Talk:Jimmy Wales/Archive 1

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About this article

I have dropped my opposition to a page about me, but I think we're going to have to watch it carefully for trolling. It might even need to be generally protected, I don't know. Jimbo Wales 02:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

After a long history of reverts this article started containing only one sentence: "Jimmy Wales is a person.". This very short form of an article is called a "stub" among Wikipedians. The usefulness of such stubs is disputed within Wikipedia. In this case the article start is an allusion to the 50,000th French article, which was "La nèfle est un fruit." and whose background was described in a beautiful posting by Anthere [1].

Political Party Donations

Is it true that Jimmy Wales is a substantial party donor?

No, it is not true. I can't recall ever making any political donations. --Jimbo Wales 05:48, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

This article really walks the line between neutrality and hero-worship, that nonsense about "god king" et.c. really doesn't provide any useful information. The continuation on that theme, noting that the "god king" drives a hyundai is also completely pointless. He's a corporate officer, not a messiah.

Anyhow I don't recall anyone ever calling me the "God King" of Wikipedia, except for Raul being quoted to that effect in Wired.--Jimbo Wales 05:50, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Jimbos Personal Blog

In the link section of the articel, there is still Jimbos personal blog as a reference. The blog has not been updated since early April of this year. Does anyone know if it has been disbanded? In this case, I think the link could be removed. Cheers,--84.165.244.214 08:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

It is still live, I'm just a terrible blogger.--Jimbo Wales 05:53, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Congrats to the writers

I truly am amazed that an article about our founder could possibly be NPOV, but it is! Congrats my co-editors Redwolf24 22:21, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Picture of Jimbo

Apologies in advance to anyone who likes that picture of Jimbo (standing), but I think it is awful (and I don't mean it fills me full of awe). Paul August ☎ 16:11, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

That's funny, I think the majority of people who have commented on it think it's very classic and benevolently dictatorial. — Dan | Talk 16:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, if it was meant to be humorous, then yes I can see it that way. But I'm not sure humor is appropriate here, certainly not for the lead picture. Paul August ☎ 16:53, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, by "funny" I meant that I thought your opinion was unusual. I don't think the picture is funny so much as it is awesome. :-) — Dan | Talk 17:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Well perhaps we see the picture differently. In the picture, in my opinion, he looks like someone who has struck some kind of mock expression. (I don't know if this was intentional or not, if it was unintentional (i.e. not posed), then it is an unfortunate accident) I think such a picture makes him and us look less serious than he and we deserve. Paul August ☎ 18:17, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
There are tons of pictures of Jimbo lying around. commons:Jimbo Wales has some, and there are quite a few on Wikipedia:meetup (just make sure it has an acceptable license). →Raul654 02:12, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
Personally, this has always been one of my favorites. It's Jimbo holding up the Christmas present we gave him - 'Jimbo in Purgatory', but it wouldn't be good for the article. →Raul654 02:14, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

It's a very weird picture. Sort of like a cult might have on the wall, of their leader. Funny though.

Although the pose was sort of ridiculous, the old photo had a number of things going for it: he was well dressed and contrasted against a neutral background. The current front page photo, on the other hand, is atrocious--distracting background that Jimbo seems to blend in with, bad shading, etc. — Phil Welch (t) (c) 22:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

A really, really stupid question

In the interests of full disclosure, might the article be tagged with a disclaimer like this?

{{wikipedian-bio}}

This wouldn't apply just to Jimbo (and I don't mean to pick on him...), but to any Wikipedia editor or admin who also is the subject of a biographical article.

--EngineerScotty 22:51, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Solution looking for a problem, IMO. Pcb21| Pete 15:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I have added this template (w/ the Wikipedia logo). I've also added it to the top of this Talk Page. Discussion please. Nippoo 23:09, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems completely unnecessary when there is no question over the subject's notability. - Stoph 21:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Cite source, please

I removed the text: Jimbo is an advocate of libertarianism and is strongly opposed to taxation, which he claims is akin to fascism. In a telephone interview conducted on September 2, 2005, Jimbo stated that although he is not outraged by taxpayer money being used to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina, he is opposed to such government action.

Please cite a reputable source for this telephone interview. See WP:NOR. FreplySpang (talk) 00:52, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Someone did in fact call me last night while I was having dinner. He did not identify himself although I asked several times. He did, in fact, ask me if I am outraged about the $10 billion Congress approved for FEMA. It is true that I said that I'm not outraged, and also that I am generally opposed to taxation. It seemed that we were about to get into a more nuanced discussion of my position, but he hung up on me.
Based on the voice and extrapolating from a prior phone call, my 'interviewer' was Lir. Probably a check of the ip numbers could confirm the location sufficient to prove this. (He is or was a student in Iowa.) Based further on the sound of the voice, he was either drunk or on drugs.
It's really a shame that he hung up on me, because I do enjoy talking to Lir.
In case anyone is wondering what I think about taxation and emergency aid: emergency aid in a time of disaster is a tricky thing -- at some point it moves beyond legitimate use of existing (military, emergency management) resources and becomes a bailout for wealthy or upper middle class (and politically influential) landowners who have chosen to locate valuable buildings in precarious places. A perfect example of this would be my own house, which is located in a neighborhood only 5 feet above sea level, and which will certainly be disastrously flooded in any direct hurricane strike. It would be extremely expensive to buy flood insurance at market rates, but no matter -- flood insurance is heavily subsidized. Thanks, tax payers! I oppose this type of government intervention into the economy, and one reason that I do is that it distorts prices in such a way which leads to disaster eventually.
I do not think my position on such matters is particularly interesting or noteworthy for the article about me. I have positions on all sorts of political topics. "Libertarian" is not accurate except in the broadest sense to describe my political views. In particular, I gladly disassociate myself from the US Libertarian party, and from the libertarian movement surrounding it. --Jimbo Wales 12:36, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
"Based further on the sound of the voice, he was either drunk or on drugs." He might have been, but I would (if it were me) simply say he sounded like he was under the influence:
A person's own body can produce hormones, drugs, & other chemicals as a result of stress -either extrenal or "internal" stress.--GordonWattsDotCom 14:48, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

So Lir really is male? He has always tried to pass himself off as female. User:Zoe|(talk) 07:30, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

adult content

The correct terminology is 'adult content'. If this is pornography, then so is much of mainstream culture. I do not think we should adopt the definitions of the Taliban or the Southern Baptist Convention. --Jimbo Wales 17:08, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

This sounds rather like a lame euphemism to me. The Bomis article uses the word "pornography", anyway, and the ones for toilet paper and coffins mostly call them by those names, as opposed to "bath tissue" and "casket". As a compromise, I changed "adult-content" to "erotica". —Saric (Talk) 20:12, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
Pornography is not actually a pejorative term, though, it has a fairly well-defined meaning which fits the purpose of that site. 'Adult content' could mean anything. Rsynnott 03:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Why should the word "adult" mean explotiation and degradation. Things should be called what they are - not glossed with mealy-mouthed euphemisims.

What contribution to the Wales independent wealth has porn sales made ? (seenext section on wealth of Wales which is silent on this point)

Esp as internet porn is 8o-90 % of all webuse and the largest by far money maker of the internet.

Will Wales fess up to this point ?

“high class, no really, high class girls — we didn't have any of that — that was right out” – Luigi Vercotti, Monty Python's Fly Circus
  • Out of curiosity, what degree of nudity was present? In the UK, for example, things like Page 3 girls wouldn't typically be called pornography probably "glamour photography" or a similar somewhat euphemistic term.
Without making any further statements about the facts of the matter, I should point out that NPOV requires that in any case where there is a controversy, Wikipedia must not take a stand. Of course, here, we do take a stand, the stand that is mostly negative about me, and of course I can't edit it because if I do it will make world headlines. But it is inappropriate, to say the very least, to say that Bomis published "softcore pornography" when that is very much in dispute.--Jimbo Wales 00:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
You kind of sound like you would happily edit your article if you could get away with it (and failed once already), but your way too sensitive about the pornography thing, if that's not soft-core porn it's as close as you can get. Either way you were trying to sell direct sexual imagery like most of the original internet companies. There are a lot of admins who would love try to curry favor with you, by simply mentioning your disatisfaction with your own article you guarentee some action will be taken in your favor. --M4bwav 04:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
The term "erotica" is a carefully negotiated (and, in my opinion, good) compromise, not an attempt to curry favors. See the lengthy discussion on Talk:Bomis.--Eloquence* 04:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

tracking

As most of you know , an arm of DARPA (formerly headed up by Jimbo Wales when he was 2yrs old and invented the internet (see this page)), is now heavily involved in enabling any law enforcement person to track you, all your emails, porn rentals (see above), so that any law enforcement person thinking to harrass you because you blessed them out for giving you a ticket when not disserved, they can track all that info and "out you" for any of multiple likely apparents diversions from straightlaced Puritan pursuits.

And that includes tracking all info , all submissions and all dialogue on wiki etc ... see this link

Felon Poindexter's New Spy Toy Spies on all 300 million Americans

independently wealthy?

According to the article, I am 'independently wealthy'? Can someone cite a source for that? My point is equally valid for other 'facts' in the article.--Jimbo Wales 09:23, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

The Wired article; presumably you told them that yourself. What other facts do you think need a source? Gohn 12:12, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
After all the money you've poured into Wikipedia, may be it should be "independently poverty-striken" ;-). But seriously, that should be deleted and I am about to do so. Ideally we should replace it with a bit more detail on your trading career. E.g. who you worked for and what you traded... the current stocks and futures sounds a bit vague to those who know to what extend a trader specialises. Not sure if that information has been made public in the interviews you have done but worth having a quick scout around... Pcb21| Pete 12:16, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Ok Gohn has pointed to the Wired article so I have quoted that. Also that article says Wales' worked in FX and interest rate derivatives whereas we are claiming equity derivatives and the (very generic) "futures". Which is correct? Pcb21| Pete 12:25, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
This is much better. "Independently wealthy" sounds to me like a loaded phrase, whereas the Wired quote is much milder. I'll take a look in a few days when I have time for other items that sound more like speculation or interpretation than citation. Of course the very strange thing for me is that even the citations depend on the accuracy of journalists, and I have been quite disappointed on average in those. I do recommend the Florida Trend article, it is the best one yet, because the reporter bothered to spend several days with me, and she fact checked the article herself before a fact checker from the magazine also fact checked it. Most reporters simply repeat what they are told.
I question whether it is common for anyone in the community actually wryly calls me "GodKing" -- I feel that this was a misunderstanding on the part of Dan Pink (or perhaps Raul, who I believe is quoted there) based on a lack of knowledge of the term in wiki culture. It's a bit of a shame for us to repeat something that I think is a journalistic error, but to adhere to our general rules of sourcing, I don't think you should cite what I say on this talk page.  :-) --Jimbo Wales 02:36, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
Jimbo, you talked about a lot of these issues on your recent on-the-record C-SPAN interview... and that is something we can cite ;). Pcb21| Pete 09:11, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

God-king

I call Jimbo -- a label I think extends beyond the man and into the myth -- the god-king of Wikipedia; but then I'm a polytheist and I don't have an excessive regard for any gods. Before I became heavily involved in WP, I used to apply the term "local god" to the sole founder of an online community, who pretty much wields absolute power, at least in the early days.

I have myself been the local god of more than one online community; at present, I am more of an absentee landlord. I think a time comes in the life of every online community -- wiki or otherwise -- when the child is grown to a man and the father must step aside. (I do not think that time has come here, unfortunately -- WP is in the throes of a troubled, delinquent adolescence.)

I suggest that the term "god-king" now is extremely troubling to all; as a Community, we seek to mature; as founder, Mr. Wales would like to reduce his responsibilities. These goals are of course compatible. The difficulty is that no respected authority has grown up to take Jimbo's place. Thus, to the detriment of all, he remains the god-king. — Xiong熊talk* 05:26, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Long time no see Xiong; still taking things too seriously I see. Keep up the confusing work. - RoyBoy 800 05:48, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
  • "Hair God" What is clear is that Jimmy Wales joins Einstein as one of the 20th centuries "hair gods". (see earlier version of this page in regard to his pompadour hairstyle removed by some blackguard.

