30th WikiBirthday: Difference between revisions

* 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 [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ meatballwiki] and still laugh at the CamelCase system of linking :) I first met Ward in 2005 in Frankfurt, where he gave a presentation [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ward_cunningham_presentation_wikimania_2005.jpg], attended a private dinner [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimaniadiscussion.jpg], and offered a tangible memory of him, a teddy bear won in a typical German fair next to the venue [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_and_Wikimania.JPG]. 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 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki-logo.png]. Wikis changed the world and changed the way people collaborate. Happy birthday wikis. [[User:Anthere|Anthere]] ([[User talk: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! [[User:Shani|Shani]] ([[User talk:Shani|talk]]) 14:27, 9 March 2025 (UTC)