User:RenamedUser jaskldjslak904/Wikipedia's first IRC chat

On 1 April 2006, the log for the first ever chat session on #wikipedia was painstakingly recovered from a corrupt hard disk. Starting mere seconds before Wikipedia went online, it shows us a fascinating glimpse at the early days of the site.

Session Start: Mon Jan 15 00:00:34 2001 * Now talking in #wikipedia * jwales has joined #wikipedia * Larry_Sanger has joined #wikipedia  Do we really need an IRC channel? I mean, we don't even have any articles yet. Suppose so, but it'll get pretty busy when we do. We might even have over 100 people in here, you know, in a decade's time.  I dunno. I think that's a tad optimistic. Probably. Ok, Wikipedia's up.  Great. Who's gonna write the first article? Me, me!  Fine, fine.  Hey, I've got some philosophy lectures that I wrote a few years back...think they'll be good for Wikipedia? Sure, whatever. The bigger the better. Right, Wikipedia has it's first article!  Lemme see.  What the hell? "0MG YOU SUCK"? Huh? I didn't write that.  That's what it says. Someone must have vandalized it.  What? Vandalized. It's the word I use to describe someone editing a page for malicious purposes.  This is great.  Perfect. We're online for, what, 3 minutes? And already it's messed up. Wait, wait, we can revert, remember?  Oh, right... There, done.  "This is a test.". Catchy. What I want to know is, who the hell was the vandalizer? We don't even have a main page yet.  Someone from Britannica, or Encarta? Maybe.  We should ban the user. Are you kidding? We can't ban our first outside user. We'll be the laughing stock of all the other wikis.  Guess so. Who was the user, by the way? Just an IP address. 127.0.0.1. <Larry_Sanger> Ok. <Larry_Sanger> Do we have a logo yet? Not really. I put up an American flag, though, as a temporary measure. <Larry_Sanger> Hmm, a little ethnocentric. I had this idea of this 3D jigsaw ball like thing, with individual characters on each piece. We're Wikipedia, not Pixar. KISS. <Larry_Sanger> Suppose so. <Larry_Sanger> No topic? ? <Larry_Sanger> This IRC room doesn't have a topic. Put the status in or something. * jwales changes topic to 'Status: Up' How's that? <Larry_Sanger> Looks ok to me. Don't really see what the point is, though. Why would Wikipedia ever be down? Anyway, just written a HomePage. <Larry_Sanger> "Welcome to WikiPedia! We're writing a complete encyclopedia from scratch, collaboratively. We started work TODAY. We want to make over 100,000 pages. So, let's get to work! Write a little (or a lot) about what you know!" <Larry_Sanger> You're crazy, Jimbo. I don't see why 100,000 isn't a reasonable target. Granted, it'll take us 8 years at the least to do it, but that's still an incredibly fast amount of progress. <Larry_Sanger> Will Wikipedia even be around in 2009? Of course. And if it gets REALLY popular, we might even reach a million! <Larry_Sanger> ... <Larry_Sanger> So... <Larry_Sanger> ...if the first 100,000 takes 8 years, multiply that by 10, and that gives us a millionth article date of.... <Larry_Sanger> ...2081. I'll be 115. <Larry_Sanger> Hah! I'll be 113. Rats. <Larry_Sanger> Heh, what would the millionth article be? Probably something like FirstCityOnTheMoon. <Larry_Sanger> Or an article about a railroad station in, I dunno, Scotland. Railroads will be long gone by then. We'll be riding around in hovercars. WOO! <Larry_Sanger> Woo? First outside article! <Larry_Sanger> Woo! What is it? AprilFoolsDay <Larry_Sanger> What does it say? "Held on FirstOfApril." <Larry_Sanger> Wow, that's great! Yeah, really informative! <Larry_Sanger> And brilliant prose, too. That's actually a great idea for a page. Stick all the best articles on it, you know, to show how great Wikipedia can be. <Larry_Sanger> Great idea. I'm creating it now, and sticking that on. Wow, we're growing so fast. The TestPage, the HomePage, AprilFoolsDay, BrilliantProse...that's four articles already! <Larry_Sanger> In a month or so, we might even have more articles than NuPedia! Yeah! <Larry_Sanger> Boy, the fun never stops with Wikipedia. You got that right. Tomorrow, I'm gonna start writing an article on GdansK. <Larry_Sanger> Don't you mean DanZig? Hmm. Didnt think of that. <Larry_Sanger> Who cares, anyway? It's just a stupid city. Good point. <Larry_Sanger> I'm gonna get going. Got a busy day ahead of me. But we were making such good progress! <Larry_Sanger> Yeah...same time tomorrow? Sure. <Larry_Sanger> Bye for now! Bye! * Larry_Sanger has left #wikipedia * Disconnected