Is it me or do you all recognize the pics of James as true "glam" photo's hare or no.

"Some consider Jimbo sole founder" vs. "Jimbo considers himself"

Someone made a change to the former saying that "Jimbo is not the one that thinks this". Well of course that's true. But to say "X thinks Y" doesn't mean that noone other than X thinks Y! We are talking about Jimbo's opinions here, not the opinions of others so the "Jimbo considers himself" formulation is a lot more informative than the woolly "some consider" formulation. Pcb21| Pete 13:08, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

"Jimbo considers himself" makes it clear that one person has this opinion. "Some consider" makes it clear that more than one person has this opinion. Since more than one person has this opinion, why not make it clear? --Rebroad 12:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Because, as I said above, we are talking about Jimbo's opinions here. Specific facts are better than vague "some people" weaselisms... who are "some people" and why do we care about them? Pcb21| Pete 13:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Why should the opinions be limited to those of Jimbo? This is an article about Jimmy Wales, not "Jimmy Wales' opinions". It should remain acturately factual within the subject of Jimmy Wales, and that includes other's opinions of him. --Rebroad 13:08, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be limited to Jimbo. Name some important peoples' opinions and maybe we should include them. Replacing a specific opinion with a "some people" weaselism is a retrograde step in terms of article quality. Pcb21| Pete 13:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Pete; the "some" needs to be more concrete. — Dan | Talk 17:32, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

"James"?

Isn't Jimbo Wales's real name actually "James", or certainly "Jim"? AFAIK, the names "Jim" and "Jimmy" are nicknames. --Matjlav(talk) 00:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

As I'm sure the archives of this page will reveal, his real name is in fact Jimmy. — Dan | Talk 00:41, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Like, his birth certificate says that? -- user:zanimum
zanimum, yes. I'm from Alabama. My real name is Jimmy. Strange, perhaps, but true.--Jimbo Wales 09:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Question about past websites

Wasn't Wales once a pornograper himself? Wikipedia seems fairly free of erotic content which is commendable, though it is not too accurate when it comes to content. Some of the articles need to be researched and cleaned up. Some of them are also quite useless such as who might be principle of some high school somewhere such as the one I found last night. When it comes to factual information one might be best to pick up a book or check out their local library.-61.24.85.136 14:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

As noted further up in the Talk page, pornography itself has numerous definitions. In the C-Span interview, he noted that the Bomis content would be considered "pornographic" along the same lines that magazines such a Maxim or Details are considered pornographic. As far as the principles of a given high school, they seem to be there mostly to educate, and I'm not sure what kind of high schools have a single person that embodies their principles... I suppose your point in gathering factual information from a collection of sources is true, as most libraries and reference books have errors in them. Some might even confuse a title for a person of authority over an educational establishment with a statement of meaning and/or purpose. :O) Ronabop 08:03, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

A few notes

1. The Bomis Babe Report was a blog, and was based on slashcode.

2. I do reject the terms 'benevolent dictator' and 'GodKing' and so does the community. The only place these ever come up are outside the community, in the press, and often because our article has been so wrong on this point at times.

3. The bit about me retaining "effective control" is ludicrous. I have no control whatsoever over the other board members, including Michael and Tim. As best, this is POV speculation. --Jimbo Wales 09:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo, I'm surprised you edited here. I thought you didn't want to do this, as in general it tends to be frowned upon when an article subject edits his own article. You are certainly free to ignore this based on your position, but that would rather confirm what you seem to deny above, i.e. that you are the one who's "more equal than others", wouldn't it? Anyway, to respond to your points:
1. It may have been a blog based on Slashcode, but that makes it sound like some pure technological thing and seems to obfuscate what it was actually about. Surely people did not go there for the text or for some geek stuff which the Slashcode reference may suggest, but for the pictures. Which blog technology it used seems to be the least relevant thing, actually. Why did you remove the word "erotica"? This can not be concluded with certainty from the title "Bomis Babes", which could just as well be a humorous title for anything else.
The blog was not about pornography. It was not about erotica. It covered all manner of topics under the general topic of 'babes', including mainstream actresses, etc.
2. The term "benevolent dictator" may not be often used by Wikipedians in practice, but it is an existing term (we have an article about it) which seems to fit. You may reject the term as such, but how is it wrong in substance? Note that it said you are considered the benevolent dictator, not that you're called that. The point here being that you do have the final say on things.
It is not fitting at all. I am not "considered" the benevolent dictator nor "called" it. The entire community rejects the term. I do not have the final say on things, the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation does. Being the president of a nonprofit organization is nothing remotely like being a dictator. If you disagree, fine, but Wikipedia is not the place for your original research. --Jimbo Wales 12:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
There is an irony here: who, other than a dictator, would purport to speak absolutely on behalf of a enormous collection of massively dispersed, entirely autonomous and mostly anonymous individuals? The "entire community" includes me (unless you decide to summarily kick me off the site, which would kind of prove my point), and I don't reject that term. I don't think anyone can or should purport to speak on behalf of the entire community, no matter how GodKinglike he or she might be. As for the use of that term as regards Jimbo Wales, it will be interesting to see whether it gains currency. For better or for worse, it does have a certain ring to it. ElectricRay 09:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
3. It is not far-fetched speculation that Michael and Tim are just proxies for you. What else are they doing on the board? They are not active editors, nor is there any other evidence that they're interested in matters of Wikipedia policy. However, they happen to be in some business relationship with you. They can be expected to vote your way. If you want to dispell this appearance, can you explain why they had to be on the board, and why they and you together need to have a majority over the actual community representatives? Gohn 18:11, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Both Michael and Tim are active in the business matters of the foundation.--Jimbo Wales 12:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Gohn, not that it means very much, but the only article you edit is this one and yet when things change on it, you are quickly around to make a comment. Call it errant paranoia if you want, but do you have another account on Wikipedia? Pcb21| Pete 20:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes. I want to keep this separate. Some people are overdefensive against any criticism of Wikipedia policies or of Jimbo, and you're quickly labelled a troll etc. Gohn 20:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I thought it wasn't kosher to have more than one account. --Mr. Billion 07:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Larry Sanger and the creation of Wikipedia

I must say, it doesn't look good when Jimbo edits the article about himself, taking full credit for Wikipedia's founding. In my opinion, it is NPOV to say that Larry Sanger was involved in "setting up" Wikipedia. In my mind, "setting up" very much involves the technical as well as the business work. Jimmy, would you please motivate why you don't think it belongs there? We wouldn't want Wikipedia's article on (one of?) its founders to be perceived as vanity, now would we? — David Remahl 01:25, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I was there, and I know the history. I set up Wikipedia. I fixed the broad outlines of early policy, and Larry worked under my direct supervision at every stage of the process. The current article, even with my edits, contains considerable incorrect editorialization, it's just that I don't even know where to begin in correcting it.--Jimbo Wales 07:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
You know your image of the history. Please allow me to direct you to the WP:NOR policy ;-). Does anyone else have input on this matter? Did you protest Wired's characterization of Larry Sanger as a "co-founder" of Wikipedia at the time of this article? I see tendencies towards revisionist history writing here. Since the the time you and Larry Sanger started diverging on a number of crucial points, it appears that you are trying to belittle his initial contributions. Before that point, I doubt you'd correct someone that said that he was involved in setting up Wikipedia. — David Remahl 00:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I am in no way trying to belittle his contributions. If anything I think it is a belittlement of him to be casual about what he did -- and did not -- do.--Jimbo Wales 05:09, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I took a swing through, here are some points: Foundations are "founded", collaborative software projects are not. I switched "founded" with "started", as it makes sense to differentiate between the start of wikipedia, and the start of the wikipedia foundation. "Wales and several others set up" is replacing "Wales set up", as from the reading of the linked history article, it wasn't just Jimmy sitting there, all by himself, doing it all on the command line (a leader does not an army make). I changed the language from "sole founder" to "primary parent" in relation to WP's origins in an NPOV effort, and qualified the statement (Wales is thought by some to consider himself...). As far as the above Talk statement made by Jimmy that "I set up wikipedia", it's a bit problematic, for the same reason that it is problematic to state that Al Gore invented the internet, or even the actual Gore quote, "took the initiative in creating the Internet". While I don't know Jimmy, I somehow doubt that Jimmy hand-entered all the commands in the first servers, rewrote and debugged all the software involved, or (for an expanded view of "set up") seeded all the articles with their basic information. Ronabop 07:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Good points. I concur with the changes except for the slight "weasel" qualification ("thought by some"). It would be better to quote a newspaper article, mail message or edit by Wales (or, for that matter, some people that say that they believe that Wales ..., but that seems a round-about way of doing stuff).
If I'm allowed to continue my rambling for another paragraph, I think it is inevitable that Wikipedia will be scrutinized for self-interest sooner or later. It is especially important that the NPOV policy's light shines through especially bright in articles such as Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales and others that hit close to home. — David Remahl 07:43, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
What's this about setting up software? Really he just took some Bomis funds and downloaded some wiki software, the kind you see at places like the usemod wiki. This software we use now wasn't around in 01, it was written in 02 by one of our devs, but Jimmy didn't have an army working on the original stuff. He didn't even need a large server, it was nothing in the beginning and it started like any other wiki. Redwolf24 (talk) Attention Washingtonians! 08:07, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales and the Fall of Atlantis

Wales' increasingly authoritarian dictates, contrary to the freewheeling nature of the original incarnation, ironically led to the crashing downfall of the most popular Objectivist mailing-list/listserv, "Atlantis", which now persists in part as "Atlantis II" on a separate server with no input or control from Jimbo. This event caused quite a stir in the Objectivist online community. Perhaps it deserves a mention?

(It's also noteworthy that similar criticism has been drawn for recent encroachment against Wikipedia's original purpose in the form of authoritarian-seeming dictates relying on collectivism as their basis, such as the No Original Research policy.)

I don't think it caused a stir in the Objectivist community, but only in that list. Later Jimbo gained a lot of sympathy from the same listmembers who were upset about his policies, precisely because of Wikipedia, and most recently even more so because of the Seigenthaler episode. Michael Hardy 01:52, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Sole founder

If we're going to present Jimmy Wales as the sole founder, or even that he considers himself a "sole founder", we should probably have links to media which state the same. Preferrably links that dictate that there are no other founders, parents, contributors, etc. Ronabop 08:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Media sources interview the first sources, i.e. Jimbo himself. So this gets us nowhere. Quoting NOR here is going against NOR's purpose - we're underqualified to insert our own opinions or experiments into articles. Jimbo's the first source, so NOR isn't going against him, and any media would just interview him... Redwolf24 (talk) Attention Washingtonians! 08:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

self reference

Remind me again how a Wikipedia user page is an external link? And how is linking to another page a self-reference? I was going to change it until I saw the note requesting that we consider what's said here first. I don't see anything about it. Could someone clarify this for me? —User:ACupOfCoffee@ 01:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Links from articles to other namespaces on Wikipedia should be handled just like links to other web sites, i.e. as external links. — David Remahl 17:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Please support this claim

"However, in fact, Seigenthaler related that it took five months to get a response from Wales, and that his reputation was damaged in the interim and continued through the availability of history files." --JWSchmidt 01:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Please see the transcript as provided in the article. --AustinKnight 16:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Aslo this one:
I haven't seen where Wales directly admitted that the material was libellous. -Willmcw 16:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Simply review Wales' personal talk page (this is not it), using your browser's "Edit" "Find" feature to locate the word "libel." There are 2 examples where he uses it to refer to the recent Seigenthaler matter.--AustinKnight 16:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
another useful resource: User:WikiFanatic/Wales interview transcript --JWSchmidt 16:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
That's the source that I checked. Only the interviewer mentions libel. As for the talk page, A) that isn't a good source, B) I don't see where he says that the material on Seigenthaler was libellous. -Willmcw 17:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Please, get real. The remarks on Seigenthaler's page were clearly libelous, and Wales was correct (and intellectually honest) in describing them as such on his personal talk page...twice. --AustinKnight 17:15, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. You may be honestly confused by the fact that this page is about Jimmy Wales, but is not his personal talk page. See: User_talk:Jimbo Wales for Wales' 2 references to libel. --AustinKnight 17:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Can you please give us a citation for Wales admitting that the material was libellous? Thanks, -Willmcw 17:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't consider it an "admission". Whether or not it was or was not an act of libel by this ip number would be for a court to determine. In my opinion, this matters little. It should have been caught before it was anyway, and of course we should consider this a major mistake. I don't know what Austin Knight's deal is, he seems primarily interested in yelling at me. But I think, honestly, that's because he thought I was blowing him off or ignoring him. Presumably he doesn't know how busy I am such that I can't get around to every email promptly.--Jimbo Wales 00:27, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Controversy/Criticisms

This article seriously needs a heading or a section with the title Controversy and/or Criticisms. As it is, there are already criticisms and controversial content on the page, but they are misallocated under the heading "Development of Wikipedia." I tried to make this change myself, but it was undone minutes later. Without that heading, the page appears too sanitized and biased by not calling attention to both sides of view, instead highlighting only the positive in the subheadings.

