Jimmy Wales
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. |
Jimmy Wales | |
---|---|
![]() Jimmy Wales in 2005 | |
Born | Jimmy Donal Wales August 7, 1966 |
Nationality | United States |
Other names | Jimbo |
Occupation(s) | President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation |
Spouse | Christine[1] |
Children | Kira[1] |
Website | blog.jimmywales.com |
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966) is an American Internet entrepreneur. From 1994 to 2000, he worked as a research director at Chicago Options Associates. During this time, he founded the webportal Bomis. Since 2000, he was involved in several wiki-related initiatives. He founded the free online encyclopedia Nupedia (2000) (of which Wikipedia was an offshoot), the charitable Wikimedia Foundation (2003), and the free web hosting service Wikia (2004).
Jimmy Wales is a self-described libertarian and Objectivist. Time listed him as one of the most influential thinkers in 2006.
Early life
Jimmy Donal Wales was born on August 7, 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama in the United States.[2][3][4]
Wales' father worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran a small private school, in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales received his early education. He and only four other children were placed in the same grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students.[5] After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,[6] a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, Alabama. Wales has said that the school was expensive for his family, but that education was regarded as 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."[5]
He received his Bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University and started with the Ph.D. finance program at the University of Alabama, where he left with a Master's.[5] After that, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance program at Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a Ph.D.[5]
Career
Chicago Options Associates and Bomis
From 1994 to 2000, Wales served as research director at Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago.[5] By "speculating on interest rate and foreign-currency fluctuations" he had soon earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives," according to Daniel Pink of Wired Magazine.[7] During this time one of the projects Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis, a website featuring user generated webrings that, according to The Atlantic Monthly, meant the site "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet".[8] For a time the company sold erotic photographs[9] and Wales described the site as having had "a market similar to say Maxim magazine. So it‘s kind of a guy-oriented search engine".[5] Although Wales is no longer connected with the company his involvement with Bomis has been criticised with questions frequently asked about the nature of its content.[10][11] Bomis also provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.[7]
Nupedia, Wikipedia, and the Wikimedia Foundation
In March 2000, Wales started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief.[5] Nupedia was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.[12] After Sanger publicly proposed on January 10, 2001 the idea of using a wiki to create an encyclopedia, Wales installed wiki software on a server and authorized Sanger to pursue the project under his supervision. Sanger dubbed the project "Wikipedia" and, with Wales, laid down the founding principles, content and established an Internet-based community of contributors during that year. Wikipedia was initially intended to be a wiki-based site for collaboration on early encyclopedic content for submission to Nupedia, but Wikipedia's rapid growth quickly overshadowed Nupedia's development.[13] Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002; Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1.[14][15] Wales has said that he initially was so worried with the concept that he would wake up in the middle of the night, wanting to check the site for vandalism.[16] In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation,[17] a non-profit organization[18] based in St. Petersburg, Florida, to support Wikipedia and its younger sibling projects. The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees consists of seven directors as of May 2007.[19] In a 2004 interview with Slashdot, Wales explained his motivations about Wikipedia, "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."[20]
Wikia
Wales would later co-found, with Angela Beesley, the for-profit company Wikia, Inc. in 2004.[13] Wikia is a wiki farm, in that it is a collection of different individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website.[21]
Another service offered by Wikia is an open source web search engine named Wikia Search with which Wales meant to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it's created into the search engine's operations, adding "I trust Google reasonably well, but that's like saying you have a favorite politician. I trust this politician, but I still want the city council to meet publicly. I still want a certain transparency in how government is run, even if you trust the person who's in charge now."[22] According to Wales, "It is meant to take on Google by creating a search engine where all the editorial decisions are made by the general public and all the software is open."[23]
Another wiki service offered at Wikia is Academic Publishing Wiki.
