User:Pakaran/Kingdom of Wikipedia portal/Featured article

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966) is an Internet entrepreneur and a wiki enthusiast, best known for founding Wikipedia.

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. He first attended Auburn University and later, the University of Alabama for his undergraduate studies. Afterwards, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama and Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a postgraduate degree at these institutions. Wales went on to become a futures and options trader in Chicago, and within a few years became financially secure and independently wealthy.

In March 2000, he founded a peer-reviewed open-content encyclopedia Nupedia.com, and hired Larry Sanger to be the editor-in-chief of it.

On January 15, 2001, Wales and Sanger set up Wikipedia, a similar wiki-based site intended for collaboration on early encyclopedic content before submitting it to Nupedia for peer review. Wikipedia's rapid growth soon made it the dominant project and "the free encyclopedia", and Nupedia was mothballed. In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a Tampa-based non-profit organization, to support Wikipedia and its younger sister projects. Since then, he has become increasingly involved with promoting and speaking about the foundation's projects. As of 2005, Wales is the foundation's president and chairman of the board.