Maybe you could create a subsection within the existing section rather than change the name of the existing section. (and please sign your entries on talk pages with ~~~~) --JWSchmidt 15:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Register shot at home comments

The diff is here. Read all about it on The Register. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

This only makes The Register look bad. It's a pity because they do have insightful contributions and the wonderful BOFH. Mark Hurd 05:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
And in what way does it make The Register look bad? The whole article is in jest. Coolsi 10:22, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that article was fairly clearly in jest, but what about this one? I think they're trying to make a point, but like I said above, for me it only reflects badly on The Reader. Mark Hurd 18:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Has the content actually been submitted yet - as Mr. Stern said he'd do? If not, my two cents is that we keep an eye out for it and when he does, give him a polite warning and a reminder of the policy that Wikipedia shouldn't be disrupted to illustrate a point. Remember, anything we do can be used against us. --Kizor 23:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Good Lord. Google News needs to try to not scare me like that. That Register article was on the front page. 69.156.206.82 17:57, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Haha. Likewise. --Kizor 18:29, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
How nice. One of my actions was on the news. I think I blocked that vandal. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 00:16, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The founder of Wikipedia?

I just saw this blog post which brought me to this page. I must say I am amused. 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.

Anyway, here are several points I wish people would bear in mind when they write about who got Wikipedia started:

  • I was there (which thankfully no one is denying yet), and I've written a long memoir, which I put a great deal of work into, called "The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia." This has been published in O'Reilly's Open Sources 2.0. I wrote it honestly and attempted to give Jimmy credit for what he is responsible for. I wish he would do the same for me.
  • I have already taken Jimmy to task for his claim that a Jeremy Rosenfeld first had the idea for, or proposed, making a wiki encyclopedia (see the whole thread and especially this post). In fact, it does not matter the slightest bit when Jimmy first heard of wikis, or from whom, because it was when I heard of wikis, and when I was thinking about how to solve Nupedia's problems, that I proposed to Jimmy the idea of a wiki encyclopedia. The next day a new wiki was created for me to work on. I proceeded to create the first pages of what became Wikipedia. Jimmy, in claiming that he "set up" the wiki, or that he got the idea from Jeremy Rosenfeld (who I believe was a link weeder for the celebrity rings on Bomis.com), is, I regret to say, perpetrating a self-serving myth. I had thought he would have stopped doing so after being called on it in public (on Wikipedia-l); it is amazing that he continues.
  • The notion, as Jimmy suggests above, that "Larry worked under my direct supervision at every stage of the process" is highly misleading. I was answerable to Jimmy, but that hardly means that he was giving me orders and I was carrying them out. That is not at all the case. In terms of the design of Wikipedia's policy and recruitment and so forth, I was given very free rein. Again, see my memoir: he said from the first few days that I started working on Nupedia that I had free rein to design the encyclopedia projects as I wished. I did not talk to Jimmy very much about what I was doing on Wikipedia (although we did discuss things), and in the first year, Jimmy was actually relatively in the background.
  • From 2001 until mid-2004, press reports of Wikipedia had, following our mutual practice, identified Jimmy and I as co-founders. Since mid-2004, Jimmy started calling himself "the founder." Since earlier this year he has actually gone farther, to rewrite this article about himself, and to give interviews with the press, to make it look as if I had very little to do with Wikipedia. The fact--which Jimmy does not (yet) deny--is that my proposal of a wiki-based encyclopedia led to the creation of Wikipedia, and very many of the basic practices and policies that Wikipedia still follows were started by me.
  • Also, from 2001 until 2004, the various articles mentioning the origin of Wikipedia, including history of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and Larry Sanger, all reflected actual historical fact, as explained here. It was only when Wikipedia emerged into the broader public eye, and Jimmy started jetting around the world, that he found it convenient to encourage the rewriting of these articles, or to rewrite them himself (!), and to give interviews to the press that ignored my role and emphasized his own. I'm frankly not at all upset, however, because I am thinking long-term, and I know that the truth will out.

--Larry Sanger

This was posted by User:69.107.17.118. Mr. Sanger, could you sign in so we know for sure this is by you? --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 20:38, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Jimmy Wales now includes mention of Jimbo's past connection with a company which (among other things) sold some photographs of unclothed women. It also does not explicitly label him as the "founder" of Wikipedia. I'm not sure what else can be made NPOV, the article looks pretty good to me. -- Pakaran 23:07, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The point is that it's inappropriate for Wales (given his formal, informal and perceived power over the project) to edit his own biography. Doing so is damaging to the project's credibility. Wales has stated that the biography contains serious errors and misunderstandings that he doesn't even know where to begin to correct. If the community can't even sort out the article about its "sole founder" without the subject's involvement, what does that say about its ability to write biographies on anyone else? Or, it might be that Wales' self-image is in conflict with NPOV (it would be strange if it wasn't). — David Remahl 23:24, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Somebody give this man a cigar. That's the situation in a nutshell. Matt Gies 03:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Er...signing in wouldn't prove that it's me, would it? You mean it's no longer the case that just anyone can sign up as anyone else? That used to be the case.  :-)
--Larry Sanger
Did "you" leave before password-protected user accounts were created or has it been removed? — David Remahl 23:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimmy has said before that he thinks it is inappropriate for people to edit their own articles. [2] He has also now acknowledged that editing this page was a mistake. [3] I'm sure it was just a temporary lapse in his usually good judgment. Jimmy, I hope you don't mind suggesting future changes on the discussion page, and let us work out the whole "founder" issue. Larry, thanks for joining us. I recently rediscovered your original "Let's make a wiki" post. It's quoted in the "History" section of the Wikipedia article. Perhaps it should be quoted here as well?-Eloquence* 10:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed Jimmy has on several occasions in the past refrained from making even simple changes to the page, preferring instead to raise issues on this talk page. He didn't actually get much of a response, so it was in the spirit of the wiki to make the changes himself. Now more people have come to the party, and the article will be more complete and accurate for it. Pcb21 Pete 13:11, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


It remains true that Larry Sanger was Jimbo's employee. Does that deny him the ability to be considered a "founder"? I would say that it does. Members of a company are generally labeled founders/co-founders from the start of the company, not by retrospecting. — 0918BRIAN • 2005-12-20 13:21

Well, let's just add the position of both individuals: Jimbo says he founded it, and Larry said he helped, though they disagree over this point. I know it's not what Jimbo would want, at least we should mention the difference of opinion. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:30, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Agree - we should succinctly describe the dispute. I don't understand why Jimbo made changes himself. Trödel•talk 14:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I disagree, that does not really describe the "dispute." In fact, I really don't know what Jimmy disagrees with, other than the name "founder," and who cares about that? If one actually describes the actual things I did, one sees immediately that I was more responsible than any single person, Jimmy included, for getting Wikipedia started. Jimmy has the honor of having paid my salary, ;-). To say I "helped" does me a disservice, frankly.
Not sure what you are disagreeing with - seems like Ta bu shi da yu, you and me are all asking for the same thing - a report of the facts, and describing the differing viewpoints for disputed facts. I don't think Ta is done yet; I'm not either, just haven't figured out the best words. Trödel•talk 18:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
By insisting that I was not a founder and merely an employee under his direct supervision, Jimmy makes it appear as if the big decisions and major work were all done by him. They were, in fact, at best participated in by him, but done by me.
Ask him if he disagrees with this. --Larry Sanger 17:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Larry, the way I read it, is that you were employed by Jim's company called B... something. Then you resigned for not having been paid. That sounds to me that you were an employee, not a co-founder. If you indeed were a co-founder, do you have papers on this? As an employee, or as in your case, an editor-in-chief, you could have done many things and come up with many original ideas. That still wouldn't change the fact that you were an employee, and officially, Jim would be the founder of Wiki. You could be given the credit for creating Wiki, but not for founding it. Anyway, this reminds me of Remus and Romulus. --Anittas 18:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Anittas, how are you defining "founder" here? If I read your statement correctly, you are claiming that Larry Sanger otherwise would qualify if he weren't an employee. Glancing through the wiktionary entry, founder, I don't see anything that obviously supports your interpretation. From some exposure in the dotcom era, I don't recall any particular meaning attached to being a "founder" of a business or project (aside from the assumption that you helped create the thing in some way). Employees who had been there since the begining could be founders though they need not be recognized as such.
Having said that, what authority determined that Jimmy Wales is a founder and Larry Sanger is not? Apparently, the argument is that Mr. Wales's company determined this. If so, that fact (and the fact that Mr. Wales controls the company) should be reported to supply NPOV. -- KarlHallowell 23:55, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, let's squash this stupidity before it gets worse

I have updated the article about Bomis, stating who accuses Jimbo of being a pornographer, and also that Jimbo disputes this. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

"As of 2005, Wales was conspicuously trying to obscure his past links to the world of female glamour photography due to criticism from the religious Right. [1]" -- This is absolutely absurd. --Jimbo Wales 15:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Yup, I would agree. I didn't include this. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
As an accused (but not convicted) member of the religious right - I tried to make this section more NPOV. Trödel•talk 15:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Wow, criticism from Caesar himself. Well, Jimbo, I still don't think you have any business commenting on the accuracy of this article. I mean, didn't you have some ethical principles in mind when you started this thing? Matt Gies 20:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo, I see you're having a few disputes with Larry Sanger. I think you should give the man whatever credit he deserves; and when it comes to you having been involved in female photography: you should be damn proud of it, dude. Not all of us have that sort of a privilage. If I had that privilage, do you think I would spend this many hours on Wiki, flaming weirdos? Be a good Santa and send me some of those photos, at: wizzard_bane @ yahoo.com. Thanks! --Anittas 18:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think this really undermines the credibility of Wikipedia. I left Wikipedia when I started my website but If I still edited here I would seriously consider not continuing to do so. Perl 20:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, please. If he had changed it to an encomium, perhaps it would undermine his own credibility, but nothing he could do to his own article could possibly undermine the credibility of the encyclopedia as a whole. As it stands, he merely made several minor corrections, one of which is now disputed. Kindly refrain from making alarmist comments and save the panic for when it is truly warranted. — Dan | talk 20:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
If the community can't even get the article on Jimbo right, what does that say about other biographies? This is damaging to the credibility as a whole. — David Remahl 00:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

It appears that admins such as brian are violating 3RR in the process of reverting changes. Just because you disagree with an edit, doesn't make it vandalism. These reversions also don't bode well for Wikipedia's crebility, especially considering that cases like this demonstrate selecive immunity of admins who are supported by Jimbo himself.

I should also note something interesting: there is a bit of deliberate revisionist history here. babes.bomis.com has essentially been taken down and as per (what I'm guessing is a recent modification) to robots.txt, it is excluded from archive.org as well, so we don't have records of it. Fortunately, I have a memory of visiting babes.bomis.com before Wikipedia was even created, and I do remember them having soft pornography on it. Or are topless women not "soft pornography" anymore? "Glamour photography" is clearly being used as an inaccurate euphimism here.

