Wiki143:2001

This page is a chronology of events in year 2001 directly related to Wikipedia and Wikipedians, both within Wikipedia and in the whole wide world. Wikipedia events and events in sister projects (Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc.) are listed as long as they are related to Wikipedia.

Additions to this page must follow certain rules,Template:Efn because it is hoped that in 50 years or so this page will become a valuable source of scholar research.

Events

January 15: The first edit to Wikipedia is made to HomePage by Jimbo Wales: "This is the new WikiPedia!"
January 16, Wikipedia's oldest surviving article and edit is created by account eiffel.demon.co.uk, later known as user:Eiffel
January 17: User:ScottMoonen becomes the first known named user.^[1]
February 12, The English Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles.
March 17, At 01:41 UTC, the first ever edit to a non-English Wikipedia is made to the article ca:Àbac ("Abacus") by the anonymous user 194.158.80.xxx^[2].
May 19, The first data is recorded in the French Wikipedia.

Features

January 21: The page Wikipedia:Brilliant prose is created by Larry Sanger. It eventually becomes Wikipedia:Featured articles (renamed on January 21, 2004). At present, there are {{Wikipedia:Featured articles}} featured articles, of a total of 2,305,611 pages on the English Wikipedia. Thus, about one in Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "{". articles is featured.
November 13: Wikipedia:Friends of Wikipedia is created to list webpages which link to Wikipedia. It was deleted in 2005 after outliving its utility, then restored as an archive.
December 1: the page originally titled "VANDALISM IN PROGRESS" (all in uppercase) was established; it was moved to Wikipedia:Requests for investigation in 2006. See the history section of that page for more details.

Establishments

Date	Project	Notes
January 13	wikipedia.org is registered^[3]
March 16	German Wikipedia	Article creation began in May.
March 16	Catalan Wikipedia	For two months, this was the only Wikipedia with articles in a non-English language.
March 23	French Wikipedia
May 11	Spanish Wikipedia
	Portuguese Wikipedia
	Italian Wikipedia
	Esperanto Wikipedia
	Japanese Wikipedia
	Chinese Wikipedia
	Hebrew Wikipedia
May 20	Russian Wikipedia
May 23	Swedish Wikipedia
June 19	Dutch Wikipedia
September 26	Polish Wikipedia
November 16	Afrikaans Wikipedia
November 26	Norwegian Wikipedia	Allowed articles in either language standard.
December 6	Basque Wikipedia	The first article was created in November 2003.

The Simple English Wikipedia was also created in 2001, but the exact date is unknown and the first articles were only created in 2003.

Holidays

January 15: Wikipedia Day: The Wikipedia project formally begins.

Earliest user accounts

It is difficult to establish start dates in the early days of Wikipedia. Most of the information in monthly format is taken from Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians in order of arrival/2001.

January

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2003
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	2009
Script error: No such module "user".	before the move to phase III
Script error: No such module "user".	2006
Script error: No such module "user".	2002	And I can prove it : )
Script error: No such module "user".	2017	Joined up with Wikipedia after the brief GNUPedia episode and its mention on Slashdot. Did some of the first Britannica copying. Pimped wikipedia a bit on Indymedia and some other sites.
Script error: No such module "user".	2019	earliest edits as LarrySanger
Script error: No such module "user".	active	Likely January 15 (see above)
Script error: No such module "user".	2001	created on January 17, no edits beside own user page

February

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2003

March

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	July 2018
Script error: No such module "user".	2001	now editing as User:Justrob
Script error: No such module "user".	2001
Script error: No such module "user".	2002	read about it in the newspaper
Script error: No such module "user".	prior to the move to phase III
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	2013
Script error: No such module "user".	2010
Script error: No such module "user".	active	can't remember why I came, but noticed it lacked my favourite musicians, so resolved to add them.

