Jimmy Wales
Encyclopedia
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (icon; born August 7, 1966) is an American Internet entrepreneur
best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia
and the Wikia
company.
Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama
, where he attended Randolph School
, a university-preparatory school, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance. While in graduate school, he taught at two universities, but left before completing a Ph.D.
in order to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of a Chicago futures and options firm. In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis
, a male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. The company would provide the initial funding for the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nupedia
(2000–2003) and its successor, Wikipedia.
In 2001, with Larry Sanger
and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free, open content
encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity, and as Wikipedia’s public profile grew, he became the project’s promoter and spokesman. He is historically cited as a co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder. Wales serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
, the non-profit charitable organization he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Wikia
, a for-profit wiki-hosting service.
His role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world’s largest encyclopedia, prompted Time
magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world’s most influential people.
, on August 7, 1966. His father, Jimmy, worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning, a small private school
in the tradition of the one-room school
house, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education. As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity and, in what he credits to the influence of the Montessori method
on the school’s philosophy of education, "spent lots of hours pouring over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias." There were only four other children in Wales’ grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students. As an adult, Wales was sharply critical of the government’s treatment of the school, citing the “constant interference and bureaucracy and very sort of snobby inspectors from the state” as a formative influence on his political philosophy.
After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School
, a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at sixteen. Wales said that the school was expensive for his family, but that "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 bachelor’s degree in finance
from Auburn University
. Wales then entered the Ph.D. finance program at the University of Alabama
before leaving with a master's degree to enter 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 for a Ph.D., something he ascribed to boredom.
and options
trading firm in Chicago
, Illinois
. Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and used to write computer code as a pastime. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game
—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects. Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering
of Netscape
in 1995, and having accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations", he decided to leave the realm of financial trading and become an Internet entrepreneur. In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis
, a web portal featuring user-generated
webring
s and, for a time, erotic photographs. Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim
magazine; The Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful, however.
Though Bomis had struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to pursue his greater passion, an online encyclopedia
. While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of Objectivism
in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger
, a skeptic of the philosophy. The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends. Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it, Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University
—to be its editor-in-chief
, and in March 2000, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), a peer-reviewed, open-content
encyclopedia, was launched. The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics, and to sell advertising alongside the entries in order to make profit. The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.
In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollects attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton
, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a paper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the subject matter. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.
In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki
by extreme programming
enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process. Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck. Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia’s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia’s information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia. Thus the wiki project, dubbed "Wikipedia" by Sanger, went live at a separate domain
five days after its creation.
, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement. Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added. Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.
Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project. The broader idea he ascribes to Wales, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot
that "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", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on." 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 of that year. In the early years, Wales had supplied the financial backing for the project, and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead.
and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002. In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia. Sanger assembled on his personal webpage an assortment of links that appear to confirm the status of Sanger and Wales as co-founders. For example, Sanger and Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and press releases as co-founders. Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe
as calling Sanger’s claim "preposterous" in February 2006, and called "the whole debate silly" in an April 2009 interview.
In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographical
entry on the English Wikipedia
. Writer Rogers Cadenhead
drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia. Sanger 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 out." 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. Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content, he apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.
, Wales outlined his vision for 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." Although his formal designation is board member and chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales' social capital
within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch and spiritual leader
. He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years. The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an Internet celebrity
, and although he had never traveled outside North America prior to the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project saw him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face.
Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling The New York Times in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." In May 2010, the BBC reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical privileges on Wikimedia Commons
(a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content) after criticism by the project’s volunteer community over what they saw as Wales' hasty and undemocratic approach to deleting sexually explicit images he believed "appeal solely to prurient interests".
In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit organization
founded in St. Petersburg, Florida
and later headquartered on the West Coast of the United States, in San Francisco, California. All intellectual property rights and domain names pertaining to Wikipedia were moved to the new foundation, whose purpose is to establish general policy for the encyclopedia and its sister projects. Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees
since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006. Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus
and holds the board-appointed "community founder" seat. His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid. Wales has often joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he had done. On the one hand, he estimated that Wikipedia was worth US$3 billion; on the other, he weighed his belief that the donation made possible its success.