Regardless of whether or not you consider it pornography, that is clearly something that is a widely contested point and is clearly not vandalism. NPOV requires that you represent all views in proportion to their popularity, PERIOD. This is a popular view, so it must be repreented, not whitewashed. The same goes for his status as co-founder. That view MUST be represented, regardless of whether or not you agree with it, since it is also widely contested. Even Jimbo himself would acknowledge that this is widely contested, so as per NPOV policy, he shouldn't have created that edit.

It's inappropriate no matter how you look at it, because this is something which clearly requires presentation of the relevent different POVs (both of which are popular). Nathan J. Yoder 05:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Anon Comment

This article is a joke. There are a swarm of enforcers editing any discussion of Jimmy Wales and his involvement with a cheap and nasty porno site. Any changes to ridiculous terms like "glamour photography" are met with warning against vandalism. A different point of view to your own is not vandalism, and it's a very dangerous thing to act as if it is. This is more doublethink that truth my friends. - Sean White —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.167.64.6 (talk • contribs) .

There's still several hundred thumbnail images and cached pages from Bomis Babes in Google, so people can judge the site's content for themselves. I talk about this more on my weblog. My wrist hurts. Rcade 00:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
James has now had all those link pages wiped out so that they do not come up any more gurls.
Thanks for finding that cache. Someone should capture those thumbnails before they get deleted from the next round of google's bots on that site (since they're now forbidden by robots.txt). I clearly see women on there who are topless. I'm going to see if I can mirror the google thumbnails because those would be bad to lose permanently. Nathan J. Yoder 05:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I saved the first 30 pages in google's image cache. Some of them were completely buck naked too, in provacative poses. Others had women sucking eachothers teets. Nathan J. Yoder 05:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Here's several thousand thumbnail images from premium.bomis.com, the pay service, a What's New page, and a Models Wanted page. Rcade 06:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
From the what's new site, I agree, as per the definition of softcore. "Glamour photography" may be nude (like the Pirelli Calendar) but anything with the word "lesbian" includes some form of a sex act and as such crosses the line into the world of softcore. A set of pictures of a single woman in the process of stripping (as opposed to her doing a tease) is not glamour photography (as per the wikipedia definition). Therefore, I agree with Rcade. Calwatch 07:56, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

God, are you guys serious? What does this have to do with Jimmy's credibility or his creation of wikipedia? Puritan hypocrites...

vandal edit summaries

I've restored the recent vandal edits to make it easier for non-admins to keep track of them. With these vandals, any information about them can be used as evidence, if we want to take further action against them (as opposed to merely blocking them). However, regarding the offensive edit summaries, I have made a request for a developer to remove them. --Ixfd64 00:37, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Apostrophes

Why are people changing apostrophes? There is no rule in the English language that dictates that only historically significant people have "s'" instead of "s's." Quite the contrary, it's standard practice in any formal writing to use "s'" regardless of who it is. I don't even think I've seen a single newspaper or book print the other form. Nathan J. Yoder 05:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's Rule #1 in The Elements of Style. — Dan | talk 05:45, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think a single book should dictate "proper usage," especially when it's based on what a single guy said nearly 100 years ago (language changes). I've always been taught that it's a mistake to use "s's" in formal writing, regardless of context. As an example, Nature prefers to use "Wales'" instead of "Wales's." I don't really think there is a right or wrong here, but I think we should go with whatever is most common in formal writing. Nathan J. Yoder 05:55, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

No, we should go with whichever is recommended in Wikipedia's style guide. Until there's a recommendation there, people shouldn't be changing them to suit their personal preferences. Strunk & White's rule #1 is "Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's." The Chicago Manual of Style concurs, and notes the traditional exceptions. "Wales's" isn't one that would be an exception except under Chicago's alternative simplified procedure for those "uncomfortable" with the usual rules. Nunh-huh
The Economist and the Chicago Manual of Style (second question from the bottom; unfortunately the full manual is not available online) both prefer "Wales's". — Dan | talk 06:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Manual of Style says: Possessives of singular nouns ending in s may be formed with or without an additional s. Either form is generally acceptable within Wikipedia. However, if either form is much more common for a particular word or phrase, follow that form, such as with Achilles' heel. So you go which ever form is more common, which is what I already said (although I restricted it to formal writing). There's nothing in there that says you must obey any particular style guide (other than itself). I'm not sure how you'd easily determine this though, since Google doesn't let you search like that, it disregards the apostrophe for the "s'" form. Nathan J. Yoder 06:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the Commonwealth of Australia's Style Manual also supports "...s's" in all but the "historically significant" (Jesus, Moses, Achilles...) cases. As of five minutes ago, all but one of the occurrences in the article were of the form "Wales's", so I changed the single "Wales'" to be at least consistent. PaulHoadley 00:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd just like to add that the spelling of "...s's " or "...s' " should be consistent irrespective of the spoken form. That is, even if it is pronounced like "...ses " it still should be spelt "...s' " if that is grammatically correct, and vice versa. Mark Hurd 05:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Resolving the Bomis Babes Dispute

I don't think we're going to reach a happy medium on whether the nude pictures on Bomis Babes are pornography. There's a What's New page and several thousand thumbnail images from premium.bomis.com, the site's pay service, that you can use to judge the content. I'd call pictorials titled "Vanity and Evita wet lesbians" and "lesbian strip poker threesome" porn, but I'm easily excitable. Regular customers of online porn would probably be disappointed in a site like that, because there appears to be no sex.

Here's my recommendation: "In 1996, Wales founded the search portal Bomis, which he described as a "guy-oriented search engine" in a September 2005 interview on C-Span. The Bomis Babes Report published sexually oriented pictures of models and coverage of the entertainment and porn industries, and a premium section offered nude pictorials commissioned by Bomis."

The C-Span interview is online, if someone wanted to footnote it. Rcade 14:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I revised my recommended text based on some feedback I received. Rcade 15:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I recommend the term 'erotic photography' as a neutral description.--Jimbo Wales 12:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Who's idea was the wiki-encyclopedia?

Jeremy Rosenfeld initially came up with the idea to make the encylopedia wiki-based and Sanger coined the name Wikipedia.
from Jimmy Wales
In January 2001 Sanger proposed the creation of a wiki to spur the development of articles, and the result of this proposal was Wikipedia
from Larry Sanger

So, whodunit? :-) bogdan 15:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

True?

Jimmy Wales himself would have changed this page several times. Changing one's own biography however is a violation of Wikipedia's rules about biographies. Among these changes he would also have minimalised the role of Larry Sanger. [4] Though my source is the Belgian quality newspaper, De Standaard, I wonder if there are other news articles that back this claim up. Mjolnir1984 16:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Sheesh. It's a guide, for goodness sake, not a hard and fast rule!!!! - Ta bu shi da yu 16:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed material

"Additionally, Wales has been accused of trying to obscure his relationship to Bomis."

Let's find out exactly who says this, hmmm? I'd like to see a source. I've taken it out till someone finds me one. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Well there's Rogers Cadenhead quoted at BetaNews. Times Online also alludes to that.--T. Anthony 13:41, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem with that article is that the source of the news report is wikipedia itself - so the original research information on wikipedia was used a source for a news report which is now being used to justify restoring OR material. It would be helpful if there was a verifiable accusation that predates the controversy ;) Trödel•talk 20:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
The quote above is a direct quote of me, and was my own interpretation of Cadenhead's article as I had edited the Jimmy page. Anyway, I don't see what's the problem: Because Rogers has his own wiki user name, do you consider it "original research"? While I agree with that policy WRT people with no credentials other than being on Wikipedia acting as original researchers, I don't think it makes sense to apply it to everybody who happens to edit on here too. In as many words: I think that the mention of Jimmy's revisionism needs to be more explicit in the article proper. Matt Gies 09:24, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

slashdot tag

I have removed the "watch out for vandals" tag on the article page, which I do not believe is appropriate for wikipedia article pages (having it on a talk page is fine.) Sdedeo (tips) 18:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Dsiputed

This article is extremely biased--Jimbo's prowess on wikipedia should not accord him a more favorable article. This article makes no mention of his history in the pornography industry, his public statements after the hurricanes of 2005, etc. Users who make unfavorable edits to this article are banned. Having a biased article on the founder of wikipedia reflects badly on the encyclopedia. This needs to be fixed. 69.22.42.35 02:22, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a no more favourable article than any other one.
It says about his history and position with Bomis already already - This suggests you haven't actually read the article that you're complaing about. Also, Bomis did NOT produce pornography, there was some nude modelling but never sex acts or "porn".
How do you know? While there are no insertion of objects in any orifice, suggestive touching between two photographed people is definitely softcore, though on the low end, unlike insertions. I do like the "nude and partially nude" description and I hope we can agree on that, instead of trying to split hairs between "glamour photography" and "softcore". Calwatch 07:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
From what I've seen, people who make nonsense unfavorable edits to the encylopedia are NOT banned any more than people who make nonsense favourable ones (there have been some of both).. What are you referring to? I bet you're one of those people who posted some unsourced POV crap... --Mistress Selina Kyle 02:30, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

rm of disputed tag

I have removed the disputed tag after looking over the talk page. As far as I can tell, there are no facts at dispute here. Actually, as far as I can tell, the whole thing is whether or not to describe Boomis babes as "pornography". Nobody disagrees that there were some hot women and cameras involved. In any case, the disputed tag is not the correct one, unless there are other facts at dispute, in which case, please let us know (this stupid Sanger-Wales-who-founded-wp stuff has been settled as far as I can tell) by posting here. Sdedeo (tips) 07:41, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Look there is no debate really... Bomis supported porn... period... Proof: Image:Sylvia Saint 001.jpg Silvia Saint is flat out no denying a PORN STAR. from her article here on wiki:
She was Penthouse Pet of the Year in 1996 (Czech edition) and after her introduction to the United States porn industry in 1997 and again in 1998 (U.S. edition). Her first movie was shot in Prague for Private Media, and was a great success. From there, she moved across the Atlantic where she has spent over three years on U.S. soil. Much of her work includes anal sex and she is noted for her performance of oral sex.
Jimbo himself even concedes this point: "Bomis owns the copyright to that photo, and while we don't release all of our promotional photos under the GNU FDL, that one is fine. I always wonder what happened to the photo of Aria Giovanni on my Ferrari. Hmm... the mysteries of Wikipedia.  :-) Jimbo Wales 20:57 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)" old edit.
This is UNDENYABLE proof in JIMBOS OWN WORDS that Bomis worked with Porn Stars... end of discussion.  ALKIVAR™ 11:22, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Shall I post links to images of Adolf Hitler on wikipedia to prove that wikipedia supports Nazis? Same argument, really. Ronabop 14:35, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
But did Hitler wear a Bomis shirt? No. Calwatch 20:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Godwin's Law perchance? Matt Gies 10:35, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I think that Ronabop's point is quite a good one. "There exists a photo of a porn star wearing a Bomis t-shirt" somehow translates to "Bomis is porn"? Not in any rational universe, it doesn't. --Jimbo Wales 13:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

December 2005 Controversy

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69880,00.html

"In an interview with Wired News, Wales acknowledged he's made changes to his bio, but said the edits were made to correct factual errors and provide a more rounded version of events.
While he said that Wikipedia generally frowns on people editing entries about themselves, there is no hard and fast rule against it.
"People shouldn't do it, including me," he said. "I wish I hadn't done it. It's in poor taste.... People have a lot of information about themselves but staying objective is difficult. That's the trade-off in editing entries about yourself.... If you see a blatant error or misconception about yourself, you really want to set it straight."
  • Although this is a minor controversy, I think the sensitive and evidently volatile nature of this article warrants a "Cleaning Up" warning. There's obviously a lot of bullshit in the article, and the Talk page is no help sorting it out. -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Poopdeville (talk • contribs) .
The cleanup tag is not for content disputes. It applies to bad grammar, lack of wikification, non-conformity to style guide (standard sections, standard boldfacing, etc), non-encyclopedic writing style, and so forth. "Obviously a lot of bullshit" is not nearly good enough an explanation; it's not obvious and arguably untrue. -- Curps 06:40, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Who cares what you think?

