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?

An open video call - featuring one or more names wiki folk 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! (Details to be clarified on Feb 25 planning call)

A WikiBirthday card that everyone is invited to contribute to.

Add other things people are organizing 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 almost no agreed-upon list of core features. For some, collaboration among people is central, while for others a personal wiki is still a wiki, for some the naming dimension is immense, for others, it's a sideline. 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. In any case, HippoBirdieToYou on your 30th birthday, wiki. --John Abbe (talk) 19:02, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, Ward, for so many life changing innovations! Keep on hacking, Dirk Riehle (talk) 20:02, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

I had been a happy user of HyperCard around 1995. And first encountered wikis in October 2001 with excitement. I still remember very vividly my first edit on wikipedia, end of 2001. I had started a line of text with a « space » without noticing and spend 30 unsuccessful minutes trying to figure out why the font looked different and all weird. It freaked me out so bad that I could not fix it (and it stayed unfixed for a long time...), that it took me a full month to dare editing a Wikipedia article again (being given freedom to act, and thus to make mistakes, can be paralyzing...). And then I jumped in the bath, and rapidly became addicted. And soon I felt the pain of not being able to fix « things » on the other websites. The presence of that Edit Button changed everything, giving unprecedented power to every single person. « It's not a bug, it’s a feature » became my mantra. 22 years down the line, it is safe to say that wikis entirely changed my life... I also was a heavy reader for some years of the inspiring meatballwiki and still laugh at the CamelCase system of linking :) I first met Ward in 2005 in Frankfurt, where he gave a presentation [2], attended a private dinner [3], and offered a tangible memory of him, a teddy bear won in a typical German fair next to the venue [4]. Thank you Ward for inventing wikis ! You made the world a better place. The last element I would share when it comes to my personal relationship with wikis is that I became the co-author of the original and long-lasting Mediawiki logo with Erik Moeller [5]. Wikis changed the world and changed the way people collaborate. Happy birthday wikis. Anthere (talk) 11:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, Ward, for all the goodness you brought to our lives. Happy 30th, and for many mote to come! Shani (talk) 14:27, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
Thank you Ward for bringing this amazing gift to the world! -- JackHerrick (talk) 21:55, 24 March 2025 (UTC)