Talk:First Wikipedia edit

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

"Jimmy Wales Is Auctioning the "Birth of Wikipedia" as an NFT". Slate. December 9, 2021. By the way, there is now a new Wikipedia article about the "First Wikipedia edit" that delves into the distinction between the earliest edits recalled by Wales and the earliest found edits available in the digital record.

First Wikipedia edit was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 17, 2021	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 13, 2021.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the first Wikipedia edit was made on 15 January 2001?

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 04:31, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that the first Wikipedia edit was made on 15 January 2001? Source: Gault, Matthew (December 3, 2021). "Jimmy Wales Is Auctioning His First Wikipedia Edit As an NFT". www.vice.com.

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/KGRZ

Created by JPxG (talk). Self-nominated at 01:39, 4 December 2021 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: New article, long enough and interesting, specially on wikipedia,copyvio unlikely, good to go. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 04:18, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Would "first edit to Wikipedia" sound better? Legoktm (talk) 01:16, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Foe the hook or the article title? Frankly, I welcome anyone's ideas on how to phrase either of them better (I spent a couple minutes trying to come up with the best title and ended up rolling a die for it). jp×g 15:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was just suggesting it for the hook. I think the title is fine as is, or at least I don't have any better suggestions. I tried to look for similar titles, but mostly found "First Battle of ____" and things that call themselves First in their name, none of which help here. Legoktm (talk) 01:37, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To T:DYK/P1

When did import happen?

BTW: once the database had been found, in 2010, I reconstructed the first 10k edits. I wonder when the edits were imported back into Wikipedia? There's no citation. -Reagle (talk) 16:58, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was a little painful to write this article, because there is way more I could have written, but very little of it in sources that would pass WP:RS muster. There is tons of things, for example, in WP:RECORDS (a page to which I've contributed quite a bit), but the only citations for them are links to mailing list posts or diffs from project pages. There's also a good bit in History of Wikipedia that was scantily-sourced enough I didn't feel like pushing my luck by putting into a brand new article. jp×g 12:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Reagle: I imported the edits in July 2019. This was documented in the Signpost. @JPxG: you're probably (painfully?) aware of this but see the subheadings in the sections about self-published sources for advice in situations like this. Graham87 13:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Graham87: That's an excellent link. I am aware that I could probably get away with some WP:ABOUTSELF here, but I figured that creating this article at all was basically begging for an AfD... maybe once the DYK runs I can get a bit more cheeky ;)

As an aside, I wonder how many levels of WP:COI it is for me (as both a Wikipedia editor and a Signpost writer) to cite that article -- it'd at least be an interesting noticeboard thread. I do think it ought to go in the article, but probably someone besides me should put it there. jp×g 14:36, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and if that 2019 Signpost article goes in, it would probably be condign to include the Jimbo quote about the "hello world" edit -- it covers some things that aren't mentioned in many of the other sources (like the original process of deleting articles by dropping them from the database entirely). jp×g 14:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: Eh I wouldn't have a problem with you adding the Signpost article. You weren't involved in the publication back then per relevant searches; the article was co-written by the current editor-in-chief but I don't think that's very relevant or at all problematic. By that logic *I* have an even bigger COI because I'm promoting an action that I undertook. Graham87 15:10, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've been a daredevil and added it, along with the quote, as you suggested. Graham87 15:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bravo. jp×g 01:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Graham87: thanks. I link to that from my blog post now. I imagine it was a nuisance since you didn't import the other pages? -Reagle (talk) 17:28, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Reagle: Yes, I imported those edits specifically because of how historically significant they are. The process is tedious and error-prone due to how many username changes there have been between 2001 and now; it can also be difficult/impossible to correct an import if a mistake has been made. I'm also not usually a fan of creating significant gaps in the page history/misleading edit summaries ... but for this specific case it wasn't too much of an issue. Graham87 02:24, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Editing a live auction's resource

I describe the changing of the timestamp on a live auction on my blog. -Reagle (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't destroying your artwork while it's being auctioned just make it worth more? jp×g 16:13, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:First Wikipedia edit/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: ProcrastinatingReader (talk · contribs) 12:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Will review shortly. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Progress

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it well written?
A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
Is it verifiable with no original research?
A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

C. It contains no original research:

D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
Is it neutral?
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
Is it stable?
It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Comments

(talk page stalker) As a general rule of thumb, I would be very surprised if an article under 3,000 bytes of prose could meet both of the "broad in coverage" and "stable" criteria. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:02, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments based on Special:Permalink/1060536661

The product being sold was not actual ownership of the edit (as Wikipedia content is released under a copyleft license), but rather a "digital item" that records the purchaser's name alongside a URL of the edit and by itself confers the owner no special rights. can't see where this appears in the source, also seems factually incorrect. Wikipedia's license doesn't stop people from transferring ownership over material to which they hold copyright. Potentially it is derived from Which raises a question: could anybody sell an NFT based on Wikipedia, an encyclopedia where all the content is freely licensed for reuse? (which appears in the source), but that would be a misinterpretation (probably the hypothetical question raised is referring to whether I could create an NFT representing your edit, for example)
FN9 (The Signpost) is not RS (see WP:RSPWP) so cannot be used as a secondary source. The actual usages are uncontroversial and would fall under WP:PRIMARY if you cited the underlying source.
The relevance of A message sent by Sanger to the Nupedia mailing list said "Humor me [...] go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes". is unclear to me; reading the source and the context in which it appears makes it even more unclear.
the purchaser would be allowed to edit it -- it seems anyone would be able to edit it (per The Verge)
Perhaps worth noting, per VICE and The Verge, the proceeds would be used to (among other things) fund WT Social.

Fails GARC #2, and has some inaccuracies, so failing overall. Could be renominated after improvements. Note I haven't assessed criteria marked as neutral, but at a glance most seem fine except potentially 3(b). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:26, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ProcrastinatingReader: Fair enough -- I wrote this article fairly quickly based on initial coverage, and a good number of subsequent articles have been written that allow for a little more detail. If I get around to a renomination, I think it will be a far better article. jp×g 13:54, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sources on Wikipedia first recorded edits

I won't add it because of WP:COI, but this article should include Slates's Jimmy Wales is auctioning the "Birth of Wikipedia" as an NFT and my blog post about Wikipedia's first recorded edits and the WP 10K redux project. (These are cited in the Slate article.) -Reagle (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And adding to this, the article does not mention that Christie's screenshot had an impossible timestamp, that Wales changed it for the live version. This is important, especially now that a screenshot of the Christie's image is now included. (What did PleasrDAO actually buy? I think they bought a signature of a screenshot of an impossible image!) -Reagle (talk) 22:29, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

These would be good to add, but I don't personally feel inclined to do much more with this article right now. My main aim here is summed up in my first edit summary. Graham87 01:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]