a beautiful relationship!"
• December 4th Angela Beesley creates a mailing list and an external wiki for use exclusively by female Wikipedia editors, called WikiChix. Due to the approved culture of secrecy and fake identities that dominates Wikipedia, the list inevitably becomes infiltrated by males disguising themselves as female editors.
• December 7th Wikimedia Foundation bylaws revised, Board expanded to include Kat Walsh, Oscar van Dillen and Jan-Bart de Vreede.
• December 17th Voting closes for elections to the Arbitration Committee.
• December 23rd Jimmy Wales makes a passing comment regarding the possibility of a wiki-based internet search. The result is extensive media coverage publishing the statement as an announcement, forcing Wales's Wikia company to re-brand and relaunch its previous search engine proposal under the temporary name of "Search Wikia".
• December 28 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Brandt (11th nomination). Nominated by Majorly . Consensus remains "Keep".
• December 29th Wales attempts to clarify several issues regarding "Search Wikia". He says that funding received from Amazon.com is not specific to the search project and also restates that Wikia and Wikipedia have separate management, even though they shared three key stakeholders.