The concept of compiling the world's knowledge in a single location dates back to the ancient Library of Alexandria and Library of Pergamum, and there are ancient precursors of the idea of a comprehensive encyclopedia, such as Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia, but the modern concept of a general-purpose, widely distributed, printed encyclopedia originates with Denis Diderot and the 18th-century French encyclopedists.[10] The idea of using automated machinery beyond the printing press to build a more useful encyclopedia can be traced to Paul Otlet's 1934 book Traité de Documentation. Otlet also founded the Mundaneum, an institution dedicated to indexing the world's knowledge, in 1910. This concept of a machine-assisted encyclopedia was further expanded in H. G. Wells' book of essays World Brain (1938) and Vannevar Bush's future vision of the microfilm-based Memex in his essay "As We May Think" (1945).[11] Another milestone was Ted Nelson's hypertext design Project Xanadu, which began in 1960.[11]

The use of volunteers was integral in making and maintaining Wikipedia. However, even without the internet, huge complex projects of similar nature had made use of volunteers. Specifically, the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was conceived with the speech at the London Library, on Guy Fawkes Day, 5 November 1857, by Richard Chenevix Trench. It took about 70 years to complete. Dr. Trench envisioned a grand new dictionary of every word in the English language, and to be used democratically and freely. According to author Simon Winchester, "The undertaking of the scheme, he said, was beyond the ability of any one man. To peruse all of English literature – and to comb the London and New York newspapers and the most literate of the magazines and journals – must be instead 'the combined action of many.' It would be necessary to recruit a team – moreover, a huge one – probably comprising hundreds and hundreds of unpaid amateurs, all of them working as volunteers."[12]

Advances in information technology in the late 20th century led to changes in the form of encyclopedias. While previous encyclopedias, notably the Encyclopædia Britannica, were often book-based, Microsoft's Encarta, published in 1993, was available on CD-ROM and hyperlinked. The development of the World Wide Web led to many attempts to develop internet encyclopedia projects. An early proposal for an online encyclopedia was Interpedia in 1993 by Rick Gates;[3] this project died before generating any encyclopedic content. Free software proponent Richard Stallman described the usefulness of a "Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in 1998.[5] His published document outlined how to "ensure that progress continues towards this best and most natural outcome."

The concept of compiling the world's knowledge in a single location dates back to the ancient Library of Alexandria and Library of Pergamum, and there are ancient precursors of the idea of a comprehensive encyclopedia, such as Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia, but the modern concept of a general-purpose, widely distributed, printed encyclopedia originates with Denis Diderot and the 18th-century French encyclopedists.[10] The idea of using automated machinery beyond the printing press to build a more useful encyclopedia can be traced to Paul Otlet's 1934 book Traité de Documentation. Otlet also founded the Mundaneum, an institution dedicated to indexing the world's knowledge, in 1910. This concept of a machine-assisted encyclopedia was further expanded in H. G. Wells' book of essays World Brain (1938) and Vannevar Bush's future vision of the microfilm-based Memex in his essay "As We May Think" (1945).[11] Another milestone was Ted Nelson's hypertext design Project Xanadu, which began in 1960.[11]

The use of volunteers was integral in making and maintaining Wikipedia. However, even without the internet, huge complex projects of similar nature had made use of volunteers. Specifically, the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary was conceived with the speech at the London Library, on Guy Fawkes Day, 5 November 1857, by Richard Chenevix Trench. It took about 70 years to complete. Dr. Trench envisioned a grand new dictionary of every word in the English language, and to be used democratically and freely. According to author Simon Winchester, "The undertaking of the scheme, he said, was beyond the ability of any one man. To peruse all of English literature – and to comb the London and New York newspapers and the most literate of the magazines and journals – must be instead 'the combined action of many.' It would be necessary to recruit a team – moreover, a huge one – probably comprising hundreds and hundreds of unpaid amateurs, all of them working as volunteers."[12]

Advances in information technology in the late 20th century led to changes in the form of encyclopedias. While previous encyclopedias, notably the Encyclopædia Britannica, were often book-based, Microsoft's Encarta, published in 1993, was available on CD-ROM and hyperlinked. The development of the World Wide Web led to many attempts to develop internet encyclopedia projects. An early proposal for an online encyclopedia was Interpedia in 1993 by Rick Gates;[3] this project died before generating any encyclopedic content. Free software proponent Richard Stallman described the usefulness of a "Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in 1998.[5] His published document outlined how to "ensure that progress continues towards this best and most natural outcome."

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said that the concept of Wikipedia came when he was a graduate student at Indiana University, where he was impressed with the successes of the open-source movement and found Richard Stallman's Emacs Manifesto promoting free software and a sharing economy interesting. Wales also credits Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek's essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," which he read as an undergraduate,[13] as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project."[14] The essay asserts that information is decentralized—that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively—and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge, rather than by a central authority. At the time, Wales was studying finance and was intrigued by the incentives of the many people who contributed as volunteers toward creating free software, where many examples were having excellent results.[15] According to The Economist, Wikipedia "has its roots in the techno-optimism that characterised the internet at the end of the 20th century. It held that ordinary people could use their computers as tools for liberation, education, and enlightenment."[16]

Formulation of the concept
Wikipedia was initially conceived as a feeder project for the Wales-founded Nupedia, an earlier project to produce a free online encyclopedia, volunteered by Bomis, a web-advertising firm owned by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell and Michael E. Davis.[17][18][19] Nupedia was founded upon the use of qualified volunteer contributors and a considered multi-step peer review process.[20] Despite its mailing list of over 2000 interested editors, and the presence of Sanger as full-time editor-in-chief,[21] the production of content for Nupedia was extremely slow, with only 12 articles written during the first year.[19]

The Nupedians discussed various ways to create content more rapidly.[18] Wikis had been used elsewhere on the web to organize knowledge,[22] and the idea of a wiki-based complement to Nupedia was seeded by a conversation between Sanger and Ben Kovitz,[23][24][25] and by another between Wales and Jeremy Rosenfeld.[23] Kovitz was a computer programmer and regular on Ward Cunningham's revolutionary wiki "the WikiWikiWeb". He explained to Sanger what wikis were, over a dinner on 2 January 2001.[23][24][25][26] Wales stated in October 2001 that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software" for people bored by Nupedia process,[27] and later stated in December 2005 that Rosenfeld had introduced him to the wiki concept.[28][29][30][31] Sanger thought a wiki would be a good platform to use, and proposed on the Nupedia mailing list that a wiki based upon UseModWiki (then v. 0.90) be set up as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Under the subject "Let's make a wiki", he wrote:[32]

No, this is not an indecent proposal. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not... As to Nupedia's use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE "open" and simple format for developing content. We have occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. It seems to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly, need very little maintenance, and in general, are very low-risk. They're also a potentially great source of content. So there's little downside, as far as I can determine.

Wales set one up and put it online on Wednesday 10 January 2001, under the nupedia.com domain.[33] This moved to a new wiki under the wikipedia.com domain on 15 January. On 17 January, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) GNUPedia project went online, potentially competing with Nupedia,[34] but within a few years the FSF encouraged people "to visit and contribute to [Wikipedia]" instead
