30th WikiBirthday

30 years of the Wonderful Wiki Web

March 25, 2025 is the 30th birthday of the the WikiWikiWeb.

30th WikiBirthday — March 25, 2025

Below is just a start, feel free to add more ideas. We just had a first organizing meeting, and there will be another next week! (Tuesday, Feb 11) Reach out if you would like to get involved, you can reach me at wiki30 (at) ourpla.net --John Abbe (talk) 03:22, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

What is already in the works?

Some kind of open video call - featuring one or more names you will recognize and want to hear from, *and* with plenty of time (probably in breakout groups if it's a lot of people?) for people to catch up or get to know each other, share some wiki stories, etc. Learn something, connect with someone, and celebrate!

A WikiBirthday card that everyone is invited to contribute to. Add more ideas here.

Other possibilities

What else would you like to see?

That is a Tuesday. So, we could lean into the Tech Tuesdays thing. And/or, March 26 could be a global retro/reunion for WikiWednesdays, everyone organize whatever they want locally. Suggest we pick one of these early on and go for it.

Who's organizing WikiBirthday this year?

So far: John Abbe, Mark Dilley, Cary, Phoebe, Pete, You

Next steps include networking and generally getting the word out: Contact wikizens, wiki developers, maker spaces, free/open projects (OSU still host a bunch?), other coder commons, Wikia refugees, etc.

Themes / Names Explorations

WonderfulWikiWeb

Many people are understandably pretty down on the Internet and web these days, as for-profit companies exploit their attention (and pocketbooks!) with dark patterns. But these tools have also given us so much, and continue to! We want people to notice and love and defend the wonderful things about the Internet, and we're inspired by how the IETF organizes itself, and some of the things they say. We want people to notice and love and defend the wonderful things about the web, and wiki has brought so much wonder to so many, we see this 30th WikiBirthday as an opportunity to celebrate and share that wonder with each other, and as much as we can with the rest of the world as well.

Wiki: A way of thinking about and practicing collaborative in an increasingly factious world

Wiki: A sometimes shining example of collaboration and intertwingliness

Wikipedia: A tool for managing mis- and dis-information in a world where the quality and source of information is increasingly difficult to perceive++

History of wikis

• Wiki engine evolution tree - a history of wiki engines and software
• WikiHistory from C2
• History of wikis, from Wikipedia

WikiBirthdayCard

Would you like to wish wiki a happy birthday? Leave your message below.

• How have wikis changed you? What has wiki meant to you? What wikis have you edited, and why?
• How are wikis important for the world?
• What do you want to see for the next 30 years?

Leave your notes, thoughts, photos and well wishes below.

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• Thank you Ward for starting a platform that changed my life. Wikis promise that together, we can make it better -- and together, we have. My participation with wikis has been as an editor of Wikimedia projects, local wikis, and internal wikis; an educator/author; and a conference organizer for Recent Changes Camp, WikiSym, Wikimania, and many other Wikimedia events. I've put my energy into organizing events over the years because it's the in-person manifestation of what makes wikis so interesting to me - people coming together to create something wonderful in the same space. -- Phoebe (talk) 15:35, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

ideas from Recent Changes Camp 2008, photo by Jay Walsh [1]

• After a few days intensively focused on reading & writing in the new-to-me WikiWikiWebs in 1998(?), I knew my experience of the web had changed forever when I saw an error on some other website and was confused when I couldn't find the edit button. I had internalized that the web is editable! Wiki became part of my ongoing life, as with Open Space. What makes a wiki a wiki is an amazing conversation to get to be a part of, especially as it becomes clear that there is no agreed-upon list of core features. For some, collaboration among people is central, while for others a personal wiki is still a wiki. Are structured wikis still wikis? It depends? "What is a wiki?" quickly (over a period of years) became one of those questions that will never have a definitive answer. I believe that the web, and the world, will be endlessly grateful it was Ward and other early wiki folks who put hypertext on the map of the early web, a space of many ecosystems that wiki continues to inhabit and grow into. --John Abbe (talk) 19:02, 19 February 2025 (UTC)