Jimmy Wales

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Jimmy Wales (November 2004)

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966) is the founder and President of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation which operates Wikipedia and several other wiki projects. Wales is also founder of the for-profit company Wikia, which is legally unrelated to Wikimedia, within which he co-founded the Wikicities project.

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1 Life before Wikipedia
2 Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
- 2.1 Controversy about Wikipedia's origins
3 Other activities
4 Published works
5 End material
- 5.1 Footnotes
- 5.2 External links
  - 5.2.1 News media
  - 5.2.2 Audio/Video

[އުނިއިތުރު ގެންނަވާ] Life before Wikipedia

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. His father, now retired, was a grocery store manager while Wales was growing up. Wales's mother Doris and grandmother Erma ran a small private school, "in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse," where he also went to school. There were four children in his grade most of the time, so the school grouped together first through fourth grades and fifth through eighth grades. A 2005 Time magazine article incorrectly reported that Wales was home schooled.^[1] Strictly speaking Wales was not, but he did note that his schooling experience was "in a sense similar" since his mother and grandmother were his primary teachers. Students had a fair amount of freedom to study whatever they liked; the school's philosophy of education was significantly influenced by the Montessori method. Wales spent many hours poring over the World Book Encyclopedia during this time. After eighth grade, Wales went to Randolph School, a college prep school, which was and is an early adopter of computer labs and other technology for direct student use. This prep school was expensive for the family, since they had few means, but Wales reports that his family believed education was very important: "Education was always a passion in my household ... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."

He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University and his masters from the University of Alabama. Later, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama and Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but he did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a postgraduate degree at these institutions. Wales went on to become a futures and options trader in Chicago, and within a few years had earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives." ^[2]

In 1996, Wales founded a search portal called Bomis, which also sold erotic photographs until mid-2005. Because of his past position with Bomis, Wales was asked in a September 2005 C-SPAN interview about his involvement with what the interviewer, Brian Lamb, called "dirty pictures." In response, Wales described Bomis as a "guy-oriented search engine."^[3]

In an interview with Wired, he also explained that he disputed the categorization of Bomis content as "soft-core pornography": "If R-rated movies are porn, it was porn. In other words, no, it was not." ^[4] Wales is no longer actively involved in the company.

In March 2000, he started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia.com ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief. While Wales was CEO, Bomis donated over $100,000 (primarily through salaries and providing free Internet access) to Nupedia and Wikipedia, and continued supporting them into 2002.

[އުނިއިތުރު ގެންނަވާ] Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation

Jimmy Wales speaking at Wikimania 2005

Main article: History of Wikipedia

Using a wiki to create encyclopedic content was publicly proposed by Larry Sanger on January 10, 2001. The wiki was set up by Wales and started on January 15, 2001. Wikipedia was at that point a wiki-based site intended for collaboration on early encyclopedic content before submitting it to Nupedia for peer review. Wikipedia's rapid growth soon made it the dominant project and Nupedia was mothballed.

Sanger dropped out of the project in 2002, posting a resignation on his Wikipedia user page^[5]. He has since criticized Wales's approach to the project^[6], describing Wales as being "decidedly anti-elitist". Wales took issue with this description in the above-mentioned C-SPAN interview, describing himself as not anti-elitist, but "perhaps anti-credentialist. To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters.... You can't coast on your credentials on Wikipedia.... You have to enter the marketplace of ideas and engage with people."^[3]

Jimmy Wales standing at the Hohlbeinsteg bridge in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, during a shooting break of a documentary film on Wikipedia created by French-German TV station arte.

In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a St. Petersburg, Florida-based non-profit organization, to support Wikipedia and its younger sibling projects. He appointed himself and two business partners who are not active Wikipedians to the five-member board; the remaining two members are elected community representatives. This move relieved him and Bomis from the increasing financial burden of supporting Wikipedia while keeping his leadership position, which he holds for life, not subject to any elections.

In 2004, Wales was quoted as saying that he had spent around US$500,000 on the establishment and operations of his Wiki projects. By the end of the foundation's February 2005 fund drive, the Wikimedia Foundation was supported entirely by grants and donations. Wales has become increasingly involved with promoting and speaking about the foundation's projects. To this end, he travels both to conferences and Wikimedia functions (like "Wikimeets" and Wikimania) on the Foundation's travel budget ($25,000 in 2005 ^[7]). He has frequently been engaged as a speaker.

[އުނިއިތުރު ގެންނަވާ] Controversy about Wikipedia's origins

While Larry Sanger has referred to himself as the co-founder of Wikipedia as early as January 2002 ^[8], Wales says he has always called himself the sole founder of Wikipedia. The press had frequently referred to Sanger and Wales as co-founders, but this began to change after Sanger's departure. For example, a 2004 Newsweek magazine article stated that "[Wales] created Wikipedia", without mentioning Sanger.^[9] In 2006, Wales told the Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder. ^[10]

Sanger has strongly contested this assertion, claiming that, in addition to developing Wikipedia in its early phase, he also had the idea of applying the wiki concept to the building of a free encyclopedia. It is undisputed that he also coined the name of the project. He has said: "I remember very clearly the evening when I got the idea for Wikipedia." He nevertheless ascribed the broader idea to Wales: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis. (...) The actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on."^[11] Wales has credited a Bomis employee named Jeremy Rosenfeld as the person who "initially came up with the idea to make the encyclopedia wiki-based"^[12], though he has acknowledged that there was no causal connection between this suggestion and the creation of Wikipedia.^[13]

In late 2005, a related controversy arose regarding Wales and the Wikipedia entry on himself. After Wired Magazine picked up on work from Rogers Cadenhead, Wales confirmed that he had (visibly and under his own name) edited his own biography on Wikipedia, a practice generally frowned upon within the Wikipedia community and even by Wales himself. ^[14] Wales's edits ^[15] were in line with his view that Larry Sanger should not be considered a co-founder of Wikipedia. When some other editors undid his edits, Wales repeated them twice. His edits changed specific references to Wikipedia's origins as well as the description of Bomis. Wales said in the Wired interview, "People shouldn't do it, including me. I wish I hadn't done it." ^[16] The article suggests that Wales attempted to escape the stigma of having within Bomis "a section with adult photos called 'Bomis Babes.'"

[އުނިއިތުރު ގެންނަވާ] Other activities

Wales in May 2005

Perhaps inspired by the success of Wikipedia, Wales has founded the for-profit company Wikia (unrelated to Wikimedia), which hosts various wikis and manages the Wikicities project.

Wales was appointed a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in 2005. Later that year, on October 3, according to a press release^[17], Wales joined the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses.

Wales has also been described as a passionate adherent of Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by author Ayn Rand. From 1992 to 1996 he ran the electronic mailing list "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy"^[18], and in 2002, he began moderating Atlantis, an Objectivism-related mailing list on the Objectivist community site We the Living.

Wales lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his wife Christine and daughter Kira. He is protective about his personal lifeTemplate:Citation needed. From time to time, he enjoys a game of chess with his friends.

[އުނިއިތުރު ގެންނަވާ] Published works

Robert Brooks, Jon Corson and J. Donal Wales, "The Pricing of Index Options When the Underlying Assets All Follow a Lognormal Diffusion," in Advances in Futures and Options Research, volume 7, 1994. Abstract available online from the Social Science Research Network. See also Log-normal distribution.