NY Times 12.24.05

"THE debate over Wikipedia has hit a fever pitch in recent weeks. Supporters of Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, are pitted against traditionalists who call the site inaccurate and irresponsible" [5]
Insider Editing at Wikipedia, NY Times December 24, 2005 -- Merecat 00:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Moved talk page

Why has this talk page been moved to Talk:Jimmy Wales/delete? Can't sleep, clown will eat me 23:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Incorrect Impression is Provided by this Paragraph

"More recently, perhaps inspired by the success of Wikipedia, Wales has founded the for-profit company Wikia (unrelated to Wikimedia) which hosts various wikis, and manages the Wikicities project."

Wikia is not "unrelated" to Wikimedia. When Jimbo established Wikimedia unilaterally he announced on the mailing list that he intended to stack the Board. He proceeded to do so. In the first election he announced that he intended to defer to the two of five elected Board members regarding issues of interest to the community. This obviously begs the question of why then he needed to stack the Board. Perhaps now we know. Recently a vote of 200/268 screened voters voted to initiate the long deferred Wikiversity project under the auspices of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Board has issued terse confusing feedback and requested a complete rewrite of the entire proposal regarding how the learning communities (Wikiversity) would operate in detail. Difficult to accomplish with an experimental leading edge prototype. Something that still has not been accomplished with other Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia. Is it merely coincidental that various participants impatient with their treatment on wikibooks have begun proceeding with content development at wikicities, which will incidentally line Jimbo the internet entrepreneur and philanthropist's pockets (or at least pay some of his operation's overhead) with advertising revenue? How many years should Wikiversity wait in the wings to spring into action in case Jimbo and Angela et. al. cannot get rich of the many eyeballs, free labor, advertising model of the traditional dot.com internet fraud fiascos? (diff^tm) Interlocking chains of executives, Board Members, owners, and God Kings should in no honest publication ever be called "unrelated". Perhaps we should say "unrelated for tax accounting purposes" or perhaps we should say "allegedly unrelated and unaccountable to regulators and stakeholders". Actually I like the former better as I think it is more correct. The latter often crops up in discussions of "apparent conflicts of interest" which occasionally are determined by investigators and public opinion to have been in no way "unrelated". Of course, if investigations show that Wikia business has been conducted on travel or Wikimanias expensed to the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation for the benefit of Wikia stockholders, managers, founders, owners, and/or executives then the former may be incorrect as well. What is a good term implying unrelated for two activities substantially controlled by the same person/people? Left brain, right brain. Public/private. Above board/stealthy. Known/unknown. Acknowledged/denied.

http://academia.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page approved for fun and profit

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity/test deferred until you make us happy, possibly to infinity

http://wikicities.com/wiki/About_Wikicities

http://wikicities.com/wiki/Wikicity_creation_policy

"Check that your idea is not already covered by an existing Wikicity. Check that your idea could not become part of an existing Wikimedia project (http://www.wikimedia.org). Check which other proposals were rejected for an idea of what not to request.

You must agree:

  • to the terms of use.
  • that the the content of the wiki will be licensed under the GFDL, a free content licence. This means the information can be reused, not only in other Wikicities, but by anyone.
  • that the wiki will be open to the public to edit (see protection).
  • that the wiki will be run as a community project. Wikicities are not owned by their founders. Users should strive towards consensus as the primary means for organizing their wikis."

Interesting that the above shows clearly a relationship between wikicities projects and wikimedia projects as potential competitors. Further, it is clearly part of the terms and conditions that the "founder" is not an "owner" of the community founded. Of course it does not say anything about "stacked boards" because that has already been provided. Wikia owns the servers and collects the revenue from the advertising delivered to local users of the material created by the volunteer communities. 70.110.60.140 03:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Crazy

I want to comment on this, "Wales confirmed that he had edited his own biography on Wikipedia, a practice generally frowned upon within the Wikipedia community. Wales's edits were in line with his view that former editor Larry Sanger should not be considered a co-founder of Wikipedia. " I remember when I saw him do this and I commented, joking, "I saw that!" As what it seems, I am the first person to see his Larry Sanger edit [6], and I want to say that I support Jimbo on this one. He offers a personal view of what happened in the foundation of Wikipedia. He already has enough stress with Daniel Brandt and the Seigenthaler controversy on his shoulders. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 22:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Would you be willing to respond to this?

Moved other users' comment to User talk:Jimbo Wales by Mistress Selina Kyle, this is not Jimbo's user page he rarely reads it as per the header at the top

Hidden text

As regards this - I hid the text as a result of an IRC conversation with Jimbo, in which he pointed out that no serious critics have called him a pornographer, or made a serious issue of it. If the people who express these concerns are just a bunch of Internet trolls looking for an excuse to criticize Wikipedia, which is my perception, their claims and a huge defense against said claims don't need to be in the article. Again, Jimbo didn't ask me to edit it, but I decided to after he brought up the issue. -- Pakaran 20:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I, personally, consider the mere fact that you conduct casual conversations with Jimbo to be prima facie evidence that you're not qualified as a neutral arbiter in this debate. As a matter of fact I consider myself a serious critic of Jimbo, and I call much of the Bomis material softcore pornography. So I can't abide the blanking of all that text on such a flimsy basis. Matt Gies 02:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
It seems like every two-bit troll "Wikipedia critic" likes to harp on the "Jimbo is a pornographer!" line as an ad-hominem attempt to attribute guilt by association to Wikipedia. Maybe no serious critics do, but some of the silly critics make a lot of noise, and are perhaps "notable" on this account. *Dan T.* 03:15, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Hey, you're barking up the wrong tree here. I love the porno. What I hate is deception, obfuscation, blind faith, hero-worship, and hypocrisy. I don't think having made soft porn is bad; I think denying and trying to hide it is bad and highly unethical. Matt Gies 04:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course if anyone actually did make soft porn, and then tried to hide it, they would of course be in the wrong. But notice that there are two separate threads of this critique which have to be thoughtfully sorted out. The first question is the question of what Bomis was, and what to call it. I think "softcore pornography" is ludicriously POV. Indeed I am of the opinion that given the fact that since the glamour photography on the site was never more than a very tiny part of the entire business, it is as silly to even mention it in this article as it would be to mention it in the Marriott International article. I won't win that battle, though, and so what I strongly recommend is that we go back to what was a generally accepted compromise of 'erotic photography'. I will still find this article absurd to mention that, but whatever. I can live with that.

The other question is whether this article should treat this as some kind of controversy. To my knowledge it absolutely is not a controversy. Other than, as Dan T. puts it, "two-bit trolls", I am not aware of this being controversial. Matt Gies seems to agree on that point, am I right? So what I recommend is that we should entirely eliminate the suggestion that it's controversial and simply state it as a plain fact.

There is a horrible problem in this article of violation of WP:CITE. Statements are changed back and forth over and over with absolutely no external references.--Jimbo Wales 12:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that "softcore pornography" is "ludicruously POV", but erotic photography is a reasonable, inclusive term that everyone so far seems to have been able to agree to, so I've used it here as well.--Eloquence* 15:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

correcting bad facts?

In this edit [7] is the comment "correcting bad facts" but you changed it from one wrong version to an even worse vesion.

The actual historical fact, to my knowledge not contested by anyone, is that I registered the domain name, I tested several different wiki packages, installing several to test, and then I installed the Wikipedia software. I made the first edits. This was absolutely not over any objections of mine but as the culmination of many many months of me complaining to Larry that the problem with Nupedia could be solved with a more open editing model. --Jimbo Wales 12:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Wait My mistake, I linked to the wrong edit. This edit is perfectly fine. I'll have to find the one I was complaining about. :-) Apologies.--Jimbo Wales 13:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
This is the questionable edit. Notice how it is made by an anonymous redshirt and flagged as a minor edit. Notice how it takes credit away from Larry Sanger while mangling the historical facts. I know that people love to view this dispute as me thinking Larry gets too much credit, but in fact I think that in general Larry does not get enough credit. All I care about here is simple historical accuracy.--Jimbo Wales 13:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Link to class action lawsuit

No lawsuit has been filed, and there is very good reason to think that the website linked to in this article is not credibly about to file any such suit. I know of absolutely no reason to think that they are, but in any event, there is not a suit now. Therefore, linking to it as we do:

is totally silly. This method of linking implies that there _is_ a lawsuit.

The article doesn't even mention it, and so I question whether the link even belongs here. I suppose if in fact it ever does amount to anything, it should be linked, but at the present time I don't think so.--Jimbo Wales 12:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Correct, it's one of the QuakeAID sites. I'm not sure this belongs here at all since it focuses explicitly on Wikipedia rather than on you personally, and so far it is only "gathering complaints".--Eloquence* 15:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Editing my own entry

"In late 2005, a controversy arose regarding Wales and the related Wikipedia entry on himself. After Wired Magazine picked up on work from Rogers Cadenhead, Wales confirmed that he had edited his own biography on Wikipedia,"

I have no real suggestions about how this alleged controversy (was there a controversy?) should be presented it, except to say that we should absolutely not follow the lead of uninformed media. This wording suggests that Rogers Cadenhead sleuthed out some secret and then upon questeioning by Wired, I confirmed it. The actual facts of the matter is that all edits to this article by me have been done openly, under my publicly known username, and so there was no need for me to "confirm" it. This sentence contains an implication which I think will mislead readers of this article.

Perhaps something like this: "Wales has from time to time edited the article about himself in Wikipedia, in an open and public fashion, interacting with other editors on the talk page in the normal fashion."

The context of the alleged "controversy" is this: Adam Curry was caught (secretly) editing the entry about himself, and someone traced the ip number to him, he was confronted about it and admitted it. Then, a couple of weeks later, the media picked up on a bloggers report about me editing about myself, and they seemed to assume that it was the same sort of thing.

Now whether or not me editing about myself is actually controversial, I leave to others to decide. But what I do think makes sense is that we accurately report the story, and not suggest that I did this secretly and only confirmed it after being confronted by a magazine.

--Jimbo Wales 12:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I've added a note that the edits were visible and open. I've also linked your older mailing list post [8] where you stated that "it is a social faux pas to write about yourself", a quote by you which has been at the top of Wikipedia:Autobiography for quite some time.--Eloquence* 15:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd assert Jimbo wasn't writing about himself per say (I have not gone through all of Jimbo's contribs), but rather about events for which he was a witness/participant. - RoyBoy 800 17:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
It's ironic that the founder of wikipedia himself is a complete hypocrite, both to the very concept of wikipedia and to objectivety in general. I think it makes sense though, I have a sister who studies ancient roman philosophers and writers, and many of them would espouse one idea, and then in pratice do the exact opposite. As the Neitsche title says "All too human". Also I can't blame him too much, this project must have exploded his ego to tens times save levels. Once someone is involved with something this successful, only a rare few can maintain their grounding in reality.--M4bwav 16:53, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
The focus should not be on Jimbo, but rather on the edits themselves and if they are grounded in reality. If they are, then there is little to take issue with. - RoyBoy 800 17:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
But aren't there issues both with a subject editing his own article, and specifically with Mr. Wales, who wields so much influence that any suggestions might be coercive? How can anyone possibly have neutral point of view on themselves? And doesn't providing inside information from a primary source violate the tenents of publicly known and independently verifiable information, which are cornerstones of encyclopedia? Freddie deBoer 18:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of this talk page?

There are several items on this talk page which do not appear to about this article, but are rather inquiries for me which should have been left on my user talk page, or simply rants against me. I don't want to be accused of in any way stifling open discussion about this article, so I'm reluctant to remove or archive any of it myself. Could someone do that?

What I would recommend is that we archive all the points that are more than a week or two old, so that we can have a cleaner workspace to work on the errors in the article. --Jimbo Wales 13:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I've attempted to get rid of most of the unrelated items. They can now be found on your Talk page under the heading "Comments from Talk:Jimmy Wales. --Mr. Billion 05:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Paragraph about advertising

This edit inaccurately portrays even what the absurd Times Online story said. "Despite resistance to the idea" by me is relevant, as the current paragraph gives the impression that over community objections, I'm considering advertising in Wikipedia. The bit about "been known to assure people in the past" adds to the misimpression, in addition to being plainly false.