Roles of Wikipedia creators
Wales has publicly disagreed with Sanger's role in the founding of Wikipedia. Wales continues to assert that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia,[24] which he bases on the specific fact that Sanger was his employee.[25] In 2006, Wales told The Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder;[24] however, Sanger was identified as a co-founder of Wikipedia at least as early as September 2001[26] and referred to himself that way as early as January 2002.[27] In addition to developing Wikipedia in its early phase and guiding the project, Sanger is also responsible for 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 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."[28] In response to Wales' revisionism,[29] Sanger posted on his personal webpage a collection of evidence about his role in founding Wikipedia by referencing earlier versions of Wikipedia pages, citing Wikipedia press releases, and linking to early media coverage, all of which described Wales and Sanger as the co-founders.[30] In a discussion with Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press, Wales said: "When you write this up please do not uncritically repeat Sanger's absurd claim to be the co-founder of Wikipedia." He added: "I am not bent out of shape about it. The facts are on my side, which is why I bother so little about it."[31] Wales' role in the Wikipedia community has been described as "benevolent dictator for life".[32]
Wikipedia biography
In late 2005, Wales edited his own biography page on Wikipedia. In this regard, Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.[33][34] Sanger, who is widely acknowledged as Wikipedia's co-founder,[31][26] commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will be out."[11][33][35] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company's products.[11] An article in the July 31 2006 issue of The New Yorker magazine expanded on this topic:
"Even Wales has been caught airbrushing his Wikipedia entry—eighteen times in the past year. He is particularly sensitive about references to the porn traffic on his Web portal. 'Adult content' or 'glamour photography' are the terms that he prefers, though, as one user pointed out on the site, they are perhaps not the most precise way to describe lesbian strip-poker threesomes. (In January, Wales agreed to a compromise: 'erotic photography.')"[36]
In both cases, Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content.[11] He apologized for editing his own biography, which is a practice generally frowned upon at Wikipedia. Wales said in the Wired interview, "People should not do it, including me. I wish I had not done it."[11]
Wales had previously edited his entries on Wikipedia and on the Wikimedia Foundation's website in 2004 to indicate his date of birth is August 7, 1966.[4][37] He also made a statement in 2006 in which he wrote in part: "My date of birth is not August 8, 1966."[38] The Encyclopædia Britannica, Current Biography, and Who’s Who in America support these statements.[2][39][40] According to a researcher’s note on the Britannica’s website in June 2007, Wales contacted Britannica claiming that the date of August 7, 1966 was incorrect but was unwilling to provide them with a documented alternative.[41] On July 27, 2007, when asked by Oregonian reporter Mike Rogoway when his birthday was Wales is reported to have mysteriously stated, "Nobody knows."[2] Moreover, on his blog Rogoway claims that a Florida public records search shows that Wales’ drivers license lists his date of birth as August 8, 1966.[2] In August 2007, Wales expanded on this in his Wikipedia talk page by stating, in part: "In any event, the quotes in the Oregonian are correct."[3]
Personal philosophy
Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", to the extent of having named his daughter Kira after the heroine in Ayn Rand's We the Living,[22] although he says, "I think I do a better job — than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists — of not pushing my point of view on other people."[42] When asked by Brian Lamb in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A about Rand, Wales cited "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales reluctantly labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles.[5] From 1992 to 1996, he ran the electronic mailing list "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy."[43] An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason.
Wales is credited with operating his business frugally as well as living frugally, as noted by his choice of driving a Hyundai instead of a Ferrari, which he previously drove. He attempts to use his mobile phone in Europe sparingly because of the high rates charged.[13]
On December 6, 2007, Wales, while at the Online Information conference in London's Olympia, stated that "it's a bad educator that bans their students from reading Wikipedia". Wales reasoned that new editing and checking procedures make Wikipedia more reliable.[44]
Honors and awards
- Mid-2005 – Wales is appointed as a member of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
- October 3, 2005 – According to a press release, Wales joins the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses.
- 2006 – Wales joins the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization Creative Commons.[45]
- May 8, 2006 – Wales is the first person listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the special edition of Time ("The lives and ideas of the world's most influential people"), listing 100 influential people.[46]
- June 3, 2006 – Wales receives an honorary degree from Knox College.
