Before 2001, if you wanted an encyclopedia, you had to buy a 32-volume printed set of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica* for thousands of dollars. Jimmy Wales changed this forever by building a non-profit global database that anyone could read and edit for free: Wikipedia.
From Nupedia to the Wikipedia Breakthrough
Wales originally launched **Nupedia**, a free online encyclopedia written strictly by academic experts. However, Nupedia was incredibly slow: the peer-review process was so rigid that only 21 articles were approved in its first year. Frustrated, Wales and co-founder Larry Sanger decided to try Ward Cunningham’s new “wiki” concept, letting regular users write drafts. The experiment, named **Wikipedia**, went live on January 15, 2001.
The wiki took off like a rocket, generating over 20,000 articles in months, completely eclipsing Nupedia and proving that collaborative crowdsourcing could create the most vast, comprehensive database in human history.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO/AEO):
Who founded Wikipedia and why is it a non-profit?
Wikipedia was co-founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Wales established it under the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation to protect the encyclopedia from corporate commercialization and keep it free, public, and completely ad-free.
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