I have been saying exactly the same thing about advertising for many many years. After the Times Online story appeared, I was interviewed by other outlets, who then more accurately reported on this.--Jimbo Wales 13:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this belongs here at all, this is a biography of yourself and not a history of Wikipedia, and as you point out, it is unambiguously true that your personal position on advertising has been consistent (in fact, it has been consistently your position that the decision should not be made by you alone). Your statements at Wikimania, for example, are on the record. If anywhere, the issue of advertising belongs in the Wikipedia article.--Eloquence* 15:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

"a founder of"

If we simply count the news sites, I think it is quite clear that I am best known as "the" founder of Wikipedia. Given that there is (apparently) some controversy over that, I think the article should start off with something like an earlier revision: best known as "the head of Wikipedia" or similar, and then the controversy, if there is a controversy, should be discussed later on in the article.--Jimbo Wales 13:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

You are also the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation. Do you prefer the term "President" or "Chair"?
If this is to become a good article, we do need to write something about what your exact role and authority in Wikipedia is, which will be difficult, since it does not seem to be defined and you have rejected some of the possible labels like benevolent dictator -- so we'll simply have to describe some of the decisions you've made or refused to make in the past.--Eloquence* 15:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I normally use 'President'. I frequently in talks describe my role in Wikipedia as being analagous to 'constitutional monarch' but even that is a bit of a stretched analogy. I think it's pretty hard to find an exact term for it, especially using political analogies, since this is not a government but an encyclopedia project. --Jimbo Wales 16:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
On Larry Sanger's article, it says: "...and the co-founder of Wikipedia"...I know you are known as "the founder", but that's just a suggestion of how it could be reworded? --Gary Kirk (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)]
I would describe Larry as the "editor in chief", a position that was eliminated after it became clear that a wiki doesn't need such a thing. However, I don't think it is up to me to decide. --66.55.0.146 18:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Probably relevant to the controversy: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's".--Jimbo Wales 13:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

That can be phrased more neutrally, but yes, something to that effect should be in the article.--Eloquence* 15:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's a quote by Larry. (His history, posted on Slashdot.) I don't know if the quote should be included but it should certainly inform the debate.--Jimbo Wales 15:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I didn't realize it was a direct quote, in that case, it could certainly be inserted.--Eloquence* 16:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Is there any early statement by you where you describe your vision of Nupedia? That would be useful and interesting, I think.--Eloquence* 15:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
It certainly would be. :-) I've been hunting around for this sort of thing but unfortunately my very oldest email archives are missing, as are the very early email archives of Nupedia itself.  :-( The email archives I have do include some very interesting tidbits that haven't been made public, but I really have to think about whether and when I'd like to do that.--Jimbo Wales 15:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


I say go for it. We all have to pump our resumes wherever we can, Jimbo. --Jscott 19:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

effectively controlling a 3 vote majority?

Absolutely not true. Michael Davis and Tim Shell are independent voices, people who I trust because of long association. It is absurd for this article to claim that I somehow control them. At the very very very very least this is original research, and then beyond that of course it is highly POV.--Jimbo Wales 15:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

From the facts that (1) you admit that they are long-time trusted associates and (2) they are not Wikipedians (active editors), it is not a far-fetched conclusion that, in any conflict between you and the community, they would side with you. Even if there is any need for them to be on the board because of the technical or business roles they supposedly play, it does not explain why they and you together need to have a majority over community representatives. Gohn 15:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The biography of me is not the appropriate place for your original speculations about the composition of the board. It absolutely is a far-fetched conclusion that they would side with me; they very often do not. Contrary to your POV-pushing, the reason for them to be on the board is precisely for their experience in business and internet, as well as their support for the overall vision I set forth for our projects from the very beginning. This is not about me having personal control, it is about ensuring long-term stability. We have always regarded the current board as a transitional phase as we grow and learn as a community what the best approach is. However, and I think this is the important point here, a biography in Wikipedia is not the place for you to put your own speculations, far-fetched or otherwise. You need to provide actual sources -- I recommend magazine articles, books, newspaper stories, interview transcripts, television appearances. Wikipedia is not the place for editorializing.--Jimbo Wales 15:33, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the claims pending a source.--Eloquence* 15:45, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

"peddler of pornography"

I'd love to see a cite for "some critics" other than Internet trolls. "Some critics" have accused me of raping little boys at home, shall we include that criticism as well? In grade school, someone called me a "doody head", I think we ought to include that. My point is: describing Bomis as having something to do with erotic photography is about the same, in my mind, as describing Marriot Hotels as being a pornography distribution business. I will not win that fight. But I continue to argue that treating this as a "controversy" is silly.

The quote from Wired News was not a response to people criticizing me for being a "peddler of pornography". The interviewer asked me why I edited that out of the article, and I responded: it's a simple factual error. The Wired quote, therefore, either doesn't belong in the article at all or, perhaps, it should go into the section which explains why I edited my own biography.

My own view is that there are a number of trolls who hang out on this page and write false things about me. Because I made the mistake of reading the article and editing on impulse, it made the news. This doesn't change the fact that the alleged "critics" here are not the story.--Jimbo Wales 15:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like the "peddler of pornography" phrase either. I disagreed with you that "softporn" is a POV phrase, but "peddler" certainly is POV without clear attribution. The only site I know of that directly criticized you for Bomis' erotica business which ended up in Google News is BAOU/QuakeAID, and given that they also publish articles promoting Holocaust denial, I'm not sure they're worthy of inclusion here. But it's tough to make a truly neutral decision on that.
The Bomis connection was mentioned in at least one other interview, the Q & A on C-SPAN [9], where the interviewer asked you about "dirty pictures". I think instead of referring to it as criticism, we should simply point out that some interviewers have asked you about Bomis' erotica business, to which you have responded, etc.--Eloquence* 15:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, done. Could someone please look over the punctuation in the quotes? I always get those wrong in English.--Eloquence* 16:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

atlantis/wetheliving

I still think the best reference to Ayn Rand would be the magazine article in Florida Trend, or perhaps my interview with C-SPAN. Random links to google groups are original research and we have a proper reference, so why not use that?

In any event, Atlantis was an unmoderated forum, always, and I was never the moderator of any mailing lists of the wetheliving community. Bomis never owned or operated the site. --Jimbo Wales 17:05, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

What does "Atlantis list run by jwales at bomis.com" mean then? Gohn 17:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't know, where does it say that?--Jimbo Wales 18:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I found it. That's just something that mailman says by default for whoever is setup as the contact person or whatever of a mailing list. It says that for unmoderated and moderated lists.--Jimbo Wales 18:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
1) The current nameserver entries for wetheliving.com are gunther.bomis.com and zwinger.wikipedia.org. Perhaps you can simply answer some basic questions, so we can present a clearer picture in the article (or leave out things which are not relevant). What is Bomis' association with wetheliving.com? Who operates the site? Who owns the servers it runs on? What was your role in its creation?
The site was closed down a long time ago. It was owned and operated by Kirez Korgan. Wetheliving was hosted by Bomis for some period of time. This was not a relationship of management or control, but rather a relationship of customer/hosting company. I had no role in the creation of the site. Kirez founded the site and when he had some troubles with his hosting company, he decided to move it to Bomis. Bomis hosted many other sites under similar arrangements.--Jimbo Wales 18:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
The article should now reflect the fact that Bomis provided hosting for some time.--Eloquence* 18:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
What do you mean the site was closed down a long time ago? It was still there when I clicked Eloquence's link just hours ago. At this moment, strangely, it doesn't work any more. And what's with zwinger.wikipedia.org? Does that mean a Wikipedia server hosted that mailing list? Gohn 19:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it seems that the frontpage was taken down just now, but I'm not sure if the mailing lists were still operational even before then. zwinger.wikipedia.org is one of the important servers in the Wikimedia matrix. When you set up a site with a domain name, you need to associate it with two nameservers, preferably in different networks. This is separate from the actual hosting of the content; it merely makes sure that when you type a name like "wetheliving.com", you get sent to the right numerical IP address. Because nameservers can crash, there's always at least two of them. But again, this is emphatically not the same as hosting the content on Wikimedia's servers.
Historically, zwinger has been used as a secondary nameserver for some sites run by or associated with Bomis, including babeengine.com.--Eloquence* 20:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
2) Atlantis forked into Atlantis II, and as can be seen from the archives there (you have to join as a member to see them), several members complained about your style of moderation of the list. I think many members of Atlantis II would disagree that Atlantis was an unmoderated forum. But if you insist that it was, we can represent the controversy in an NPOV fashion. I also have an archive of Atlantis from January 2002 to May 2004 and I can check the facts there as well, if needed. Addendum: Looking at the archives, it appears that you removed members for personal attacks until April 14, 2003 and then implemented a policy of flagging them for "personal moderation". I think this unambiguously qualifies as you moderating the list, though it is true that there are different types of moderation.
I think it is totally unimportant and not worthy of mention in the article at all, actually. Representing "the controversy" in an NPOV fashion would simply make the article even more imbalanced, I think, by creating a rather long explanation of something that is quite surely trivial.--Jimbo Wales 18:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Then let's simply state that you moderated the list and leave out all this other nonsense.--Eloquence* 18:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
3) I disagree with you that Usenet postings are "original research". Information published on the Net is fair game. However, it needs to be relevant and to the point, so I have removed the general Google Groups search link Gohn inserted. Removing information from the Net retroactively, like Bomis Premium was removed from the Internet Archive by someone with access to the Bomis servers, does not change its status of having been a public source.
I do not know if it is worth mentioning in the article, but it is also true that at least three other people associated with Bomis and Wiki[mp]edia, Tim Shell, Terry Foote and Larry Sanger, have expressed objectivist/libertarian positions, and that your brother Johnny ran as a candidate for the Alabama Libertarian Party. [10] Based on the published facts, we can certainly say more than was published in the news media without violating WP:NOR.--Eloquence* 17:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I would say that it is probably not worth mentioning in the article. My political and philosophical views are widely known, and the views of other people seem hardly relevant or interesting in that context. (It might be different if, for example, I was in any way contesting the issue, and we needed to independently establish it.) But I've been interviewed by magazines, newspapers, and television, and those seem to me to be better sources (more informative for the reader) than this stuff, which I still think amounts to original research.
There is nothing to be done about it at this moment in time, but one of the strange things about this article is the very odd view of me that it gives. There's a reason for that. You can dig up on the Internet that I managed a mailing list when I was in college. You can't dig up on the Internet anything about my reading. People know of my interest in firearms policy (a very very minor interest, by the way), because it's on the net. My much deeper interest in dozens of other topics is not on the net at all.
This is a problem with all verifiable biography, though. It's just very interesting to be a subject of it all. :-)
There's a very curious cycle at work here. Originally people looked up a few facts about me online and put them in the article. They ignored or didn't chance upon other facts about me. (Has anyone written about my interest in parenting philosophy? No, but they could have, had they happened to find the mailing list where I used to discuss it.) Then, the media prepped for interviews by reading the article about me. This, then, gives rise to further verifiability for the facts already known, and obscurity to facts not already known.
Therefore, the article reads very very strangely to me, in a way that is difficult for anyone else to really feel the impact of. I spend more time each day now studying German than I ever spent on studying firearms public policy, and yet, I'm not described in the article as a "German language enthusiast". My dozens of books at home with stories about people sailing around the world, which I have spent many happy hours reading, also are not mentioned... of course.
It's all very curious and strange.--Jimbo Wales 18:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think it's very appropriate for the article to mention your objectivism, since you have sent many hundreds of messages to the relevant newsgroups and discussion lists on that particular topic. I doubt that you have spent as much time learning German, or you'd already have a higher edit count on the German Wikipedia. ;-) I'm not sure about the firearms issue and whether it belongs in the page. Given your political views, it would be far more astonishing if you supported gun control.
I don't think it's curious that people focus on potentially controversial issues; in fact, we used to have a guideline that suggested starting a stub article by picking the most controversial things you can find about a topic, because it motivates others to contribute. ;-) I do believe that it's important that we get those particular issues right, that we do not downplay or minimize the facts, and that we do not sensationalize them either. But of course I would like to have more facts included in the article.
So why don't you spend some time sleuthing the web and post some links to other interests of yours and where you expressed them? We can also quote you directly, of course.--Eloquence* 18:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
As long as we're keeping stuff in other people's biographies that the subject in question dislikes for some reason, we've got to be careful not to be seen as "whitewashing" Jimmy's own bio to his taste... that would be used against us. *Dan T.* 19:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
True. But I don't think we're doing that at all.--Eloquence* 19:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll point out for the record that We the Living is in the Internet Archive at time of this writing [11]. Jimmy, I would appreciate it if you could make sure this time that it is not removed the same way some of the Bomis content was. (Content is only removed from the Archive if site owners place specific robots.txt instructions on their servers.) I can appreciate that the site was taken down if it was inactive, but I really don't like seeing historical records deleted.--Eloquence* 20:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments on the latest version, by Larry Sanger

I am going to make one last post on Wikipedia about this issue, and then let the chips fall where they may--I do hate to seem petty and self-serving in commenting about this issue. Please take what I have to say here into consideration when you edit the relevant paragraphs.

