[Wikipedia-l] Fw: Nupedia: system up; Wikipedia started; German and Slashdot invasion

Expect an influx of traffic. ----- Original Message ----- From: <system(a)nupedia.com> To: <lsanger(a)nupedia.com> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 10:42 AM Subject: Nupedia: system up; Wikipedia started; German and Slashdot invasion December!)--that's mainly because we've been so busy. But I'll keep this update brief and informal. now up and running: I have promised to add more instructions (where text is underlined) but have always seemed to lack time to finish this task. Meanwhile, the system is simple enough, with enough instructions already in place, for many people to have started using it; others, I'm afraid, might feel they've been left high and dry. My apologies; I'll try to get those instructions written. In the meantime, of course, help is available from many different people. "WikiWiki" software led to the creation of Wikipedia, a new encyclopedia project complementary to Nupedia: pressing the "edit text" link, edit the text of the page. As of this moment (Thursdy, March 22, 12:57 PM Pacific Time), we have 2,953 (yes, 2,953) pages in Wikipedia. Of these, 1,816 are relatively substantial articles. We started in January, 2001, so we've made incredible progress--even we are surprised. Maybe you think that Wikipedia would end up being a rather low-quality product, since it's open to everyone. But perhaps it's the fact that it is open to everyone that makes a lot of these articles in fact not so bad, and ever-improving. We tend to cater to the highest common denominator--"lower denominators" usually don't touch articles they know nothing about. Nupedia are totally separate; Nupedia editors and peer reviewers do not necessarily endorse the Wikipedia project, and Wikipedia contributors do not necessarily endorse the Nupedia project. I personally am working on both projects, as are a number of Nupedia members. I think that the projects might eventually develop a very interesting symbiotic relationship. But nothing along those lines is official, and no changes are anticipated in the near future. Certainly no changes will be made without consulting Advisory-L and Nupedia-L. coverage of Nupedia by the German press agency DPA and by the hugely popular computer programmer website, Slashdot.org (twice!). (This has led, by the way, to my getting far behind in my e-mail--something for which I apologize, but it really couldn't be helped.) Andreas Flack, which has been producing German translations of various Nupedia pages. See: page in French, Italian, and Spanish (as well as German of course). We've set up Interpret-L for general translation issues, and Francais-L, a nascent French language translation project. We might soon set up Espanol-L. See this page for more information: who may be contacted via the following web pages: news; but I did promise to try to keep this short. If you're curious, you could join Nupedia-L or simply poke around the website to see what you've been missing.