The "creation" of Wikipedia

Rightly or wrongly, Wikipedia is seen by many as recording, whatever, as gospel. Not so - and certainly not definitive in the way a Britannica might be said to be.

The background to the creation of Wikipedia? Read on......

"In an excerpt from his new book, The Innovators, Walter Isaacson recounts the improbable story of the online encyclopedia that has proven its detractors wrong time and again.

Ward Cunningham, Jimmy Wales, and the Wonder of Wikis

When he launched the Web in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee intended it to be used as a collaboration tool, which is why he was dismayed that the Mosaic browser did not give users the ability to edit the Web pages they were viewing. It turned Web surfers into passive consumers of published content. That lapse was partly mitigated by the rise of blogging, which encouraged user-generated content. In 1995 another medium was invented that went further toward facilitating collaboration on the Web. It was called a wiki, and it worked by allowing users to modify Web pages—not by having an editing tool in their browser but by clicking and typing directly onto Web pages that ran wiki software."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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