Indented below are some paragraphs from the current version of the article, followed by my comments (not indented):

Using a wiki to create encyclopedic content was publicly proposed by Larry Sanger on January 10, 2001.

I think I publicly proposed that there be a Nupedia wiki--which is what Wikipedia began as--some time earlier than that. Check Nupedia-l and, if they have it (they should, if they still have Nupedia-l!) Advisory-l. Moreover, everyone still agrees that I proposed to Jimmy (privately) that a wiki be set up for me to work on. I believe that was Jan. 2, and I think the wiki was set up the next day.

The wiki was set up by Wales and started on January 15, 2001.

Well, this is also misleading. The software was installed on Wikipedia.com some days before that--whether by Jimmy or by the Bomis sysop, I don't recall. If Jimmy says he installed the wiki software, then I'm sure he did. I then transferred pages that I had written on the Nupedia wiki to the Wikipedia wiki, and otherwise whipped the introductory documents into shape, and spearheaded the effort. Given this, I wonder what the strength of this claim, "the wiki was set up by Wales," could be. Is he being credited with setting up the software? That's something the sysop could have done; it wouldn't matter nearly as much as the fact that he gave the go-ahead for work on Wikipedia to get started. That's what he did, and it was quite significant.

Wikipedia was at that point a 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 Nupedia was mothballed.

This is fine.

Wales has sometimes been referred to in the press as the (implicitly) sole "founder" of Wikipedia, including in a 2004 Newsweek Magazine article [4]. Sanger has strongly contested this assertion, considering himself a co-founder along with Wales, and criticizing reports that have suggested otherwise.

This is biased by omission. It omits that earlier in 2004 and before that, we received co-billing in news reports and in Wikipedia articles themselves. Jimmy changed his practice in 2004, and then more recently started editing the articles about himself (and about me) to downplay my involvement.

The other thing I want to say about the text above is this: I started publicly contesting the assertion that Jimmy is the sole founder of Wikipedia only after he introduced the brand new claim that the person who first had the idea for a wiki encyclopedia was someone other than me (see [12] and my reply [13]), and in other respects took active steps to downplay my role. If he had taken no such steps, I might have let him start calling himself "the (singular) founder" without comment at all.

Jimmy himself, I'd like to point out, has never denied that it was the idea that I had, and the proposal that I made, that led directly to the birth of Wikipedia. If what he has said is true, then the most he can mean is that he heard about wikis, and that the idea could be applied to encyclopedias, from someone else. But he never told me about this. It was only after I independently had the idea and asked Jimmy to set up a wiki for me that Jimmy set up a wiki for me to get started; and that became Wikipedia. The point is this: the fact that Jimmy heard about the idea from someone else had no important causal impact on anything. I have to insist, again, on a very important point: Jimmy isn't denying this. As he has made clear [14]: "Of course I 'admit' it. :-)"

These are important pieces of missing context.

However, Sanger has also stated: "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." [5]

This makes it sound as if I were agreeing with Jimmy that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia. But that's not correct. Jimmy had the idea for an open source encyclopedia. I never denied that, of course. In fact, Jimmy does deserve huge credit for the existence of Wikipedia, because he put his money behind his idea of a free encyclopedia. Still, it was I who had the idea (the whole set of ideas) for the successful implementation of Jimmy's idea: a wiki-run encyclopedia.

If you want to be quite fair, rather than taking my words out of context, you might quote a few other parts too [15]:

I have also been quoted, as co-founder of Wikipedia, in many recent news articles about the project...

It was my job to solve these problems [with Nupedia]. ... So it was while I was thinking hard about how to create a more open system, that would require minimal programming to set up, that I had dinner with an old Internet friend of mine, Ben Kovitz. [...] So Ben explained the idea of Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb to me. Instantly I was considering whether wiki would work as a more open and simple editorial system for a free, collaborative encyclopedia, and it seemed exactly right. And the more I thought about it, without even having seen a wiki, the more it seemed obviously right. So I'm sure it was that very evening or the following morning that I wrote a proposal--unfortunately, lost now--in which I said that this might solve the problem and that we ought to try it. After he had nixed my several earlier proposals, and given that setting up a wiki would be very simple and require hiring no programmer, Jimmy could scarcely refuse. I vaguely recall that he liked the idea but was initially skeptical--properly so, as I was, despite my excitement.

Jeremy Rosenfeld has been credited by Wales as the originator of the idea for a wiki-model encyclopedia, although the details of this are the subject of controversy between Sanger and Wales. [6]

Is that true? Without any further context or qualification, it clearly implies that Jimmy claims Jeremy Rosenfeld made this big proposal that led to Wikipedia. But that's not, after being pressed, what Jimmy has ever said or even clearly implied; see the context of the infamous Wikipedia-l discussion [16].

So, in fact, I'm not sure there is any controversy. What is the controversy about? Jimmy has never denied that I had the idea that caused Wikipedia to come into being. And yet this article sees fit not to mention that, but instead that Jimmy has claimed that some other guy mentioned something to him that really had nothing to do with the origin of Wikipedia.

Jimmy, if you're reading this: do you agree that I had the idea that caused Wikipedia to come into being? Also, do you agree that I played a key role in spearheading the project, formulating and enforcing policy, and so forth? If you agree on those two things, then what is our alleged controversy about?

Or, if you agree with me that there's no controversy here, why don't we issue a joint statement saying what we agree upon, and maybe we can put this behind us? Then we can go on and not have to revisit this silly issue ever again!

--Larry Sanger 04:35, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll go through some of this later. The Nupedia-L archives are down, but some of the early messages can still be accessed through the Internet Archive (I have made copies given that they could be removed at any time); not sure if the ones you're referring to are accessible. I have one question for both you and Jimmy: In your "Let's make a wiki!" post [17], you wrote: "No, this is not an indecent proposal. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not." What discussions preceded your posting from which you concluded that Jimmy thought that? Jimmy, was this post an accurate portrayal of how you felt at the time?--Eloquence* 05:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Interesting, maybe it wasn't until Jan. 10 that we mentioned the idea to anyone on Nupedia, but I suspect I made a proposal earlier on Advisory-l. (Again, it would be great if the Advisory-l archives could be unearthed.) I think what Jimmy must have meant (you can ask him) is that Nupedia's editors and peer reviewers wouldn't go for a wiki feature. He himself was always behind it, as far as I recall. Not that that really matters one way or another, because he sure got behind it in a big way in very short order. --Larry Sanger 19:54, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the advisory-l archives were members only, and therefore have not been spidered by the Internet Archive. [18] What do you guys do with your old e-mail anyway? I have personal e-mail archives going back to 1997... If you remember names of the members of the list, we can contact them individually and ask them if they still have copies. I don't know what happened to the files on the Nupedia server(s) -- Jimmy, perhaps you can answer that?--Eloquence* 21:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
It would seem from that archive that Sanger was also the first to mention the name "Wikipedia" [19] -- was the name his idea? *Dan T.* 22:27, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
There are some changes I'll make based on your above comments (and we'll have to take care to be consistent throughout Larry Sanger, Wikipedia and History of Wikipedia), but I'll comment on one bit for now: Is he being credited with setting up the software? That's something the sysop could have done .. Jimmy says he tested several wiki packages and installed one. It was UseModWiki. I do believe that this particular choice was very important -- UseMod was perhaps the best available simple wiki engine at the time, and UseMod's creator Clifford Adams would later come up with [[free links]], a key factor in making Wikipedia usable. I'm fairly confident that Wikipedia would have been a failure if it had started with, say, TWiki.
The truth is also that given all the facts I've seen so far, I believe it is true by any reasonable definition that you were the co-founder of Wikipedia. Jimmy, I think if you can agree on this, we will save a lot of ink that will otherwise be spilled on an NPOV view of "the controversy". What do you say?--Eloquence* 01:23, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up unrelated content

This page acquired a lot of unrelated stuff; mostly it was comments addressed to Jimmy. It can now be found here. We should also archive this page, after the discussion Larry Sanger started above is finished. --Mr. Billion 05:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Added picture...

..Of Jimmy looking less, well, like he's about to announce his plans for global domination (not necessarily a bad thing?) --Mistress Selina Kyle (Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) 12:13, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

It looks like it has unknown copyright status and may have been deleted over at Commons. —Ilyanep (Talk) 16:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
If it was deleted at Commons it wouldn't be showing here, as it's not separately uploaded here as what the images say, "this is a picture from commons, this is it's description page from there" ;)   --Mistress Selina Kyle (Α⇔Ω ¦ ⇒✉) 23:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I've gotta say that I think his original picture was a lot better. The new "friendly cuddly just happen to be editing wikipedia" look is just one big cliche. - Hahnchen 00:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

User page external link?

Was this consciously done to minimize userpage vandalism; otherwise shouldn't it go into a See also section. - RoyBoy 800 07:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

See WP:ASR. In short, some sites using our content don't reproduce user pages, only articles, so if we link to the user page here on WP, those sites' users can reach it. -- Pakaran 20:55, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Home address

I tried to remove his home address from the article, but inadvertently removed all the other revisions now. I think I'm just going to leave the page be. Sorry for the disruption. -- Pakaran 00:35, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

"I rarely read this."

For rarely reading this talk page, Jimmy sure has chimed in a lot!

Also, the very fact that Jimmy's page is protected hypocritically underscores the problems associated with such a project, don't you think? Wikipedia is not exactly the encyclopedia "that anyone can edit." If it was, I would modify his article.

Registered users can still edit this article. →AzaToth 14:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, is that true? "Editing of this page by new or anonymous users is temporarily disabled." If this statement is to be believed, I cannot create an account and immediately begin to edit.

So true. "Registered users" is not the same as "anyone."

But anyone can register. Brendanfox 00:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Jimmy himself should have something to say about this. For he created a system that intentionally does not require registration to edit entries. He must have had a reason. But he has reversed himself when it came to his own entry. Why? Unfortunately, his decision smacks of hypocrisy. One is led to believe that he promotes the product when it is used to spread information about everyone else (true or false) but not himself. I'm sure I'm way off base on this one. Please help! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.250.2.96 (talk • contribs) .

Um, it's to prevent vandalism, not prevent anonymous editors from editing. Vandals often switch proxies and hide behind anonymous accounts in order to vandalise certain articles. It's purely a temporary measure. The alternative would to prevent everyone except administrators from editing the page until the vandals left, which would be worse. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 12:59, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The statement that "anyone can edit Wikipedia" is patently false. Neither Wales nor myself can edit this article, Wales because he'll be criticized, myself because I'm not logged in as a registered user. Why continue this fiction? 194.146.111.10 17:14, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Wales can edit this article; him being criticized after the fact does not prevent it. You can edit this article; you just need to register. It's "anyone can edit", not "anyone can edit without registering", and the registration does not even need a valid email. --cesarb 17:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Anyone can edit in the sense that there is no approval of whom. However, not all new users and anonymous users can edit, since they're more likely to be wandals. Feel free to register a user and edit. Noone stops you, you are actually more anonymous as a registered user. And you can still edit the vast majority of the articles on wikipedia, we just restrict access to those that are frequently vandalized. vidarlo 17:22, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds awfully complicated to me. More complicated than, say, "anyone can edit." 194.146.111.10 18:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Do you have something to hide by registering? You tell us more about yourself with an IP address than with your username. -- user:zanimum

Anti-elitist

This reads in the article:

"Sanger has since criticized Wales's approach to the project [8], describing Wales as being "decidedly anti-elitist." Wales took issue with this description in the above-mentioned C-SPAN interview, describing himself as not anti-elitist, but "perhaps anti-credentialist. To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters.... You can't coast on your credentials on Wikipedia.... You have to enter the marketplace of ideas and engage with people"

What exactly does anti-elitist mean? That he doesn't care for snobs? That he doesn't favour people according to their education? That's a good thing, isn't it? --Candide, or Optimism 05:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I would call being anti-elitist a good thing. I don't understand how it could be a bad thing. It's worked out pretty well for wikipedia i would say.--Alhutch 05:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I just wanted to make sure I understood it right. I mean, I don't understand why Larry would be pro-elite. --Candide, or Optimism 05:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
me neither. or why Jimmy would deny being anti-elitist.--Alhutch 06:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Anti-elitist is good .... for hill-billies. Hooo33ter 20:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
What's likely meant is something like a philistinist. Someone who prefers the opinions of regular people to experts on a topic. Hence against "the elite", namely people with PhDs or expertise on a topic.--T. Anthony 13:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
You could actually bother reading the article, you know, where the term is defined.

Cousins

Repeatedly removed from the main page are mentions of important cousins of Jimbo Wales/Whales as his Brit cousin James Whales, the creator of the Frakenstein movie , a model for the Jimbo pics on this website.

And the outlaw Josey Wales movie by Clint Eastwood- which is actually about a folk hero not an outlaw , who would never condone soft or hard porn or steal ideas and claim then, the whole internet - Al Gore like; if anyone can figure out who did what in the beginning of wikipedia- Sanger or Wales a period of a whale of a good time.

Too many photos of Jimmy

There are too many posed photos of Jimmy on this page. Borderline personality cult and therefor POV. Let us get it down to just two photos. Just use some judgement. For instance, compare your treatment of Jimmy with that of Chuck Colson. You got Colson's mug shot as his only photo. You might like Jimmy and not like Colson, but it does not really give you permission to be unfair and POV. I mean, NNDB hardly likes Colson, but at least they put a decent photo of him on their page:

http://www.nndb.com/people/446/000023377/

-- Pinktulip 08:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the new photograph a lot-it looks pretty damn cool! - 09:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC) The Great Gavini lobster telephone

I agree with Pinktulip. His face isn't changing or anything...you can illustrate perfectly fine with one two pictures. Four is excessive and not needed. Mike H. That's hot 09:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I also agree with Pinktulip. The first thing I noticed on the page was the high number of photos. I think Image:DSC02502 modified.jpg should be removed and possibly another. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 06:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Never too Many Photos of Jimbo

Hey Jimbo - just dropping a line - You rock BTW. Still planning on Interviewing you at harvard. On my shopping list - Mac Mini - + Adelphia cable to set up an IRC network! Stay tuned! February = St. Val's Massacre! - TTys!

-Chris Bradley

actual name?

james,jimmy,or jimbo.i think the last one is good.--Jayanthv86 18:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Jimmy is his actual name. bogdan 20:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

?

What exactly is this supposed to mean- 'We’re already taking back the Internet. With your help, we can take back the world.' this sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. (Paulo Fontaine 03:13, 25 January 2006 (UTC))

"Jimmy, what are we going to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night, Larry. Try to take over the world!"
Now, joking aside, I assume that he means that more knowledge and understanding would create a better world. Many of today's conflicts are caused by the narrow view of people that don't know or don't want to hear other people's point of view. bogdan 14:16, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Life before Wikipedia

"so the school grouped together first through eighth grades"

There is no need for the sentence to read "first through fourth grades and fifth through eighth grades" when you could just as easily say "first through eighth grades". There is no grade between fourth grade and fifth grade, so "first through fourth grades" and "fifth through eighth grades" have no reason to be separated within the sentence. 69.138.229.246 05:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

There's a difference between having one group, consisting of grades 1 - 8, and two groups, one consisting of grades 1-4 and another consisting of grades 5-8. Your edit changes the meaning of the sentence. --BrianH123 05:26, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

No Appeal:Reckless falsity,and truth Banned from your publishing organ

The post you removed was in no way an appeal. I do not intend to make an appeal to you concerning my accused POV pushing. I would suggest that you not allow of yourself to be put in the wrong, and suggest that you avail of the chance to repair the damage to yourself as publisher of an accusation made with such reckless disregard to falsity. This is not an appeal. EffK 11:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Should this be regarded as a legal threat? *Dan T.* 18:55, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Is he a Democrat or Republican?

--Greasysteve13 12:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

He's probably wise enough not to make that information public. – ClockworkSoul 18:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Didn't he once say that he supports G. W. Bush and Iraq War? And he once said he's a Libertarian. Meg Griffin
I don't know, that's kinda why I asked.--Greasysteve13 05:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

No. — Phil Welch (t) (c) 22:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

OK to add? your SIMS/Berkeley talk in November

Jimmy,

OK to add the following link to this article?: it's the audio from your talk in November at UC Berkeley --

http://dream.sims.berkeley.edu/~jhall/wales_sims_03-Nov-2005.mp3

--Kessler 16:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Do you really need permission to post media of the subject of an article? Would this be the procedure for any other person who has an article on Wikipedia? Shouldn't Mr. Wales be subject to the same process as anyone else? Freddie deBoer 17:46, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

  • This is a link -- its copyright status is irrelevant to Wikipedia. The host page either has permission to post the content, claims fair use, or has a problem; but, that is not something WP needs to be concerned about (unless it is notified the linked page is suspected of infringement.) It was polite to ask Jimbo, but unnecessary, and Mr. DeBoer is correct that it probably would not be done in most similar cases. Xoloz 18:07, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:Bounty

I have posted a bounty of $20 USD at the bounty board in an effort to get the biography of WP's founder up to featured article status. Please help! Thanks, Xoloz 18:09, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Socialtext press release is offline

Socialtext's press release about Wales joining them is offline, requested for citation in the article, and out of Google's cache. What to do? Leffa 01:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Link please

I dare not edit this page ;-) so could someone please put up a link to User:Larry Sanger/Origins of Wikipedia? TIA. --Larry Sanger 02:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

User:Gohn has now put it in External Links. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

nitpicking about start of wikipedia

This article says "The wiki was set up by Wales and started on January 15, 2001.". Now, I'm not trying to disgrace/dethrone Jimbo or anything, I'm just courious wether that's precisely what happened. From this sentence "While the first edit on Wikipedia ever made is believed to be a test edit by Wales..." [20] one would think that Jimbo set up the wiki. But, here Larry, not Jimbo announced that Wikipedia is up. Now, I'm wondering, did anybody ever tried to figure out who was the guy who pushed the button, who actually installed the wiki and made the first edit? Well, why believing ("is believed to be"), why not asking Jimbo and Larry? They shoud know who installed the wiki and did the testing prior to Larry's mail on the list, shouldn't they? --Dijxtra 16:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I physically set up the site and made the first edits.--Jimbo Wales 00:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

New to VANDALISM IN PROGESS, need to stop user ASAP, don't know where to go

I reported this to vanalism in progress, but I don't know who too report this too ASAP, to stop user ASAP:

MAJOR VANDALISM PLEASE ADRESS IMMEDIATLY. Ta bu shi da yu is currently deleting every Time magazine cover on dozens of pages. He is ignorant of Copyright law, when I sent him a courteousy message, explaining copyright law and a case on point which makes the use of Time magazine covers legal, he beligerently "said go ahead punk...My deleting will continue until a Foundation member or Jimbo tells me otherwise." He needs to be blocked immediatly for vandalim. Travb 23:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I reported the user to another site. This user seems to have the idea that his behavior was condoned here. Sorry for the emotionally outburst. Travb 23:25, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Things about which Larry and I agree

Based solely on some comments earlier on the page...

1. "If Jimmy says he installed the wiki software, then I'm sure he did."

2."Jimmy, if you're reading this: do you agree that I had the idea that caused Wikipedia to come into being? Also, do you agree that I played a key role in spearheading the project, formulating and enforcing policy, and so forth? If you agree on those two things, then what is our alleged controversy about?"

I agree that Larry proposing a wiki was causally relevant in the start of Wikipedia. I had been complaining for a very long time about the top-down approach he took at Nupedia, and the wiki way much more closely matched my original concept.

And I agree that, along with at least a dozen other equally important people (for example The Cunctator, whom Larry wanted to ban as a troll), Larry played a key role in spearheading the project, formulating and enforcing policy, and so forth.

3. "Jimmy must have meant (you can ask him) is that Nupedia's editors and peer reviewers wouldn't go for a wiki feature. He himself was always behind it, as far as I recall."

Yes. It has been strangely reported that Wikipedia was set up against my objections. Larry and I can both agree that that's a complete fiction.

A separate point of some potential relevance:

To my knowledge, Larry was never called co-founder during his tenure at Wikipedia, and the term only started to be used after he left Wikipedia and began to refer to himself in that way. Maybe I'm wrong about that; I would like to see the evidence. It would be interesting to do research in the archives of Wikipedia itself to try to find the first such reference.

The current version of the article suggests that I was happy with Larry being called the co-founder for a long time, and then suddenly tried to grab credit for myself. This is preposterous. I have never thought of Larry as the co-founder, and I don't think it's a very plausible claim. I have always called myself the founder. And I always will, regardless of whether Wikipedia gets it right or not.

Larry and a lot of very good people deserve credit for a lot of amazing work. But as Larry himself graciously concedes, "to be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine." To me that settles it, to him it doesn't. History will decide.

--Jimbo Wales 00:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I hope you agree that for Wikipedia to "get it right" is to take a neutral point of view. ;-) In this case, the relevant articles will have to summarize the controversy briefly (with ideally a single article, e.g. History of Wikipedia, giving a detailed discussion, and all others linking to that section).
Regarding Larry referring to himself as co-founder, he did so as early as February 2002 in a letter to the Spanish Wikipedia [21], a few days before he officially resigned, but after he got off the Bomis payroll; not sure about any earlier references.--Eloquence* 01:17, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
On this you might consult some earlier press reports. They're listed here on Wikipedia in the earliest press coverage pages. Anyway, I haven't the slightest interest in debating Jimmy about this, and his increasingly hostile and self-serving approach to the issue of Wikipedia's origins, which was never a serious issue of contention before 2005, just saddens me. What I have to say is contained in my memoir and in this (briefer) summing up of the controversy. --Larry Sanger 07:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Problem editing this article

When I try to edit this article, it only says "view source" instead of the normal edit. Whats broken here???? —The preceding unsigned comment was added on 28 February 2006 23:38 by 207.200.114.52 (talk • contribs) .

The article was protected. It's now been unprotected. jacoplane 23:58, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


Stigma of "Bomis Babes"

OK, so BB is not a brand. I can accept that. It would be nice to know how much money he made directly from Bomis Babes. If it is part of a larger formulation of product, perhaps some traffic statistics would help in estimating whether "porno King" is an appropriate moniker for Mr. Wales. It would help in evaluting a statement such as "Wikipedia was initially built with porno money." If these are unfair characterizations, then so be it, but right now, we and the reader are left wondering. Mr. Wales is now asking for a great deal of trust to be placed in him. He has set himself up as a monarch within the Wikimeida Foundation. He is asking us to volunteer our time and money to his foundation. He has the trust of a large number of young and impressionable minds in the form of both Wikipedian editors and Wikipedia readers in many institutions of learning. A proper vetted process is appropriate and demanding candor, even about sensitive issues like fanancial matters is merely responsible guardianship of young minds. -- OlympiaDiego 15:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "Bomis Babes" and there never was. There was a "Bomis Babe Report", a blog among several, which was in part an advertising vehicle for Bomis Premium, a softporn paysite (no sex as far as I know; mostly nudie pics and some posing with dildos). The Wikipedia articles on Bomis and Jimmy mention what is publicly known. You can ask Jimmy for further details on the financial importance of Bomis Premium, but I doubt that he will provide any on the record. Original research into these matters does not belong here.--Eloquence* 08:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)