Jimmy Wales | |
![]() Jimmy Wales in April 2008
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Born | Jimmy Donal Wales August 7, 1966 Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.A. |
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Nationality | American |
Other names | Jimbo, James |
Alma mater | Auburn University University of Alabama Indiana University Bloomington |
Occupation | President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation |
Website blog.jimmywales.com Wikipedia Userpage |
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966)[1][2][3][4] is an American Internet entrepreneur known for his role in the creation of Wikipedia, a free open content encyclopedia launched in 2001.[5][6] He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, holding the board-appointed "community founder" seat.[7] In 2004, he founded Wikia, a privately owned free web hosting service.
Although Wales has long been cited as the co-founder of Wikipedia, he disputes the "co-" designation,[8] asserting that he is "the sole founder of Wikipedia".[9] With others, Wales laid the foundation for Wikipedia's rapid growth and popularity.[10][11] As Wikipedia expanded and its public profile grew, Wales took on the role of the project's spokesman and promoter through speaking engagements and media appearances.
His work with Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world's most influential people.[12] Wales is the de facto leader of Wikipedia,[13][5] where his role in the project has gained broad media attention and has led to controversy.[12][14]
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Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, United States. His father, Jimmy,[15] worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran a small private school, in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales received his early education. He and only four other children were placed in the same grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students.[16] After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,[17] a university-preparatory school in Huntsville. Wales has said that the school was expensive for his family, but that education was regarded as important: "Education was always a passion in my household … you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."[16]
He received his bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University and entered the Ph.D. finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a Master's degree.[16] He then took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance program at Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a Ph.D.[16]
His first wife, Pam, was quoted in a September 2008 W magazine article as saying that Wales, because he believed altruism was evil, discouraged her from pursuing a nursing degree when they were married: "His whole ‘Mr. Save the World’ is so contrary to what he said every day for seven years."[18] Late in March 1997, Wales married his second wife, Christine, in Monroe County, Florida.[19] They have a daughter named Kira and are separated.[20] As of 2007[update], Wales resided in the St. Petersburg, Florida, area.[21]
Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography.[22] After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales announced in March 2008 on his Wikipedia user page (and later on his personal blog) that there had been a relationship but that it was over and that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia.[23][24] Marsden claimed to have learned about the breakup by reading about it on Wikipedia, and listed for eBay auction a T-shirt and sweater which she claimed Wales left behind at her apartment.[25][23]
From 1994 to 2000, Wales was the research director at Chicago Options Associates,[26] a futures and options trading firm in Chicago.[16] By "speculating on interest rate and foreign-currency fluctuations," he had soon earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives," according to Daniel Pink of Wired.[27] During this time, one of the projects Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis,[27] which featured user-generated webrings and that, according to The Atlantic Monthly, "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet."[28] For a time the company sold erotic photographs,[29] and Wales described the site as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a similar market to Maxim.[16] Although Wales is no longer connected with the company, his involvement with Bomis has been criticized, with questions frequently asked about the nature of its content.[30][31] Bomis provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.[27]
In March 2000, Wales started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief.[16] Nupedia was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.[32] After Sanger publicly proposed on January 10, 2001 the idea of using a wiki to create an encyclopedia, Wales installed wiki software on a server and authorized Sanger to pursue the project under his supervision. Sanger dubbed the project "Wikipedia" and, with Wales, laid down the founding principles and content, establishing an Internet-based community of contributors during that year. Wikipedia was initially intended to be a wiki-based site for collaboration on early encyclopedic content for submission to Nupedia, but Wikipedia's rapid growth quickly overshadowed Nupedia's development.[26] Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002; Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1.[33][34] Wales has said that he initially was so worried with the concept that he would wake up in the middle of the night, wanting to check the site for vandalism.[35] In the early years, Wales supplied the financial backing for the project.[10] In a 2004 interview with Slashdot, Wales explained his motivations about Wikipedia, "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."[36]
In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in St. Petersburg, Florida, and now based in San Francisco, California.[37][38] Originally chairman of the foundation, Wales has held the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus since 2006. He is now one of eight directors who make up its Board of Trustees.[39] The work he carries out for the foundation has always been unpaid, including his appearances to promote the organization at computer and educational conferences.[29] In a 2007 interview, Wales said he had mixed feelings about having "donated" Wikipedia to the foundation, as he estimated its value at US$3 billion, but added that he is glad he did, as this is only the case because of the nature of Wikipedia itself.[40]
