On This Day 30 Years Ago, WikiWikiWeb Walked So Wikipedia Could Run

Want to know how many movies that actor has appeared in? How far is the Sun? What is the chronological order of Marvel movies? For decades, Wikipedia has provided answers to practically all of your questions. And there’s a diverse ecosystem of specialized wikis that cater to niche interests, fandoms, and expert communities. This vast collaborative base of online encyclopedias, that we take for granted, began 30 years ago with WikiWikiWeb on this day – March 25, 1995.

Humble Beginnings and Collaborative Knowledge Creation

Wikis are user-created or edited databases of articles on a particular topic. Whether it is about the discovery of the universe or a mythical weapon in Fortnite. The best part? Unlike a piece of news or journal, you can add or edit any piece of information here. This is the shared information revolution WikiWikiWeb brought to the world 30 years ago.

It started as a little pet project by someone trying to collaborate with other programmers. That someone is Ward Cunningham, the creator of WikiWikiWeb. He started the site on a mere $300 computer, launching its first version on March 25th, 1995. Back then, it was a companion to his company’s own website – c2.com.

He called WikiWikiWeb, the “web of people, projects and patterns” and added:

“Think of it as a moderated list where anyone can be a moderator and everything is archived. It’s not quite a chat, still, the conversation is possible.”

Cunningham didn’t just lay the foundation of what came to be Wikipedia, he even coined the term “Wiki”. It came to him on his trip to Hawaii, where a counter employee asked him to take the WikiWiki bus. In the Hawaiian language, Wiki means quick. Since Cunningham wanted his database to be quickly editable by users, he went with the name, “WikiWikiWeb”.

How WikiWikiWeb’s For-Ward Thinking Liberated Information

Back in the 90s, the internet was a completely different playground. It was more like TV, where you are supposed to just sit and consume whatever’s on there without an option to edit or alter the contents of any articles surrounding a topic or subject.

So when Cunningham’s invention launched, it flipped this divide upon its head. With its collaborative implementation, WikiWikiWeb made everyone a part of the creation process. You are no longer restrained to being a consumer, but add your own bit of knowledge into the mix. Essentially democratizing the sharing of information.

It also showed how a group of diverse individuals could create something better than one expert (something another encyclopedia called Neupedia tried to do). The very act of editing a web page became accessible to anyone, allowing them to share their expertise, thoughts, and ideas on a subject.

Not only did this make everyone part of the discussion, but helped shape the internet to be more interactive. Hence, opening the gates for more users, discussions, and collaborations. This liberation in editing and adding your own thoughts and expressions is what laid the foundation for not only Wikipedia, but the modern internet as we know it.

30 Years Later: The Essence of Wikis Still Lives On

While WikiWikiWeb was widely praised, its ultimate potential was realized with the creation of Wikipedia in 2001. This website helped clear so many of my school time assignments.  It streamlined the editing procedure for page content, allowing anyone to make changes.

Soon it became a household name with over 7 million articles under its belt as of March 25th, 2025. At a time when AI promises to bring all the data you need at your fingertips, Wikipedia is the 5th most-visited website and remains the go-to source for countless topics, subjects, and articles. But, WikiWikiWeb’s influence extends further beyond that.

The collective knowledge-sharing idea led to many niche forums like Fandom, DocuWiki, and Wikiversity. Even though Wikipedia has become quite sanitized and neutral over the years, WikiWikiWeb’s spirit lives on in platforms like Reddit and Quora. Funnily enough, Ward is also the person who came up with Cunningham’s Law, which states:

“The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

This is a practice many Redditors follow, including yours truly to get the correct answers and traction on their post. Thirty years later, you can still visit wiki.c2.com, the original site where Ward Cunningham launched WikiWikiWeb, to experience what the internet was like in those days.

The WikiWikiWeb’s legacy is not just about a website or a place of information, it’s about how we interact with information online. It showed that the internet could be a place for shared knowledge, a space where anyone could contribute to the world.