Jimmy Wales

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales in April 2008
Born Jimmy Donal Wales
August 7, 1966 (1966-08-07) (age 41)
Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.A.
Nationality United States
Other names Jimbo
Alma mater Auburn University
University of Alabama
Indiana University Bloomington
Occupation President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation
Children Kira
Website
www.jimmywales.com

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966)[1][2][3][4] is an American Internet entrepreneur known for his role in the creation and promotion of Wikipedia,[5] a free open content encyclopedia, in 2001.[6][7] He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, holding the board-appointed "community founder" seat,[8] and is a founder of Wikia, a privately owned free web hosting service set up by Wales in 2004.

Together with Nupedia's editor-in-chief, Larry Sanger, Wales created Wikipedia,[9] laying the foundation for its rapid growth and popularity.[10] The success of the project has helped popularize a trend in web development (called Web 2.0) that aims to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. As Wikipedia expanded and its public profile grew, Wales took on the role of the project's spokesperson and promoter through speaking engagements and media appearances. His work with Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia, caused Time magazine to name him to its 2006 list of the world's most influential people.[5] Wales is the current de facto leader of Wikipedia,[11][6] whose role in the project has gained broad media attention[5][12][13] and has led to controversy.[14][15][16]

Contents

Personal life and education

Wales' father, Jimmy,[17] 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.[18] After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,[19] 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."[18]

Wales 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.[18] 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.[18]

Wales married his second wife, Christine, in late March 1997 in Monroe County, Florida.[20] They are currently separated.[21] They have a daughter named Kira. As of 2007 Wales resided in the St. Petersburg, Florida, area.[22]

Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography.[23] After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales announced in March 2008 on his Wikipedia user page (and later to his personal blog) that there had been a relationship but that it was over and that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia.[24][25] In return, Marsden, who claimed to have learned about the breakup by reading about it on Wikipedia, turned to eBay and listed for auction a T-shirt and sweater which she claimed Wales left behind at her apartment.[26][27][28][24]

Career

Chicago Options Associates and Bomis

From 1994 to 2000, Wales was the research director at Chicago Options Associates,[29] a futures and options trading firm in Chicago.[18] 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.[30] During this time, one of the projects Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis,[30] a website featuring user-generated webrings that, according to The Atlantic Monthly, "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet."[31] For a time the company sold erotic photographs,[32] 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."[18] Although Wales is no longer connected with the company, his involvement with Bomis has been criticized, with questions frequently asked about the nature of its content.[33][34] Bomis also provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.[30]

Nupedia and Wikipedia

Main article: History of Wikipedia

In March 2000, Wales started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Sanger to be its editor-in-chief.[18] Nupedia was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.[35] 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 and content, establishing 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.[29] 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.[36][37] 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.[38] In the early years, Wales supplied the financial backing for the project.[9] 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."[39]

Wikimedia Foundation

In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in St. Petersburg, Florida, and now based in San Francisco, California.[40][41] Originally chairman of the foundation, Wales has held the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus since 2006. He is now one of eight directors who make up its Board of Trustees.[42] The work he carries out for the foundation has always been unpaid, including his appearances to promote the organization at computer and educational conferences.[32] In a 2007 interview, Wales said he had mixed feelings about having "donated" Wikipedia to the foundation, as he estimated its value at US$3 billion, but added that he is glad he did, as this is only the case because of the nature of Wikipedia itself.[43]

In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of subsidizing personal expenditures with foundation funds. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, though Wales denied this claim.[44] Foundation Chair 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 he did not have receipts for, he paid out of his own pocket.[45] Later in March 2008, it was alleged by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's entry in Wikipedia to make it more "favourable" in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation. In May 2006 Wales had erased Merkey's article "because of the unpleasantness of it" and stated "we are nearing a resolution of this longstanding conflict," referring to a dispute between the Wikipedia community and Merkey over the content of the biography. Wales called the allegation that the Wikimedia Foundation had received donations in exchange for this "nonsense."[46][47]

Wikia

Main article: Wikia

In 2004, Wales co-founded, with Angela Beesley, the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.[29] Wikia is a wiki farm — a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website.[48]

Another service offered by Wikia is an open source web search engine named Wikia Search, intended to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it's created into the search engine's operations. On Wikia Search, Wales has stated, "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."[49] 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."[50]

