Thursday, September 20, 2007

Wikipedia now stores all revisions

I'm posting again, but I can't promise regular posting unfortunately, as I'm quite absorbed with my new daughter, Evelyn Jane Wheeler, born September 4th! I did finish a draft of my book, which was well received by my family/editors, and I plan to revise it when I'm ready for another commitment. In the mean time, I wanted to post this fact about Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia of everything:

Every page in wikipedia has a "Permanent Link" link in the left-hand menu, where you can get a permanent link to a page - the content will never change. Wikipedia is able to do this because they store all revisions of wikipedia, not just the most current revision. They will do this forever, so that twenty years from now, it will be possible (and probably easy) to look at Wikipedia as it was in September 2007.