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Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings

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By Lane Rasberry, Pythoncoder and Smallbones

Wikimania 2019

Wikimania 2019 was held in Stockholm from August 16 to 19, attracting about 900 conference goers, and holding over 200 events including presentations and panels. For those of us who missed it, we can still see many of the presentations online, including 25 recorded by the Wikimedia Foundation available on YouTube. Popular sessions include:

But the video offerings are not limited to those produced by the WMF. At Commons there are 153 other videos that were produced by volunteers known as the Knowledge Savers. These small session videos are not as slick as the WMF-recorded presentations, but you should be able to find the presentation that you really wanted to see. – S

What ever happened to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)?

It disappeared. Following up on a discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales, The Signpost asked for comment from the WMF. Greg Varnum stated "The FDC's role is currently under review as FDC members, the board and staff await the Movement Strategy outcomes and recommendations, particularly as they relate to Resource Allocation. For FY19/20, the APG-FDC grant amounts and process remain the same as last year: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/2018-19_Annual_Plan/Temporary_changes_to_grants_programs. The Board will review the FDC's role once Movement Strategy outcomes and recommendations are ready." – S

Earliest surviving Wikipedia edits imported

Contribution history of office.bomis.com showing the oldest surviving Wikipedia edit, made on January 15, 2001

On July 29, Graham87 (one of the few non-stewards with import rights) manually imported 419 revisions of HomePage (the original title of the Main Page) from 2001. The edits were manually restored from an August 2001 database discovered in 2010 by Tim Starling, which can be found here (warning: clicking the link will download the file). Of particular note is this edit, the oldest surviving Wikipedia edit, reading, in full: "This is the new WikiPedia!". (This title was previously held by an edit of the (list) article UuU.) The January 15th edit was made by office.bomis.com, which, according to Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles, is likely Jimbo Wales.

After these events were pointed out to Jimbo, he responded with some clarification:

For the record, these are the earliest edits that have been found, but not the earliest edits. In the early days of Usemod wiki, I did a lot of deleting things *on the hard drive* (as this was the only way to really do that). Those will never be found of course. The first words, soon deleted, were "Hello, World!"--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:20, 13 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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