Sanger’s account of Wikipedia’s history
Sanger has written a detailed history of Wikipedia in an effort to clarify how it became what it is today, and it’s a must-read for a number of reasons:
The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia part I
The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia part II
One very interesting higher-level point:
Wikipedia became what it is today because, having been seeded with great people with a fairly clear idea of what they wanted to achieve, we proceeded to make a series of free decisions that determined the policy of the project and culture of its supporting community. Wikipedia’s system is neither the only way to run a wiki, nor the only way to run an open content encyclopedia. Its particular conjunction of policies is in no way natural, "organic," or necessary. It is instead artificial, a result of a series of free choices, and we could have chosen differently in many cases; and choosing differently on some issues might have led to a project better than the one that exists today.