Bomis Options

[Peter Damian]

I'm struggling to find any information on this one. Did Jimmy set it up in 1996, 1998, or 2000? Where did he get the money to set it up? Why were the servers in a shack in Tampa, Florida, when the main office was in San Diego? When did Jimmy move to San Diego?

Wikipedia, as always when it comes to such matters, is reticent.

[Peter Damian]

On a separate but related note I am trying to search the Wikipedia-l files http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l for interesting material. Normally I do this by a Google site search, e.g.

<search terms> site:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l

This does not appear to work. Does anyone understand why so?

[Peter Damian]

On a separate but related note I am trying to search the Wikipedia-l files http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l for interesting material. Normally I do this by a Google site search, e.g.

<search terms> site:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l

This does not appear to work. Does anyone understand why so?

Also, I wrote to one of the developers who was deeply involved in Bomis, and in the early days of Wikipedia, saying I was writing a book and interested in stories. Initially I represented it as 'early days of Wikipedia'.

The guy expressed immediate interest and approval, and volunteered for interview.

As soon as I mentioned Bomis, complete radio silence. Wikipedia is a paradox. One of its principles, and a core part of its ideology, is the passionate belief in the openness of all information. All knowledge wants to be free. The exception seems to be Wikipedia itself. Its functionaries use pseudonyms, and there are dire penalties in Wikipedia world for disclosing real names and identities. The innermost workings and history of Wikipedia is sealed off from outsiders. The whole organisationis a sort of freemasonry.

How do we explain this paradox? How do Wikipedians rationalise it to themselves?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Larry Sanger]

On a separate but related note I am trying to search the Wikipedia-l files http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l for interesting material. Normally I do this by a Google site search, e.g.

<search terms> site:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l

This does not appear to work. Does anyone understand why so?

Also, I wrote to one of the developers who was deeply involved in Bomis, and in the early days of Wikipedia, saying I was writing a book and interested in stories. Initially I represented it as 'early days of Wikipedia'.

The guy expressed immediate interest and approval, and volunteered for interview.

As soon as I mentioned Bomis, complete radio silence. Wikipedia is a paradox. One of its principles, and a core part of its ideology, is the passionate belief in the openness of all information. All knowledge wants to be free. The exception seems to be Wikipedia itself. Its functionaries use pseudonyms, and there are dire penalties in Wikipedia world for disclosing real names and identities. The innermost workings and history of Wikipedia is sealed off from outsiders. The whole organisationis a sort of freemasonry.

How do we explain this paradox? How do Wikipedians rationalise it to themselves?

Lee Daniel Crocker, who went on to do poker professionally if I am not mistaken, is the guy most responsible for getting MediaWiki started. Magnus Manske did a lot of work on the earliest version of MediaWiki, but Lee had to scrap a lot of his work. Magnus also worked a lot on Nupedia.

If you interview the Bomis programmers, or the sysadmin Jason Richey, you might ask them why the server mysteriously crashed around 2003, somewhat selectively wiping out email accounts, including my account. I'm not sure exactly of the details because I wasn't too suspicious back then.

If Wikipedia is "a sort of freemasonry," that will be news to me, and I'd be curious to learn why you think so. If so, I certainly had nothing to do with starting it, and it happened after I left. Everything I did was out in the open.