Wales' association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard
and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past". Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".
. Wikia is a wiki farm
—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including Memory Alpha
devoted to Star Trek) and Wookieepedia
(Star Wars). Another service offered by Wikia was Wikia Search
, an open source search engine intended to challenge Google
and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine’s operations, but the project was abandoned in March 2009. Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor
Gil Penchina
, a former vice president and general manager at eBay
, on June 5, 2006. Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitability in September 2009.
In addition to his role at Wikia, Wales is a public speaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency. He has also participated in a celebrity endorsement campaign for the Swiss watch maker Maurice Lacroix
.
On November 4, 2011, Wales delivered an hour-long address, at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom, to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three. His speech, which was entitled, "The Future of the Internet", was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days later, on November 24, Wales appeared on the British topical debate television program Question Time
, where he recommended custodial sentences for members of the press who engaged in phone hacking
and harassment.
Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", referring to the philosophy
developed by writer Ayn Rand
in the mid-20th century emphasizing reason
, individualism
, and capitalism
. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead
while an undergraduate, and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think", he has said "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." When asked by Brian Lamb
about Rand’s influence on him in his appearance on C-SPAN
's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity
and "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 labeled himself a libertarian
, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States 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. An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason
. In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".
The January/February 2006 issue of Maximum PC
reported that Wales had refused to comply with a request from the People's Republic of China
to censor "politically sensitive" articles in Wikipedia. Other big business Internet companies such as Google
, Yahoo!
and Microsoft
had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales let it be known that he would rather see companies such as Google follow suit on Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information. In 2010, he criticized whistleblower website WikiLeaks
and its editor in chief Julian Assange
, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents
"could be enough to get someone killed," and he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki
": "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing...".
Wales cites Austrian School
economist Friedrich von Hayek’s essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society
”, which he read as an undergraduate, as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project". Hayek argued that information is decentralised – that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority. Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement
(which advocated that software be free
and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar
", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond
, which "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration." From his background in finance and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory
and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "[t]hat participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".
Wales has been married twice, and has a daughter. At the age of 20, Wales married Pam, a co-worker at a grocery-store in Alabama. He met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she was working as a steel trader for Mitsubishi
. The couple were married in Monroe County, Florida
in March 1997, and had a daughter before separating. Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after being dissuaded by the housing market there, relocated in 2002 to St. Petersburg, Florida
, where he lived .
Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden
in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography. After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest
, Wales stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and claimed that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia, a claim which was disputed by Marsden.
In February 2011, The Guardian reported Wales' move to the United Kingdom and his engagement to Kate Garvey, Tony Blair
's former diary secretary, whom he met in Davos
, Switzerland.
at Harvard Law School and the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
, the Board of Directors at Creative Commons
, Socialtext
, and Hunch.com
, and former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008.
Wales was listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the Time 100
in 2006 and number 12 in Forbes
"The Web Celebs 25". Wales has also given a lecture in the Stuart Regen Visionary series at New Museum which "honors special individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture, and are actively imagining a better future" and by the World Economic Forum
as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007. In April 2011, Wales served on the jury of the Tribeca Film Festival
.
Wales has received a Pioneer Award
, the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize in 2011, the Monaco Media Prize, the 2009 Nokia Foundation annual award, the Business Process Award at the 7th Annual Innovation Awards and Summit by The Economist
, the 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award, and on behalf of the Wikimedia project the Quadriga
award of Werkstatt Deutschland for A Mission of Enlightenment.
Wales has also received honorary degree
s from Knox College, Amherst College
, Stevenson University, Argentina's Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21, and Russia's MIREA
University.
Videos
Internet entrepreneur
An Internet entrepreneur is an entrepreneur that applies innovation to create new businesses on the Internet.Internet entrepreneurs are part of the more general category of digital entrepreneurs...
best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and the Wikia
Wikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
company.
Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the central part of the far northern region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County. The city extends west into neighboring Limestone County. Huntsville's population was 180,105 as of the 2010 Census....
