Wikipedia was actually born from an earlier project known as Nupedia, funded by Bomis.com, a company jointly owned by Jimmy Wales, Michael Davis and Tim Shell.
In the early years, the funding came from Bomis, while the ideas and the momentum came from Jimmy.
Launched in 1999, Nupedia included a rigorous seven-step process for publishing. articles written by volunteers. Experts would check the information before it was published online to check the credibility of the posts, making it a painstaking and time-consuming task.
Upon its launch, Wikipedia exploded. This explosion forced Larry to spend more time managing the growing volume of content on Wikipedia and less time on the Nupedia project.
"Wikipedia is unlike other free sites that had to change their business model over the years to ensure their survival by selling ads, instead it has become one of the few successful free knowledge sites left on the Internet," a spokesperson for Wikipedia said.
Now over 20 years later, nearly 3,00,000 editors volunteer their time to write, edit, block, and scrub every corner of Wikipedia. The difficulties with trolls & problem contributors did not slow down the growth of Wikipedia through the years. Many people believe in the idea of free access to information on the Internet, for which Wikipedia continues on into the foreseeable future, without advertising