Roles of Wikipedia creators

Main article: Origins of Wikipedia

Wales has publicly disagreed with Larry Sanger's role in the founding of Wikipedia. To the contrary, Wales has stated that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia[51] and that Sanger was his paid employee.[52] In 2006, Wales told The Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder.[51] However, Sanger was identified as co-founder at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times[53] and was referred to as a founder alongside Wales in Wikipedia's first press release in 2002.[54] In addition to developing Wikipedia in its early phase and guiding the project,[9][55] Sanger was responsible for the idea of applying the wiki concept to the building of a free encyclopedia. He also coined the name of the project.[55][56] 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."[57] In response to Wales' statement,[58] Sanger posted on his personal webpage a collection of statements confirming 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.[59] 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."[55] Wales' role in the Wikipedia community has been described as "benevolent dictator for life."[60]

Editing of own 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.[61][62] 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 be out."[34][61][63] 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.[34] An article in the July 31, 2006, issue of The New Yorker magazine expanded on this topic, stating that Wales was "caught airbrushing his Wikipedia entry—eighteen times in the past year", and that he was "sensitive about references to the porn traffic on his Web portal".[56]

In both cases, Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content.[34] He apologized for editing his own biography, 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."[34]

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.[64][65] He also made a statement in 2006 in which he wrote in part: "My date of birth is not August 8, 1966."[66] The Encyclopædia Britannica, Current Biography, and Who’s Who in America support these statements.[2][67][4] 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, unless his birth date was removed, which violated Britannica's policies.[68] 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."[69]

Personal philosophy

Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", and has named his daughter Kira after the heroine in Ayn Rand's We the Living,[49] 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."[70] 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.[18] From 1992 to 1996, he ran the electronic mailing list "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy."[71] An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason.[33]

Honors, awards and positions

Other notable media appearances

  • November 6, 2006 – Wales appears on PBS' Charlie Rose.[78]
  • April 2, 2007 – Wales is featured in 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.[79]
  • December 6, 2007 - Wales, while at the Online Information conference in London's Olympia, states 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 than ever.[80]

