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)

* Thank you Ward for bringing this amazing gift to the world!  -- [[User:JackHerrick|JackHerrick]] ([[User talk:JackHerrick|talk]]) 21:55, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

* My life would have been completely different, if not for wikis. I met my wife at Wikimania, I wrote in my dissertation about semantic wikis, most of my work has been wiki-related. It is impossible to overstate what role wikis played in my life. Thank you, Ward! --[[User:Denny|Denny]] ([[User talk:Denny|talk]]) 12:02, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* Happy wikibirthday! I learnt lots from the WikiWikiWeb c.2001, mainly spelunking through all the different WikiEngines. Thanks for everything! [[User:Samwilson|Samwilson]] ([[User talk:Samwilson|talk]]) 13:04, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* Happy 30th wikibirthday! I, too, owe so much to wikis, including marital bliss. I remember exploring design patterns on the original wikiwiki, and also remember hearing about Wikipedia in 2001 ("building an encyclopedia on a wiki!") and immediately thinking "that could never work!". I am delighted to have been very wrong. Here's to the next 30 years! :) [[User:Asaf Bartov|Asaf Bartov]] ([[User talk:Asaf Bartov|talk]]) 13:09, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* Ward, my life path would have been very different, surely far less interesting, and I think far less productive, if not for wiki software and the various communities that have emerged around it. Above all it has helped me develop an understanding (or at least a theory) of the conditions that best support collaboration, which serves me well in every relationship. Hopefully, I've been able to put that to use for others as well. I deeply appreciate your work over the years, which seems consistently driven by care, kindness, and a desire to support people in doing their best work together. Happy wiki birthday! -[[User:Peteforsyth|Pete Forsyth]] ([[User talk:Peteforsyth|talk]]) 16:38, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* Discovering Wikipedia, MeatBall, and the original Portland Pattern Repository WikiWikiWeb in 2001 definitely was a turning point in my life. :) I spent many many hours poring over the collected wisdom of other programmers about how we program, and tried to realize those insights in the tools I created for Wikipedia editors to use. I'm astounded and immensely pleased *and* proud that wikis are still around years later and running strong in a lot of core knowledge-sharing niches! We've done well, collectively, but we can do better: we can make richer interactivity, easier-to-use tooling for communication and data structuring, and stronger programming-oriented tools for the complex niche tasks. It's my great hope that wikis will continue to evolve and fill that knowledge-sharing niche with "the human touch" in a world that isn't sure who they can trust anymore. --[[User:Brooke Vibber|Brooke Vibber]] ([[User talk:Brooke Vibber|talk]]) 16:49, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* Ward, I was glad to meet you at a Wikipedia meetup. I, too, have been a fellow traveler on the Wiki-Wiki shuttle, but more importantly I am a fervent editor on several Wikis that run on the descendants of the software that you developed. Thank you for changing our lives!  [[User:Peaceray|Peaceray]] ([[User talk:Peaceray|talk]]) 16:53, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* The concept of a wiki is so simple that it's bound to fail - right? How can we trust people to just show up to a website, and improve it? And yet, somehow we made it work by making it easier to do the right thing, than to mess it up. It turned out to be a valuable addition to a set of publishing models, one that enables communities to really work together effectively. And communities, that is what has driven a lot of the valuable content of the internet. Just imagine we would have to depend on companies to provide everything, if everything would need to abide by business models. Wiki's are not for everyone, but the people that run with it, are my kind of people. Thank you for providing the spark that brought these fun and interesting people together! [[User:Effeietsanders|Effeietsanders]] ([[User talk:Effeietsanders|talk]]) 17:31, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

* Thank you, Ward, for wikis, for the answers, all the questions and all the people. --[[User:CristianCantoro|CristianCantoro]] ([[User talk:CristianCantoro|talk]]) 18:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)