, where he attended Randolph School
Randolph School
Randolph School is an American independent private kindergarten-through-12th-grade college preparatory school chartered in 1959 in Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama. It started in an antebellum home on Randolph Street with just a few elementary classes...
, a university-preparatory school, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance. While in graduate school, he taught at two universities, but left before completing a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in order to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of a Chicago futures and options firm. In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis
Bomis
Bomis was a dot-com company founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Its primary business was the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal, and to provide support for the free encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia...
, a male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. The company would provide the initial funding for the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nupedia
Nupedia
Nupedia was an English-language Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief...
(2000–2003) and its successor, Wikipedia.
In 2001, with Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free, open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity, and as Wikipedia’s public profile grew, he became the project’s promoter and spokesman. He is historically cited as a co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder. Wales serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
, the non-profit charitable organization he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Wikia
Wikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
, a for-profit wiki-hosting service.
His role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world’s largest encyclopedia, prompted Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world’s most influential people.
Early life and education
Wales was born in Huntsville, AlabamaHuntsville, Alabama
Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the central part of the far northern region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County. The city extends west into neighboring Limestone County. Huntsville's population was 180,105 as of the 2010 Census....
, on August 7, 1966. His father, Jimmy, worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning, a small private school
Private school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
in the tradition of the one-room school
One-room school
One-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most rural and small town schools, all of the students met in a single room...
house, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education. As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity and, in what he credits to the influence of the Montessori method
Montessori method
Montessori education is an educational approach developed by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori. Montessori education is practiced in an estimated 20,000 schools worldwide, serving children from birth to eighteen years old.-Overview:...
on the school’s philosophy of education, "spent lots of hours pouring over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias." There were only four other children in Wales’ grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students. As an adult, Wales was sharply critical of the government’s treatment of the school, citing the “constant interference and bureaucracy and very sort of snobby inspectors from the state” as a formative influence on his political philosophy.
After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School
Randolph School
Randolph School is an American independent private kindergarten-through-12th-grade college preparatory school chartered in 1959 in Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama. It started in an antebellum home on Randolph Street with just a few elementary classes...
, a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at sixteen. Wales said that the school was expensive for his family, but that "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 bachelor’s degree in finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
from Auburn University
Auburn University
Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...
. Wales then entered the Ph.D. finance program at the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....
before leaving with a master's degree to enter the Ph.D. finance program at Indiana University
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a Ph.D., something he ascribed to boredom.
Chicago Options Associates and Bomis
In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futuresFutures contract
In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
and options
Option (finance)
In finance, an option is a derivative financial instrument that specifies a contract between two parties for a future transaction on an asset at a reference price. The buyer of the option gains the right, but not the obligation, to engage in that transaction, while the seller incurs the...
trading firm in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and used to write computer code as a pastime. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects. Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
of Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
in 1995, and having accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations", he decided to leave the realm of financial trading and become an Internet entrepreneur. In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis
Bomis
Bomis was a dot-com company founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Its primary business was the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal, and to provide support for the free encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia...
, a web portal featuring user-generated
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
webring
Webring
A webring is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social...
s and, for a time, erotic photographs. Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim
Maxim (magazine)
Maxim is an international men's magazine based in the United Kingdom and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude....
magazine; The Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful, however.
Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
. While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of Objectivism
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
, a skeptic of the philosophy. The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends. Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it, Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
—to be its editor-in-chief
Editor in chief
An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...
, and in March 2000, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), a peer-reviewed, open-content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
encyclopedia, was launched. The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics, and to sell advertising alongside the entries in order to make profit. The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.
In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollects attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton
Robert C. Merton
Robert Carhart Merton is an American economist, Nobel laureate in Economics, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.-Biography:...
, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a paper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the subject matter. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.
In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
by extreme programming
Extreme Programming
Extreme programming is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements...
enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process. Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck. Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia’s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia’s information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia. Thus the wiki project, dubbed "Wikipedia" by Sanger, went live at a separate domain
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
five days after its creation.
Wikipedia
While Sanger saw Wikipedia primarily as a tool to aid Nupedia development, Wales felt that Wikipedia might have the potential to become the truly collaborative, open effort of knowledge building he dreamed of. Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative. Wales feared that at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish". To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed. Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the free culture movementFree Culture movement
The free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....
, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement. Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added. Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.
Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project. The broader idea he ascribes to Wales, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
that "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", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on." 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 of that year. In the early years, Wales had supplied the financial backing for the project, and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead.
Controversy
Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia, and has publicly disputed Sanger’s designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002. In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia. Sanger assembled on his personal webpage an assortment of links that appear to confirm the status of Sanger and Wales as co-founders. For example, Sanger and Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and press releases as co-founders. Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
as calling Sanger’s claim "preposterous" in February 2006, and called "the whole debate silly" in an April 2009 interview.
In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographical
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
entry on the English Wikipedia
English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next...
. Writer Rogers Cadenhead
Rogers Cadenhead
Rogers Cadenhead is a computer book author and web publisher who is currently chairman of the RSS Advisory Board, a group that assists developers in using the RSS 2.0 specification. He graduated from the University of North Texas in 1991 and Lloyd V...
drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia. Sanger 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 out." Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis
Bomis
Bomis was a dot-com company founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Its primary business was the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal, and to provide support for the free encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia...
in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company’s products. Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content, he apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.
Role
In a 2004 interview with SlashdotSlashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
, Wales outlined his vision for 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." Although his formal designation is board member and chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales' social capital
Social capital
Social capital is a sociological concept, which refers to connections within and between social networks. The concept of social capital highlights the value of social relations and the role of cooperation and confidence to get collective or economic results. The term social capital is frequently...
within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch and spiritual leader
Spiritual leader
Spiritual leader is a form of title that is used to refer to religious leaders.In Buddhism, spiritual leaders are usually the people who have attained high level of spiritual awareness. Those spiritual teachers can guide people on their path toward spiritual awakening.Spiritual Leader may be a...
. He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years. The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an Internet celebrity
Internet celebrity
An Internet celebrity, cyberstar or online celebrity is someone who has become famous by means of the Internet. Such fame is based less upon raw numbers, as with traditional media...
, and although he had never traveled outside North America prior to the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project saw him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face.
Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling The New York Times in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." In May 2010, the BBC reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical privileges on Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
(a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content) after criticism by the project’s volunteer community over what they saw as Wales' hasty and undemocratic approach to deleting sexually explicit images he believed "appeal solely to prurient interests".
Wikimedia Foundation
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
founded in St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is known as a vacation destination for both American and foreign tourists. As of 2008, the population estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau is 245,314, making St...
and later headquartered on the West Coast of the United States, in San Francisco, California. All intellectual property rights and domain names pertaining to Wikipedia were moved to the new foundation, whose purpose is to establish general policy for the encyclopedia and its sister projects. Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees
Trustee
Trustee is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, can refer to any person who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another...
since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006. Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
and holds the board-appointed "community founder" seat. His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid. Wales has often joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he had done. On the one hand, he estimated that Wikipedia was worth US$3 billion; on the other, he weighed his belief that the donation made possible its success.
Wales' association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard
Florence Devouard
Florence Jacqueline Sylvie Devouard, née Nibart was the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation between October 2006 and July 2008, succeeding Jimmy Wales....
and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past". Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".
Wikia and later pursuits
In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company WikiaWikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
. Wikia is a wiki farm
Wiki farm
A wiki hosting service or wiki farm is a server or an array of servers that offer users tools to simplify the creation and development of individual, independent wikis...
—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha is a wiki that is an encyclopedic reference for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe. Conceived by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in September 2003 and officially launched on December 5 of that year, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Wikia, Inc. on the MediaWiki...
devoted to Star Trek) and Wookieepedia
Wookieepedia
Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki is an online encyclopedia for information on the Star Wars fictional universe—including information on all six films, as well as The Clone Wars and the Expanded Universe...
(Star Wars). Another service offered by Wikia was Wikia Search
Wikia Search
Wikia Search was a short-lived free and open-source Web search engine launched by Wikia, a for-profit wiki-hosting company founded in late 2004 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley....