Published work

References

  1. ^ Monroe, Florida's County Clerk website (Marriage License Database) Jimmy Wales. Retrieved on 2008-05-21.
  2. ^ a b c d Britannica Book of the Year, 2007 Jimmy Wales. Retrieved on 2007-07-25.
  3. ^ Current Biography Yearbook 2006 - Publisher: H. W. Wilson (February 28, 2007) ISBN 978-0824210748. 
  4. ^ a b Who's Who In America: Diamond Edition - Publisher: Marquis Who's Who; 60th edition (12 October 2005) ISBN 978-0837969909. 
  5. ^ a b c d Anderson, Chris. "Jimmy Wales: The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Wikipedia", Time magazine, 2006-04-30. Retrieved on 2006-05-08.
  6. ^ a b "Brain scan: The free-knowledge fundamentalist", Technology Quarterly, The Economist, 2008-06-005. Retrieved on 2008-06-09. 
  7. ^ Keen, Andrew. "Andrew Keen on New Media", The Independent, 2008-06-02. Retrieved on 2008-06-08. 
  8. ^ Board of Trustees/Restructure Announcement. Wikimedia Foundation website (2008-04-26). Retrieved on 2008-04-27.
  9. ^ a b c Singer, Michael. "Free Encyclopedia Project Celebrates Year One", Jupitermedia, Internet Archive, January 16, 2002. Retrieved on 2008-02-27. 
  10. ^ Poe, Marshall. "The Hive", The Atlantic Monthly, September 2006. Retrieved on 2008-02-29. "Wales, though, was a businessman. He wanted to build a free encyclopedia, and Wikipedia offered a very rapid and economically efficient means to that end. The articles flooded in, many were good, and they cost him almost nothing...Wales’s benign rule has allowed Wikipedia to do what it does best: grow. The numbers are staggering."
  11. ^ Frith, Holden. "Wikipedia founder launches rival online encyclopaedia", The Times, March 26, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-07. 
  12. ^ Wes Smith. "He's the "God-King," but you can call him Jimbo", Seattle Times. 
  13. ^ Mark Evans. "Co-founder has learned to roll with the punches", National Post. 
  14. ^ Bergstein, Brian. "Wikipedia's Wales Hit Over Expenses", CNN, Time, March 5, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
  15. ^ Harris, Scott Duke. "Wikipedia founder dogged by tawdry tales online", San Jose Mercury News, March 5, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
  16. ^ Noam Cohen: Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World, March 17, 2008, The New York Times
  17. ^ Geek to chic: Wikipedia founder a celebrity
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  19. ^ Brown, David. "Jimmy Wales '83", Alumni Profiles, Randolph School, 2007-12-11. Retrieved on 2007-12-18. 
  20. ^ Florida Marriage Collection, 1822-1875 and 1927-2001, online at Ancestry.com
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  24. ^ a b "Ex takes her revenge on Mr Wikipedia", The Sydney Morning Herald, 2008-03-04. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. 
  25. ^ "Wikipedia's Wales defends breakup, expenses", USA Today, 2008-03-05. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. 
  26. ^ Siri Agrell. "Ms. Marsden's cyberspace breakup: tit-for-tat-for-T-shirt", The Globe and Mail, 2008-03-04. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. 
  27. ^ "Wikipedia Founder's Fling With Columnist Ends in Nasty Public Breakup", FOXNews.com, 2008-03-03. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. 
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  30. ^ a b c Pink, Daniel H.. "The Book Stops Here", Wired, 2005-03-13. Retrieved on 2006-10-09. 
  31. ^ Poe, Marshall. "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly, 2006-09-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
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  35. ^ Gouthro, Liane. "Building the world's biggest encyclopedia", PCWorld, CNN, 2000-03-14. Retrieved on 2007-11-25. 
  36. ^ My resignation—Larry Sanger 2002-03-01. Retrieved on 2006-10-19.
  37. ^ Wikipedia's co-founder eyes a Digital Universe 2006-01-06.
  38. ^ In Search of an Online Utopia. Archived from the original on 2007-04-18.. msnbc.msn, 2007-02-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
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  40. ^ "Open media to connect communities", BBC News, 2005-11-05. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
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  45. ^ San Francisco Chronicle
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  47. ^ Wiki boss 'edited for donation'. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
  48. ^ Wikia. Main Page, 2007-05-12. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
  49. ^ a b ""Why Is This Man Smiling?"", Fast Company, March 2007. Retrieved on 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."
  50. ^ Lewine, Edward. "The Encyclopedist’s Lair", The New York Times Magazine, 2007-11-18. Retrieved on 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." 
  51. ^ a b Knott, Janet. "Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world", The Boston Globe, 2006-02-12. Retrieved on 2006-04-12. 
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  53. ^ Meyers, Peter. "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You", The New York Times, 2001-09-20. Retrieved on 2006-10-15. "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.
  54. ^ Larry Sanger. What Wikipedia is and why it matters. Retrieved on 2006-04-12.
  55. ^ a b c Bergstein, Brian. "Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia", ABC News, Associated Press, 2007-03-25. Retrieved on 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." —Brian Bergstein.
  56. ^ a b "Know It All", The New Yorker, 2006-07-31. Retrieved on 2008-01-15. 
    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).
  57. ^ Larry Sanger. "The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir", Slashdot, 2005-04-18. Retrieved on 2005-04-18. 
  58. ^ Mitchell, Dan. "Insider Editing at Wikipedia", The New York Times, 2005-12-24. Retrieved on 2007-03-26. 
  59. ^ King, Ian. 'A Wiki web they've woven'. vancouver.24hrs.ca. Retrieved on 2007-03-02.
  60. ^ a b Cadenhead, Rogers. Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1. Retrieved on 2006-10-15.
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  68. ^ Wales, J. "More birthdate nonsense". User talk:Jimbo Wales, 2007-08-07. Retrieved on 2007-08-08.
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  74. ^ Knox College Honorary Degrees, via Knox.edu.
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  76. ^ Ewalt, David M.. "The Web Celeb 25", 2007-01-23. Retrieved on 2007-04-23. 
  77. ^ Video of Jimmy Wales on Charlie Rose, Google, 2006-10-04. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
  78. ^ "10 Questions: Jimmy Wales", Time Magazine, 2007-03-27. Retrieved on 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." —Jimmy Wales.
  79. ^ Coleman, Alistair. "Students 'should use Wikipedia'", BBC News, 2007-12-07. Retrieved on 2008-01-15. 

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Persondata
NAME Wales, Jimmy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wales, Jimbo
SHORT DESCRIPTION American Internet entrepreneur, co-founder of Wikipedia
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Huntsville, Alabama, United States
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH