The History of WHE, Part 2: The Initial Team

In the previous article of this series, I looked at the series of events and ideas that led to the creation of World History Encyclopedia. This article explains how the initial core team was formed, and how it helped grow this project from a one-man-show into a publication that is read by millions.

Initially, World History Encyclopedia (WHE, or Ancient History Encyclopedia / AHE as it was known back then) was just one person –me– with a custom-built website and no content. I started writing a few articles and I quickly learned a few things: My articles weren’t particularly good, I didn’t really enjoy writing them, and there was no way I could write the number of articles required to get this project off the ground. I needed help.

Preparing for Launch

My grandmother had recently passed away and I had inherited some money. I decided to invest $1000 of that money to pay for the first 100 submissions to the encyclopedia. You could call it the initial –and only– investment in the organisation, as we’ve not had any other investment since.?

I then searched the internet for people who wrote high-quality and engaging articles about ancient history and reached out to them. A few people answered and were willing to write for the website, including a lady who only went by “writer873” and whose name I still do not know (her articles have since been replaced), the history author Brian Haughton, and a certain Joshua J. Mark, a history professor at Marist College who ended up writing the vast majority of the initial 100 first articles.

Joshua got paid his $700-odd dollars and bought a stack of Harry Potter Lego for his daughter back in 2009. When I lived in Montreal and visited Josh at his house in upstate New York in 2021, he handed me a pile of boxes of Lego for my son who was now at that age (and very much into both Harry Potter and Lego!), so in a way my initial investment came full circle. But I digress. Back to the story of WHE…

Steady Growth

After my “seed funding” was used up, Joshua stayed on and continued writing, simply because he enjoyed it and believed in the website’s vision: “I became an AHE/WHE addict. I wanted to help create the site, sure, because I thought it was important - but, basically, I just didn't want to do anything else once I started. I always looked forward to the whole process of writing for the site. Still do.” Over time, Josh contributed more and more articles, slowly but steadily growing our coverage. Josh’s Mesopotamia definition stands out because it was the first article that attracted a large audience on Google and it remained our #1 article for almost a decade. Josh’s fountain of knowledge about history was and still very much is instrumental to building WHE.

About two years after launch I reached out to other people once again. I wanted to grow the team as well as the team’s competencies. At the time, I thought WHE might publish history and archaeology news on its home page. I found a young professor at New York University named James Wiener who was highly involved in an Ancient History group on Linkedin. I contacted him and asked whether he wanted to post news on our website. He was “terribly intrigued”, checked out the site and was keen to contribute: “The project and website were unlike anything that I had ever encountered previously. I saw a great deal of potential and opportunity,” he muses, looking back.

We ended up turning off the news feature, but James created our social media channels on Facebook and Twitter, which grew rapidly. Embracing social media early contributed to our initial growth spurt in the early 2010s. James developed our communication strategy and introduced us to the outside world, which enabled WHE to create partnerships with universities around the globe. “Those early days were such an unexpected adventure, and the novelty of what we were doing was intoxicating,” says James.

The following year, Mark Cartwright started contributing photos of sites he visited on his travels: “I was visiting Greece at the time and thought I could help out with some photos of archaeological sites. I thought to myself: This is a good way to spread the wonders of antiquity and show those not able to visit in person.” His photos were of excellent quality and able to convey the nature of ancient sites in one picture. As such, they became popular photos on the website.

Josh, James and I practically begged Mark to also write about the sites he visited, and once he consented and started writing, he became a regular contributor: “I'd studied ancient Greece at university and this was a way to continue with that. Then, once pieces were published it became a sort of addictive enterprise, especially so when one knows there is an audience out there and students, in particular, find the texts useful summaries.” The next WHE addict was on the team and Mark quickly became our next prolific writer, expanding the site into new areas with a now rapidly-growing collection of articles and readers.

Josh, James, and I incorporated WHE as a non-profit organisation in 2012. We were the initial directors and Mark joined as a director soon after. James later handed over our social media accounts to Liana Miate, our social media editor, and finally resigned from his director position in 2019, but he is still involved as the Chairman of our Advisory Board. Over the years, we’ve had hundreds of contributors who have shared their knowledge, and many other core team members who have made WHE what it is today – too many to write about without turning this into a very long article. I thank each and every one of them from the bottom of my heart!

Our Team Today

Today, World History Encyclopedia is composed of multiple teams that all unite behind our vision to improve history education around the world.?

• The editorial team (Mark, Josh, Ibolya, Joanne, Harrison, Fiona, Kim, Zhihui) is the core of our publishing operation, writing articles, reviewing submissions, sourcing images and generally putting it all together.
• The multimedia team (Kelly, Simeon, Sebastian) produces our videos, maps, podcasts, animations, printed materials, merchandising and all other non-textual content. They work closely with the editorial team to coordinate content requirements and reviews.
• The translation team (Babeth, Rosa, Emiliano, Athanasios) works with hundreds of volunteer translators to make our content available to people in every language of the world. They work closely with the editorial team to ensure accuracy of translations and with the multimedia team to translate video subtitles.
• Finally, we have operations (Jan), social media (Liana) and education (Dustin) that are one-person teams for now, but we expect them to grow in the very near future!

I love working with our team every day, and we’ve become a close-knit tribe even though we’re scattered all around the globe. In a way, we’re all small factories producing individual little products that then come together to make something impressive. Josh agrees: “Everyone is devoted to the success of the site and everyone leaves each other alone to do their own thing in their own way.” Working remotely requires such an “individualistic-as-a-team” approach, which I believe is rather unique to WHE’s culture.?

Mark adds: “The thing that appeals to me the most about the way WHE works is that there is a real mix of individual and group work. As a writer, one can work independently but then, in order for that finished work to be read and to be useful, a whole load of other people is needed.”?

And I leave the final words of this article to James, who expresses what I think we all feel: “It's interesting to look back and recognize that we were ‘tech pioneers’ in retrospect. We were working together remotely across the world in the early-to-mid 2010s; a decade ago, this was neither typical nor highly regarded. Nonetheless, we consolidated our respective passions and expertise, translating them into the construction of a successful organisation and a thriving project. This ability to come together, from afar, remains WHE's recipe for success.”