Nupedia was an English-language online encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors with relevant subject matter expertise, reviewed by expert editors before publication, and licensed as free content.
[2] Unlike Wikipedia, Nupedia was not a wiki; it was instead characterized by an extensive peer-review process, designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.
[8] In October 1999, Jimmy Wales began thinking about an online encyclopedia built by volunteers[citation needed] and, in January 2000, hired Larry Sanger to oversee its development.
[11] Also in January 2001, Nupedia started Wikipedia as a side-project to allow collaboration on articles before entering the peer review process.
Due to the collapse of the internet economy at that time, Jimmy Wales decided to discontinue funding for a salaried editor-in-chief in December 2001,[1] and Sanger resigned from both projects shortly thereafter.
As Nupedia dwindled into inactivity, the idea of converting it into a stable version of approved Wikipedia articles was occasionally broached, but never implemented.
NupeCode is free/open source software (released under the GNU General Public License) designed for large peer review projects.