Talk:Jimmy Wales

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If you need to contact Jimbo about something, please do so at User talk:Jimbo Wales, not here. As Jimbo explains... "People who are trying to leave messages for me will likely be more satisfied if they leave messages on my user talk page than if they leave them here. This is the talk page for the article about me, not a place to talk to me. I rarely read this. --Jimbo Wales 06:05, 23 August 2005 (UTC)"

Relevance of certain topics

I'm having a hard time understanding both the meaning of the following paragraph as well as the relevance of its topic:

"Later, during a question-and-answer period, Wales was asked by a school-aged child what Wales’s favorite article was that a third grader could read. Wales (after some consideration) said that Inherently funny word would probably be the case.[30] He later cautioned that a parent may want to check on this before sending their child to the site. However, perhaps a new word will be added to this article because the questioner after a few attempts at pronunciation asked if “genie-whatever that was” was one of those words, and if it was the study of genies. Wales said that this question should be answered by his parents and continued with the forum.[30]"

This seems to be an anecdote, but nothing more. I do not feel that it should be included in the article. It is also difficult to comprehend without careful examination. What does everyone think?

Also, the "Personal Philosophy" section does not seem relevant to me. Everyone has a personal philosophy, and usually it is not notable unless this philosophy was a major cultural influence (such as in the case of Adam Smith or Ayn Rand). Furthermore, the philosophy of "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them", seems basically the same as what we in America know as "progressivism", so I would not say it is even a notable philosophy.

Feedback, anyone? BrickMcLargeHuge 03:20, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Both segements should be deleted - it would improve the article greatly if they were removed. 67.184.29.7 00:42, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Only the first should be deleted. The personal philosophy is inherently notable for (someone claiming to be) a founder of an encyclopedia. And Objectivism is not progressivism. Bramlet Abercrombie 01:35, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I would nuke them both, but thats me :) --Tom (talk) 01:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not progressivism; communitarianism, perhaps. (like most of Wikipedia's editors; or perhaps you'd prefer "socialism". "Eight Ways to Run the Country" is a good source.)

What a clever guy

This guy made Wikipedia. He must have 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000IQ

Hey, it's not like he didn't have help. 68.117.211.187 (talk) 06:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Nah, he decided to purge that help, along with the rest of the truth on Wikipedia.

Speaking of Sanger, there's been a little edit war over the controversy section, with two editors undoing User:Jhurlburt's edit to change "Wikipedia co-founder** Larry Sanger" (where *s are citations) to just "Sanger". I'm going to repeat the same edit, but I'm going to explain my reasons here so I don't end up as a candidate for WP:LAME. The preceding sentence already mentions Sanger, and the fact that there is controversy over Jimmy editing this article to remove references to Sanger as co-founder. Thus, it is a simple matter of style to say that (1) you don't need to mention the full name, and (2) you don't have to call him a co-founder. It's not like the citations are lost, either, because they're both repeated from elsewhere. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 21:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems that it would be clunky to mention Sanger as co-founder in the previous sentence. The next sentence introduces Sanger's comments so its appropriate and in context to call him co-founder there. I am not sure if as much space is given to flesh this point out is really needed. It seems like it rambles abit at the end of that section and we have multiple quotes of Wales calling it preposterous and absurd?? The whole thing could be shortened. Anyways, --Tom (talk) 00:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The way I see it, I'm not sure it has to be mentioned at all. The first time Sanger's name is mentioned is in a description of his role in creating Wikipedia, so obviously calling him a co-founder there isn't really necessary. Then, in this section, the previous sentence refers to Jimmy removing references to Sanger as co-founder, thus at the very least establishing the fact that there is a claim of Sanger being a co-founder. Then, in the "Development of Wikipedia" section, we apparently have more of the "Jimmy says he isn't, but these sources say he is" (which incidentally isn't about the "Development of Wikipedia" at all anyway - may as well call it the "Co-founder controversy"), and finally, in Sanger's article, all the evidence is presented again.

I certainly don't dispute the claims that Sanger is a co-founder, but I agree with Jhurlburt's edit summary that suggests that the "Wikipedia co-founder Sanger" bit is "shoehorning" the fact in. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Hang on, I notice that was actually just split off from the "Wikipedia biography" section by User:QuackGuru. Like I just said, at the very least I'm not sure it's the right title for the section. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:06, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

You don't like my edit. Therefore, I reverted it. Happy?  Mr.Guru  talk  05:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

redirected from fatass

just thought you should know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.225.199 (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Early roles of creators

What's the point of this section in a biography? Seems like it would be more relevant in an article about the early history of Wikipedia. It should be deleted. 68.117.211.187 (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, it contains several classic errors, such as that Sanger was responsible for the idea of applying the wiki concept to the encyclopedia project. The first person to propose it to me was a different employ, Jeremy. And even in Sanger's telling of the history, the idea was given to him by a friend of his, Ben Kovitz. I do not think Sanger has ever claimed to have had the idea.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that was quick

Are you sure that reads better than my version? SamEV (talk) 23:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I preferred your edit. The concept of good grammar escapes some people. Jhurlburt (talk) 02:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. The version they prefer is every bit of an eyesore. SamEV (talk) 23:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Why was this erased (was it good faith vandalism)

Can someone explain this edit?

According to Wales this is true.

 Mr.Guru  talk  02:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Did you even read the reference you posted? The information in Wales' bio is wrong according to the reference. This is what you restored:

"In 1999 Wales had a student design software for a top-down design multilingual encyclopedia website; however, it proved to be too slow to be usable."

And this is what the reference says:

"Jimmy Wales: I had the idea for a freely licensed [online] encyclopedia written by people in various languages in 1999, and I had a philosophy student design it. The problem was that it had a top-down design and was way too slow."

The philosophy student Wales refers to was Sanger and the encyclopedia was Nupedia. Sanger didn't design the software for the Nupedia, he just setup the framework for the encyclopedia. The sentence you keep on reinserting makes it sound like he hired some student to build a program to run an online encyclopedia but it was too slow and buggy to work. This is not the case.

Your addition to the section "Early life" is also quite poor:

"...Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran a small private school, in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales received his education. Wales' early education took place in a one-room schoolhouse.".

Sounds a bit redundant to my ears. Almost as redundant as the line you keep adding to the section "Wikipedia biography":

"...Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.[32][33] Wikipedia co-founder[7][34] Sanger commented that..."

Literally three words separate the two co-founder statements. Jhurlburt (talk) 04:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this guy even of note?

Why is there an artical on this guy, I thought it was against the wikipedia rules to make personal articles about non-public figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.237.141.203 (talk) 03:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I was also under the impression vanity pages were against the rules Schnauzerhead (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 03:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

This should be at the bottom of the page, but anyway ... First, it's not a vanity page - that assumes it's written by the person who it's about, or someone closely related to them, and while Jimbo has edited the article at times, most of the text is definitely not his. Second, the threshold for deletion is WP:BIO, which requires multiple non-trivial references to the article's subject in reliable secondary sources to determine notability, and if you take a look at the number of references in the article you will see that there is no problem with that. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)