April

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2008	based on the revision history of Bahrain. Followed over from a comment on slashdot
Script error: No such module "user".	active	anonymously until May 10, came over from the link on Nupedia.
Script error: No such module "user".	active	subscribed to wikipedia-l@nupedia.com on Mon, 9 Apr 2001 14:12:51 -0700

May

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	prior to the move to phase III	based on Wikipedia Announcements/May 2001
Script error: No such module "user".	active	based on Wikipedia Announcements/May 2001
Script error: No such module "user".	active	based on Wikipedia Announcements/May 2001
Script error: No such module "user".	2008	based on Wikipedia Announcements/May 2001; inactive since 2008
Script error: No such module "user".	2010
Script error: No such module "user".	active

June

July

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2011
Script error: No such module "user".	active	July 26, the day of the big Slashdotting
Script error: No such module "user".	active	July 26, the day of the big Slashdotting
Script error: No such module "user".	2003	July 26, Slashdot effect was my first article!
Script error: No such module "user".	active	another one from the Slashdotting
Script error: No such module "user".	2002	yet another Slashdotter (though the account is newer)
Script error: No such module "user".	2003	guess which well-known blog appears on my Personal Toolbar
Script error: No such module "user".	active	thinks he arrived just before slashdotting; now editing under SJK
Script error: No such module "user".	2016	as anonymous 24.4.254.xxx et al. (since first week of July, 2001
Script error: No such module "user".	2001	not from Slashdot, but from the Kuro5hin article that might have led to it
Script error: No such module "user".	2014	k5 article
Script error: No such module "user".	2009	Due to either the Kuro5hin or Slashdot articles

August

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2013	sometime in August
Script error: No such module "user".	2002	it was before school started...; inactive since 2002
Script error: No such module "user".	active	on 6th or 7th, not sure which
Script error: No such module "user".	2006	arrived probably during the slashdotting, first contribution early August
Script error: No such module "user".	2002	2nd wave of slashdotting, 1st or 2nd, I think.
Script error: No such module "user".	2002	the big slashdotting...;
Script error: No such module "user".	August 2018
Script error: No such module "user".	2015	from a post by someone (I forget who on usenet (sci.physics))
Script error: No such module "user".	2010	first contribution listed on 15 August, 2001

September

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2011
Script error: No such module "user".	2003
Script error: No such module "user".	2017
Script error: No such module "user".	2006	after reading the article in the New York Times, September 20
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	active	I was here a day or two before JHK... I thought it was earlier than September, but maybe not

October

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	?	Script error: No such module "user". for whatever wikiDB reason the first edit logged as July 26, 2002; PabsP userpage created April 3, 2005.
Script error: No such module "user".	June 2018
Script error: No such module "user".	active	at least that's when I first contributed
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	2015	as an anon, but the account Mark Ryan didn't come for another 3 months, in January 2002.
Script error: No such module "user".	2015	must have been early to middle of 2001 - how it's changed since then

November

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	active	November 23rd
Script error: No such module "user".	2003
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	2002
Script error: No such module "user".	2016
Script error: No such module "user".	active
Script error: No such module "user".	active	October 134.132.xxx.xxx postings were me too
Script error: No such module "user".	active	November 16

December

Username	Last activity (if inactive)	Notes/user comment
Script error: No such module "user".	2004
Script error: No such module "user".	2005	December 12
Script error: No such module "user".	2006
Script error: No such module "user".	2011	probably since beginning of December or end of November 2001
Script error: No such module "user".	active	probably earlier, but I can't tell exactly when I arrived.
Eloquence Template:Toolbar	active	05:47, first logged edit on December 8
SimonP Template:Toolbar	active	11:20, first logged edit on December 9
Slrubenstein Template:Toolbar	2012	03:33, first logged edit on December 13

Notes

Template:Notelist

References

Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

Template:History of Wikipedia

[1] Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles

[2] First edit in a non-English article (Àbac)

[3] According to Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

[1]

[2]

[3]

Wiki143:2001

Contents

Events

Features

Establishments

Holidays

Earliest user accounts

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

See also

Notes

References

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Wiki143:2001

Events

Features

Establishments

Holidays

Earliest user accounts

January

February

March

April

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June

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August

September

October

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December

See also

Notes

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