Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Wikipedia's oldest articles

{{Short description|None}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2025}}
{{for|the list of pages by length of time since the last edit|Special:AncientPages}}
[[File:Earliest_known_Wikipedia_edit.png|thumb|right|The 15 January 2001 edit by [[user:office.bomis.com|office.bomis.com]] is the earliest surviving edit in the current [[WP:Database download|Wikipedia database]].]]
{{Shortcut|WP:OLDEST}}

This page describes the earliest edits and [[WP:What is an article?|articles]] that are in the current [[English Wikipedia|English]] [[WP:Database download|Wikipedia database]].

==Explanation==
Wikipedia originally used [[UseModWiki]] (also known as Phase I software), which did not keep page history reliably, and often deleted it after a couple of weeks. It originally used [[Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia|CamelCase]] for making links, rather than the [[Wikipedia:Free links|"free links" surrounded by brackets]] that are used today. Many pages were moved by cut and paste from CamelCase to regular titles, and some very early edits survive at these CamelCase titles; an example is [[Special:diff/279635|this edit to SabBath]] by [[Larry Sanger]]. Some users have contributions under a CamelCase version of their username, such as [[Special:Contributions/JimboWales|JimboWales]].

No history was imported from the UseModWiki era of Wikipedia when it migrated to the [[Wikipedia:Phase II software|Phase II software]], the predecessor to MediaWiki. [[User:Brooke Vibber|Brooke Vibber]] later imported all existing edits from UseModWiki to the current Wikipedia database (see [[Wikipedia:Usemod article histories]]). There is a copy of the Wikipedia database, with history up to 20 December 2001 [[UTC]], at the [[Nost:|Nostalgia Wikipedia]], which contains several edits that cannot be found in the current Wikipedia database. In December 2009, it [[Bugzilla:20280|became possible]] to import revisions from the Nostalgia Wikipedia directly to the English Wikipedia.

==Earliest surviving edits and other data==
[[File:Hello World re-creation of first Wikipedia edit.png|thumb|The recreated first edit "Hello, World!"]]
In December 2010, Wikipedia backups containing all edits from Wikipedia's inception to 17 August 2001 were [//lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-December/063088.html discovered] by [[User:Tim Starling|Tim Starling]], although many of these edits are not present in the current database. The [[Special:PermanentLink/908493298|earliest edit found]] was made to [[HomePage]] on 15 January 2001 at 19:27:13 (UTC), reading "This is the new WikiPedia!", followed by edits to the same page at 19:50:26 and 19:51:19 that added and formatted a list of subjects. The next pages created were [[Special:Permalink/999508058|this edit]] to [[WikiPedia]] at 19:52:32, which started "WikiPedia is a wide-open encyclopedia project. Who knows where it will go?", and [[Special:Permalink/1271312339|this edit]] to [[PhilosophyAndLogic]] that read "Let's work on articles on (at least) these famous philosophers: AristotlE PlatO EpicuruS ReneDescartes ImmanuelKant AynRand".

However, in December 2008, [[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimmy Wales]] stated that [[Special:diff/258632986|he made Wikipedia's first edit]], a test edit to the homepage with the text "[[Hello, World]]!", after installing UseModWiki. This edit is not present in the older archives, and in 2011 Starling speculated that it [//lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2011-January/108198.html may have been made on a test wiki that was later deleted]. The HomePage edit was [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=100903716 re-imported in 2019],<ref>Also see the ''[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-08-30/News and notes#Earliest surviving Wikipedia edits|''Signpost'' story]]</ref> and, upon being informed of this, Wales [[Special:diff/910624256|clarified]] that the "Hello, World!" edit was deleted manually from a hard drive; it remains unclear whether it had been made to a test wiki or to the modern Wikipedia. In December 2021, Wales [[Special:diff/1058429884|announced]] that he would be auctioning the edit as a [[non-fungible token]] (NFT), along with the strawberry [[iMac G3]] that he used when Wikipedia was created.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx|title=The first Wikipedia edit to be sold as NFT|publisher=Christie's|date=2 December 2021|access-date=5 December 2021}}</ref> In the auction posting and on an [https://www.editthisnft.com/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi accompanying website] Wales made "that recreates his first edit to the homepage", the timestamp of the "Hello, World!" edit is given as 15 January 2001 6:29 pm. Also see [[Special:Diff/1058573729|his comment about the edit]] as part of discussion on his talk page about the auction.

