wikiHow Reaches 50,000 Articles

Cameron Parkins, January 30th, 2009

wikiHow, a community site that aims to be the world’s largest how-to manual, just reached the incredible milestone of 50,000 articles with the publication of How to Obtain a Copy of Your Birth Certificate in New Mexico. All of the content on wikiHow is released under a CC BY-NC-SA license, keeping the content therein open for sharing and reuse according as long as the reuse is noncommercial in intent, the author(s) is properly attributed, and any derivative works are shared under the same license. This has broad ramifications, described by Rebbeca Rojer a little over a year ago as wikiHow passed the 25,000 article mark:

wikiHow is a great example of the possibilities for participatory culture opened by Creative Commons licenses. According to wikiHow founder, Jack Herrick, “Creative Commons licensing has been a necessary ingredient of our success thus far. These licenses allow others to easily share, republish and modify our content which furthers our mission. In addition, the licenses provide our editors with the “Right to Fork”, which gives our community comfort that their work will always be freely available to them and others.”

Jack continues “I’m optimistic that one day wikiHow will offer accurate, helpful how-to instructions on almost every topic in almost every language. I’m looking forward to sharing a how-to manual in Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, Japanese, Polish and many other languages we don’t currently serve. Fortunately Creative Commons licensing exists in all these languages and will help us along this path.”

Congratulations to wikiHow, who are ever supportive of Creative Commons both in their mission and their actions.

Thank you!

Joi Ito, January 7th, 2009

Joi Ito / Photo by Mizuka / CC BY

One week ago I asked for support in helping us reach our $500,000 goal. At that time, we had $12,000 left to raise with only 2 1/2 days left in the campaign, and we were all wondering how we were going to make it. Today, I’m proud to say that our community went above and beyond — raising CC a grand total of $525,383.73.

I want to send a special thank you to all of the individuals and companies that are long time supporters of CC. We’ve had hundreds of people continue to support CC over the years and I wish I could thank each and everyone of you publicly for your continued support. However, I don’t want to take up the entire CC main page, so please know how appreciated your commitment to CC is. To Digital Garage, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Tucows, Consumer Electronics Association, and wikiHow, thank you for your continued commitment to CC – I look forward to working with each of your companies in bringing more global awareness about CC, and I feel confident that together we will continue to enrich the digital commons we’re all investing in.

And to all the new individuals and new corporate supporters (Attributor, DotAsia, Ebay, Nevo Technologies, Safe Creative) – thank you for choosing to support CC this year. CC is only as strong as the community that supports it and we’re thrilled to see this community thriving. Think of all we can do over the next year by coming together and supporting each other.

I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the following companies and foundations who are committed to sustaining CC and the open movement. To the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, IETSI, Red Hat, Google, and the Omidyar Network – thank you.

Thank you all from the bottom of my (and the rest of the CC staff’s) heart — we know how difficult it is right now and are deeply honored that you would choose to support CC this year. This doesn’t just help us continue our work but also reaffirms the growing strength of our community and the belief in a more fair and accessible digital world.

The CC staff, the board of directors, and I all look forward to what will surely be an exciting 2009.

- Joi

We met wikiHow’s challenge in 4 days!

Melissa Reeder, November 14th, 2008

I’m thrilled to announce that we have far exceeded wikiHow’s matching challenge goal of raising $3000 in two weeks. We raised $3000 in 4 days! Thanks to wikiHow for their ongoing support (they’ve been CC supporters for 4 years running) and to our community members for helping us meet wikiHow’s challenge!

The campaign will end at midnight (PST) on December 31st, and it’s extremely important that we reach our goal by then. Please help us reach our $500,000 goal. If you work for a company that shares the same ideals – let them know they can run their own matching challenge. If interested please contact me at development@creativecommons.org.

5 New Companies Support CC!

Melissa Reeder, November 13th, 2008

Transparency is of the utmost importance to us here at CC, especially when it comes to who is funding us. People ask me all the time how CC is funded, to which I answer: CC relies entirely on the community in order to stay afloat. The community being the individuals, corporations, foundations, organizations, and institutions that believe the work CC does is important and necessary.

Today, I’m excited to announce five new corporate supporters: Nevo Technologies, Ebay, DotAsia, Safe Creative, and wikiHow. Each of these companies values the innovation that is made possible through openness and all five recognize that supporting CC is their way of helping sustain the architecture of that openness.

Please consider joining these companies and the hundreds of other individuals who have invested in the future of CC and participatory culture. If you work for a company that uses CC or supports the same ideals, please encourage them to invest in CC.

We have a little over a month and a half left and still have a long way to go to reach our goal of $500,000. We need your help – donate today!

wikiHow to support the CC fundraising campaign? wikiHow matching challenge!

Melissa Reeder, November 7th, 2008

Following Safe Creative’s lead, wikiHow has decided to help rally the community around supporting Creative Commons by issuing their own giving challenge. For the next two weeks, wikiHow will be matching every donation dollar for dollar, up to $3,000.

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project aiming to create the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. It is similar to Wikipedia in that thousands of volunteer editors from all over the world write, edit and maintain the articles.

As I stated in this month’s edition of the ccNewsletter, we need increased innovation and creative problem solving on a global level, now more than ever. wikiHow is one project working to help provide creative solutions to everyday problems. And the reason it works so well is because it was designed as an open system. Contributors are able to contribute and users are able to use and remix freely and legally because wikiHow is licensed with Creative Commons licenses.

We’re thrilled that wikiHow has decided to support CC in this way. There’s less than two months left in the campaign and we still have $434,495 to raise. Please take advantage of their generous offer and double the value of your gift.