, an open source search engine intended to challenge Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine’s operations, but the project was abandoned in March 2009. Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
Gil Penchina
Gil Penchina
Gil Penchina is an American business manager. He was formerly the CEO of Wikia Inc., and the vice president and general manager, international at eBay.He attended the Kellogg School of Management and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.- External links :...
, a former vice president and general manager at eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, on June 5, 2006. Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitability in September 2009.
In addition to his role at Wikia, Wales is a public speaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency. He has also participated in a celebrity endorsement campaign for the Swiss watch maker Maurice Lacroix
Maurice Lacroix
Maurice Lacroix is a luxury brand of Swiss watches based in the Canton of Jura and headquartered in Zurich.-History:Maurice Lacroix was founded as part of Desco von Schulthess of Zurich in 1975. Founded in 1889, Desco von Schulthess is an older company with roots in the silk trade...
.
On November 4, 2011, Wales delivered an hour-long address, at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom, to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three. His speech, which was entitled, "The Future of the Internet", was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days later, on November 24, Wales appeared on the British topical debate television program Question Time
Question Time (TV series)
Question Time is a topical debate BBC television programme in the United Kingdom, based on Any Questions?. The show typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer questions put to them by the audience...
, where he recommended custodial sentences for members of the press who engaged in phone hacking
Phone hacking
Phone hacking is a term used to describe the practice of intercepting telephone calls or voicemail messages, often by accessing the voicemail messages of a mobile phone without the consent of the phone's owner...
and harassment.
Political and economic views
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
developed by writer Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
in the mid-20th century emphasizing reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
, individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
, and capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
while an undergraduate, and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think", he has said "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." When asked by Brian Lamb
Brian Lamb
Brian Patrick Lamb is the founder and chief executive officer of C-SPAN, a television network dedicated to coverage of government proceedings and public affairs. Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Lamb earned a degree from Purdue University before joining the United States Navy...
about Rand’s influence on him in his appearance on C-SPAN
C-SPAN
C-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity
Integrity
Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions...
and "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 labeled himself a libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party
Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...
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. An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason
Reason (magazine)
Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...
. In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".
The January/February 2006 issue of Maximum PC
Maximum PC
Maximum PC, formerly known as boot, is an American magazine and web site published by Future US. It focuses on cutting-edge PC hardware, with an emphasis on product reviews, step-by-step tutorials, and in-depth technical briefs...
reported that Wales had refused to comply with a request from the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
to censor "politically sensitive" articles in Wikipedia. Other big business Internet companies such as Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales let it be known that he would rather see companies such as Google follow suit on Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information. In 2010, he criticized whistleblower website WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
and its editor in chief Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents
2010 Afghan War documents leak
The Afghan War documents leak is the disclosure of a collection of internal U.S. military logs of the War in Afghanistan, also called the Afghan War Diary, which were published by Wikileaks on 2010. The logs consist of 91,731 documents, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009. ...
"could be enough to get someone killed," and he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
": "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing...".
Wales cites Austrian School
Austrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...
economist Friedrich von Hayek’s essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society
The Use of Knowledge in Society
"The Use of Knowledge in Society" is a scholarly article written by economist Friedrich Hayek, first published in the September 1945 issue of The American Economic Review Written as a rebuttal to fellow economist Oskar R...
”, which he read as an undergraduate, as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project". Hayek argued that information is decentralised – that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority. Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement
Open source movement
The open source movement is a broad-reaching movement of individuals who feel that software should be produced altruistically. Open source software is made available for anybody to use or modify, as its source code is made available. The software use is subject only to the stipulation that any...
(which advocated that software be free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design...
", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
, which "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration." From his background in finance and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "[t]hat participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".
Personal life
Mitsubishi
The Mitsubishi Group , Mitsubishi Group of Companies, or Mitsubishi Companies is a Japanese multinational conglomerate company that consists of a range of autonomous businesses which share the Mitsubishi brand, trademark and legacy...
. The couple were married in Monroe County, Florida
Monroe County, Florida
Monroe County is a county located in the state of Florida. As of 2000, the population was 79,589. The U.S. Census Bureau 2006 estimate for the county was 74,737....
in March 1997, and had a daughter before separating. Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after being dissuaded by the housing market there, relocated in 2002 to St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is known as a vacation destination for both American and foreign tourists. As of 2008, the population estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau is 245,314, making St...