Before the importation in 2019, no edits survived in the database from 15 January 2001, the day that Wikipedia was founded. Here is a list of edits that survive from the next day, 16 January. The list was compiled from an [[Wikipedia:Database query|SQL query on the live database]] made in March 2004. The oldest such edit is listed first:

*[[Wikipedia:UuU]] found '''[[Special:PermanentLink/291430|here]]''' and [//nostalgia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UuU&oldid=50893 in Nostalgia Wikipedia]
*[[Transport]] found [[Special:PermanentLink/286342| here]], former oldest surviving edit still in the main namespace
*[[User:ScottMoonen]] found [[Special:PermanentLink/11992008|here]]

The oldest article for which there is no break in the history, either because of being changed into a redirect or a lack of surviving revisions, is [[Nupedia]], which has an edit from [[Special:PermanentLink/952046200|00:08, 17 January 2001 (UTC)]], after a [[WP:HISTMERGE|history merge]] with the old title of "NuPedia" and imports from the Nostalgia Wikipedia and the August 2001 database dump. The oldest article that has this property without the use of old Wikipedia database dumps is [[William Alston]], which has a revision from [[Special:PermanentLink/294257|00:13 (UTC)]] on the same day, five minutes later, after a history merge with the title "WilliamAlston". The oldest page where this occurred without intervention was [[List of female tennis players]], which has a version from [[Special:PermanentLink/251030|6 February 2001]].

The first consecutively-numbered [[Help:Page history|revisions]], such as [[Special:PermanentLink/1|Revision #1]] and [[Special:PermanentLink/5|Revision #5]], were among the first edits made after Wikipedia converted from UseModWiki to the Phase II software. (Edits made before Revision #1 have higher revision ID numbers, because they were imported later, as discussed above.)

[[Special:AncientPages]] lists those pages that haven't been edited for the longest time. {{As of|2025|1}}, the page was being updated periodically, and the oldest article listed was last edited in January 2015, meaning the article had remained unchanged for over ten years.
Because it uses MediaWiki, all modern special pages work on the Nostalgia Wikipedia. The oldest entry on the [[Nost:Special:Ancientpages|ancientpages list on the Nostalgia Wikipedia]] is [[Nost:StandardPoodle|StandardPoodle]], which has an entry from 17 January 2001. Similar functionality can also be found at [[Wikipedia:Database reports/Forgotten articles]].

==Archived copies of Wikipedia articles from early 2001==
The appearance of some Wikipedia articles in early 2001 has been preserved by the [[Wayback Machine]].  Early examples include [https://web.archive.org/web/20010303182505/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/GNUFreeDocumentationLicense GNUFreeDocumentationLicense] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20010306030829/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/AccessibleComputing AccessibleComputing]; Wayback's preserved versions are those of January 20.  The front page from February 28 [https://web.archive.org/web/20010302172235/http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi can also be viewed].

==See also==
*[[Wikipedia:Village pump/March 2004 archive 4#The Oldest Article|The discussion that inspired the creation of this page]] from the [[Wikipedia:Village pump|village pump]]
*[[Wikipedia:Milestone articles]], which lists article number 200,000, 500,000, 1,000,000, etc.
*[[Wikipedia:First 100 pages]], the first 100 pages made on Wikipedia
*[[:Category:Redirects with old history]], which lists all the CamelCase articles before the automated conversion
*[[Wikipedia:New topics]], new articles from 2001–02
*[[User:Emijrp/FirstPages]], a list of all the pages in the August 2001 database dump, ordered by creation date
*[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia NEWS/June 13 19 2001]], the first summary of interesting content added, from 2001; an ancestor of "Did you know ..."

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Wikipedia history]]
[[Category:Articles]]