In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of subsidizing personal expenditures with foundation funds. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, though Wales denied this claim.[41] Foundation Chair Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that for items he did not have receipts for, he paid out of his own pocket.[20] Later in March 2008, it was alleged by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more "favourable" in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense."[41][42]
In 2004, Wales co-founded, with Angela Beesley, the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.[26] Wikia is a wiki farm—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website.[43] Some of the most popular wikis include Memory Alpha (devoted to Star Trek), WoWWiki (World of Warcraft) and Wookieepedia (Star Wars).[44] Another service offered by Wikia is an open source web search engine named Wikia Search, intended to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it's created into the search engine's operations.[45] Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor Gil Penchina, a former vice president and general manager at eBay, on June 5, 2006.[46]
Wales has publicly disputed Larry Sanger's role as co-founder of Wikipedia.[47] Wales has asserted that because Sanger was his paid employee,[48] he is the sole founder of the project.[49] In 2006, Wales told The Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder.[49] However, Sanger was identified as co-founder at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times[50] and was referred to as a founder alongside Wales in Wikipedia's first press release in 2002.[51] In addition to developing Wikipedia in its early phase and guiding the project,[10][8] Sanger was responsible for the idea of applying the wiki concept to the building of a free encyclopedia, and for the name "Wikipedia".[8][52] In a 2005 memoir for Slashdot, Sanger nevertheless ascribed the broader idea to Wales: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis. … The actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on."[53] In response to Wales' statement,[54] Sanger posted on his personal webpage a collection of statements confirming his role in founding Wikipedia, by referencing earlier versions of Wikipedia pages, citing Wikipedia press releases, and linking to early media coverage, all of which described Wales and Sanger as the co-founders.[55] In a discussion in March 2007 with Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press, Wales said: "When you write this up please do not uncritically repeat Sanger's absurd claim to be the co-founder of Wikipedia." He added: "I am not bent out of shape about it. The facts are on my side, which is why I bother so little about it."[8] Wales' role in the Wikipedia community has been described as "benevolent dictator for life."[56]
In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.[57] Sanger commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will be out."[31][58] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company's products.[31] An article in the July 31, 2006, issue of The New Yorker magazine expanded on this topic, stating that Wales was "caught airbrushing his Wikipedia entry—eighteen times in the past year" and that he was "sensitive about references to the porn traffic on his Web portal".[52]
In both cases, Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content.[31] He apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally frowned upon at Wikipedia. Wales said in the Wired interview, "People should not do it, including me. I wish I had not done it."[31]
Wales had previously edited his entries on Wikipedia and on the Wikimedia Foundation's website in 2004 to indicate his date of birth is August 7, 1966.[59] He also made a statement in 2006 in which he wrote in part: "My date of birth is not August 8, 1966."[60] The Encyclopædia Britannica, Current Biography, and Who’s Who in America support these statements.[2][3][4] According to a researcher’s note on the Britannica’s website in June 2007, Wales contacted Britannica claiming that the date of August 7, 1966, was incorrect but was unwilling to provide them with a documented alternative, unless his birth date was removed, which violated Britannica's policies.[61] On July 27, 2007, when asked by Oregonian reporter Mike Rogoway when his birthday was, Wales is reported to have mysteriously stated, "Nobody knows."[62] Moreover, on his blog, Rogoway claimed that a Florida public records search shows that Wales’ driver's license lists his date of birth as August 8, 1966.[2] In August 2007, Wales expanded on this in his Wikipedia talk page by stating that the quotes in The Oregonian are correct and that the Current Biography article was "riddled with massive errors".[63]
Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", and named his daughter Kira after the heroine in Ayn Rand's debut novel We the Living,[45] although he says "I think I do a better job — than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists — of not pushing my point of view on other people."[64] When asked by Brian Lamb in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A about Rand, Wales cited "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales reluctantly labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles.[16] From 1992 to 1996, he ran the electronic mailing list "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy".[65] An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason.[30]
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Persondata | |
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NAME | Wales, Jimmy |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wales, Jimbo |
SHORT DESCRIPTION | American Internet entrepreneur, co-founder of Wikipedia |
DATE OF BIRTH | August 7, 1966 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Huntsville, Alabama, United States |
DATE OF DEATH | |
PLACE OF DEATH |