- May 3, 2006 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation awards him a Pioneer Award.[47]
- October 6, 2006 – Wales appears on PBS' Charlie Rose.[48] and was nominated for Beard of the Year 2006.[49]
- January 23, 2007 – Forbes magazine ranks Wales twelfth in its first annual "The Web Celebs 25".[50]
- April 2, 2007 – Wales is featured in the April 2, 2007 issue of Time magazine in the article "10 Questions: Jimmy Wales". He answers ten questions culled from Time's readership. His is the second interview to consist of reader questions (the first being Chris Rock). Previously, the questions had been composed by a Time staff member. In his replies, he acknowledges the limitations of Wikipedia, while defending its usefulness.[51]
- April 26, 2007 – Wales has a run-in with The Chaser, an Australian satire group. He is used in the first occurrence of the "Mr. Ten Questions" segment in Season 2 of The Chaser's War on Everything, in which a "reporter" (a.k.a. Andrew Hansen) asks the victim ten questions of variable relevance without pausing for a response until all questions are asked. Wales manages to score a 4 out of 10; however, some of the answers did not seem to match the questions being asked. Hansen also states that he edited Wales' page to state that he was a teenage drug lord from Malaysia. This change has since been reverted.[52]
Published work
- 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.
References
- ^ a b Doran, James (2006-12-23). "Curiousity filled the biggest textbook in the world". Times Online. Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 2007-08-24.
- ^ a b c d Rogoway, M. July 27, 2007 "Wikipedia & its founder disagree on his birth date,". Silicon Forest, (The Oregonian), 2007-07-27. Retrieved on 2007-08-08. Note: In his blog, Wales endorses this news article. Cite error: The named reference "dob" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ a b Wales, J. "More birthdate nonsense". User talk:Jimbo Wales, 2007-08-07. Retrieved on 2007-08-08.
- ^ a b
Wales, Jimbo (2004-09-18). "Edit by Jimbo Wales at Wikimedia Foundation". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2007-08-08.
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(help) - ^ a b c d e f g h Lamb, Brian (2005-09-25). "Q&A: Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder". C-SPAN. Retrieved 2006-07-11.
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(help) - ^ Brown, David (2007-12-11). "Jimmy Wales '83". Alumni Profiles. Randolph School. Retrieved 2007-12-18.
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(help) - ^ a b Pink, Daniel H. (2005-03-13). "The Book Stops Here". Wired. Retrieved 2006-10-09.
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(help) Cite error: The named reference "bookstopshere" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). - ^ Poe, Marshall. "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly, 2006-09-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
- ^ Brennen, Jensen (29 June 2006). "Access for All". Chronicle of Philanthropy. 18 (18). USA: Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.
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(help) - ^ Mangu-Ward, Katherine (June 2007). "Wikipedia and beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision". Reason. 39 (2). Reason Foundation: 21.
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(help) - ^ a b c d e Hansen, Evan. "Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio". Wired News. Wired. Retrieved 2006-02-14.
- ^ Gouthro, Liane (2000-03-14). "Building the world's biggest encyclopedia". PCWorld. CNN. Retrieved 2007-11-25.
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(help) - ^ a b c McNichol, Tom (2007-03-01). "Building a Wiki World". Business 2.0. CNN. Retrieved 2007-03-10.
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(help) - ^ My resignation—Larry Sanger 2002-03-01. Retrieved on 2006-10-19.
- ^ Wikipedia's co-founder eyes a Digital Universe 2006-01-06.
- ^ In Search of an Online Utopia. msnbc.msn, 2007-02-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
- ^ Wikimedia foundation bylaws. Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
- ^ "Open media to connect communities", BBC News, 2005-11-05. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
- ^ Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
- ^ Wales, Jimmy (2004-07-28). ""Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Replies"". Slashdot. Retrieved 2006-06-07.
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(help) - ^ Wikia. Main Page, 2007-05-12. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
- ^ a b ""Why Is This Man Smiling?"". Fast Company. March 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-02."Wales revealed that Wikia, his for-profit Silicon Valley startup, was working on Search Wikia, which he touted as "the search engine that changes everything … Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search."
- ^ Lewine, Edward (2007-11-18). "The Encyclopedist's Lair". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 2007-11-23.
Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren't democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we're actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn't be writing.
- ^ a b Knott, Janet (2006-02-12). "Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2006-04-12.
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(help) - ^ Sidener, Jonathan. "Everyone's Encyclopedia". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
- ^ a b Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New York Times. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
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(help)"I can start an article that will consist of one paragraph, and then a real expert will come along and add three paragraphs and clean up my one paragraph," said Larry Sanger of Las Vegas, who founded Wikipedia with Mr. Wales. - ^ Sanger, Larry. "What Wikipedia is and why it matters". Retrieved 2006-04-12.