, where he lived .
Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden
Rachel Marsden
Rachel Marsden is a Canadian conservative political columnist, geopolitical strategist, author and television commentator based in Paris. She writes an internationally syndicated weekly column for Tribune Media Services. She also teaches at Sciences Po University in Paris...
in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography. After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
, Wales stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and claimed that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia, a claim which was disputed by Marsden.
In February 2011, The Guardian reported Wales' move to the United Kingdom and his engagement to Kate Garvey, Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
's former diary secretary, whom he met in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
, Switzerland.
Honors, awards and positions
Wales is a member of the Berkman Center for Internet & SocietyBerkman Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, the Center was elevated to an interfaculty initiative of...
at Harvard Law School and the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is a research center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, headed by Professor Thomas W. Malone that focuses on the study of collective intelligence....
, the Board of Directors at Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
, Socialtext
Socialtext
Socialtext Incorporated is a company based in Palo Alto, California that produces enterprise social software, comprising an integrated suite of web-based social software applications including microblogging, user profile, directories, groups, personal dashboards using OpenSocial widgets, and shared...
, and Hunch.com
Hunch (website)
Hunch is a website, designed as a collective intelligence decision-making system that uses decision trees to make decisions based on users' interest. Hunch is building the 'taste graph' for the internet, mapping every person to every entity — and their affinity for that entity. The system asks...
, and former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008.
Wales was listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the Time 100
Time 100
Time 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, as assembled by Time. First published in 1999 as a result of a debate among several academics, the list has become an annual event.-History and format:...
in 2006 and number 12 in Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
"The Web Celebs 25". Wales has also given a lecture in the Stuart Regen Visionary series at New Museum which "honors special individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture, and are actively imagining a better future" and by the World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007. In April 2011, Wales served on the jury of the Tribeca Film Festival
Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...
.
Wales has received a Pioneer Award
EFF Pioneer Award
The EFF Pioneer Award is an annual prize for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. Until 1998 it was presented at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., USA. Thereafter it was presented at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference...
, the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize in 2011, the Monaco Media Prize, the 2009 Nokia Foundation annual award, the Business Process Award at the 7th Annual Innovation Awards and Summit by The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, the 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award, and on behalf of the Wikimedia project the Quadriga
Quadriga (award)
Quadriga is an annual German award sponsored by Netzwerk Quadriga gGmbH, a non-profit organization based in Berlin. The award recognizes four people or groups for their commitment to innovation, renewal, and a pioneering spirit through political, economic, and cultural activities.The award consists...
award of Werkstatt Deutschland for A Mission of Enlightenment.
Wales has also received honorary degree
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
s from Knox College, Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, Stevenson University, Argentina's Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21, and Russia's MIREA
Moscow State Institute of Radio-engineering Electronics and Automation
Moscow State Institute of Radio-engineering, Electronics and Automation is a Russian technical university in the field of radio technology, electronics, cybernetics and automation....
University.
External links
- Jimmy Wales, Wales' official blog' Wikipedia userpage, Wales' role in the English WikipediaEnglish WikipediaThe English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next...
as described by its editors
Videos
- Audio of interview with Wales about Wikipedia on EconTalkEconTalkEconTalk is a weekly podcast hosted by professor Russell Roberts at George Mason University. Roberts interviews guests—often professional economists—on topics in economics....
podcast, March 2009, April 9, 2009 - Jimmy Wales interviewed by Raju Narisetti for The Washington Post On Leadership series, December 1, 2009
- Atlantic Community: The Wiki Way to Create Change in Global Politics Jimmy Wales is interviewed by Joerg Wolf (Atlantic CommunityAtlantic CommunityThe Atlantic Community is a German-American project to apply Web 2.0 ideas to transatlantic foreign policy strategy. Launched in April 2007 as an undertaking of the Atlantic Initiative, the Atlantic Community aims at facilitating discussion between young thinkers and established members of the...
). He advocates for the importance of think-tanks in finding solutions to global problems, February 23, 2010