- ^ Sanger, Larry (2005-04-18). "The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir". Slashdot. Retrieved 2005-04-18.
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(help) - ^ Mitchell, Dan (2005-12-24). "Insider Editing at Wikipedia". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
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(help) - ^ Sanger, Larry. "My role in Wikipedia (links)". larrysanger.org. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
- ^ a b Bergstein, Brian (2007-03-25). "Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim does not seem particularly controversial—Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, is not happy about it.
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(help)—Brian Bergstein. - ^ King, Ian. "'A Wiki web they've woven'". vancouver.24hrs.ca. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
- ^ a b Cadenhead, Rogers. "Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1". Retrieved 2006-10-15.
- ^ "Wikipedia diff showing modification by Mr. Wales". Retrieved 2006-10-15.
- ^ Blakely, Rhys. "Wikipedia founder edits himself". Times Online. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
- ^ "Know It All". The New Yorker. 2006-07-31. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
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(help) - ^
Wales, Jimbo (2004-09-18). "Edit by Jimbo Wales at Wikipedia". Wikipedia. Retrieved 2007-08-08.
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(help) - ^
"Wales claim birthdate is not [[August 8]], [[1966]]". Wikipedia. 2006-07-11. Retrieved 2007-08-12.
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(help); URL–wikilink conflict (help) - ^ Current Biography Yearbook 2006 - Publisher: H. W. Wilson (February 28, 2007) ISBN 978-0824210748.
- ^ Who's Who In America: Diamond Edition - Publisher: Marquis Who's Who; 60th edition (12 October, 2005) ISBN 978-0837969909.
- ^
"Jimmy Wales's date of birth". Researcher's Note. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004-09-18. Retrieved 2007-08-08.
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(help) - ^ "Jimmy Wales Will Destroy Google". Retrieved 2007-05-11.
- ^ Wales, Jimmy (1992-09-23). "Re: Objectivism of Ayn Rand". Newsgroup: talk.philosophy.misc. Bv1u8x.Bnv@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu.
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(help) - ^ Coleman, Alistair (2007-12-07). "IStudents 'should use Wikipedia'". BBC News. Retrieved 2008-01-15.
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(help) - ^ "Creative Commons Adds Two New Board Members". Creative Commons. 2006-03-30.
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- ^ Anderson, Chris (2006-05-08). "Jimmy Wales: The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Wikipedia". Time. Retrieved 2006-04-30.
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(help) - ^ "EFF Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with Pioneer Awards". Kansas City infoZine News. 2006-04-28. Retrieved 2006-06-05.
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(help) - ^ Video of Jimmy Wales on Charlie Rose, Google, 2006-10-04. Retrieven on 2008-01-15.
- ^ "Beard of the Year". BBC. 2006-12-14. Retrieved 2007-07-25.
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(help) - ^ Ewalt, David M. (2007-01-23). "The Web Celeb 25". Retrieved 2007-04-23.
- ^
"10 Questions: Jimmy Wales". Time Magazine. 2007-03-27. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
The key is to look at the quality of articles. The quality of Wikipedia today, compared with three years ago, is a dramatic improvement. But people do need to be aware of how it is created and edited so they can treat it with the appropriate caution.
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(help)—Jimmy Wales. - ^ Moses, Asher (2007-04-26). "Chaser's war on Wikipedia founder". Brisbane Times. Retrieved 2007-04-29.
Given Wales's widely publicised goal of giving "every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge", Hansen evidently thought Wales would be a prime candidate for The Chaser's "Mr Ten Questions" segment.
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(help)
External links
- Jimmy Wales (weblog)
- User:Jimbo Wales on the English Wikipedia
- Jimmy Wales at IMDb
- 1966 births
- American bloggers
- American businesspeople
- American Internet personalities
- Auburn University alumni
- Berkman Fellows
- EFF Pioneer Award recipients
- History of Wikipedia
- Indiana University alumni
- Living people
- Objectivists
- People from Florida
- People from Huntsville, Alabama
- University of Alabama alumni
- Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikipedia people