Jimmy Wales: Difference between revisions

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			: "Reporters are always asking me why I'm doing this, why Wikipedians do this? I think you know why.
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			: I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I'm doing this for the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community."
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	As you probably know, Jim Wales is the creator of this encyclopedia, and thus has lots of fame here. This article is a magnet for vandals. Keep in mind, administrators watch this article more closely than the average, and vandalizing on this page is only a waste of your time.

	-->] 2005 in ], ].]]
	'''Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales''' (born ], ]) is a ] ] ] and a ] pioneer who is best known as the head of ], an international collaborative ] ] on the Internet.

	==Life before Misplaced Pages==
	Wales was born in ], ]. His father, now retired, was a ] manager while Wales was growing up. Wales's mother Doris and grandmother Irma ran a small private school, "in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse," where he also went to school. There were four children in his grade most of the time, so the school grouped together first through fourth grade and fifth through eighth grade. A May ] '']'' magazine article incorrectly reported that Wales was ] . Strictly speaking Wales was not, but he did note that his schooling experience was "in a sense similar" since his mother and grandmother were his primary teachers. Students had a fair amount of freedom to study whatever they liked; the school's philosophy of education was significantly influenced by ]. Wales spent many hours poring over the '']'' during this time. After eighth grade, Wales went to ], a ], which was and is an early adopter of computer labs and other technology for direct student use. This prep school was expensive for the family, since they had few means, but Wales reports that his family believed education was very 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."

	He received his undergraduate degree from ] and his masters from the ]. Later, he took courses offered in the ] ] programs at the University of Alabama and ]. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but he did not write the ] required to earn a postgraduate degree at these institutions. Wales went on to become a ] and ] ] in ], and within a few years had earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives."

	In ], Wales founded a search portal called ], which (as a side business among other projects) sold original images depicting ] and partially-nude women (but not masturbation or other sexual acts), and included a "Bomis Babes" ]. Because of his position with Bomis, Wales has been described as a peddler of ] by some of his critics. Wales disputes this, however, telling '']'' that "If ] movies are ], it was porn. In other words, no, it was not." {{ref\|wired}} Bomis has since ceased the adult-content portion of its business, and Wales is no longer actively involved in the company. While Wales was CEO, Bomis donated over one hundred thousand dollars (primarily through salaries and providing free Internet access) to ] and ], and continued supporting them into 2002.

	In March ], he started a peer-reviewed open-content encyclopedia ] ("the 💕"), and hired ] to be its editor-in-chief.

	==Work on Misplaced Pages and recent activities==
	]]]
	{{main\|History of Misplaced Pages}}
	] started on ], ]. Wales assigned his employee ] to set it up. Misplaced Pages was at that point a ]-based site intended for collaboration on early encyclopedic content before submitting it to ] for peer review. Misplaced Pages's rapid growth soon made it the dominant project and Nupedia was mothballed. Sanger did most of the early development of Nupedia, while Wales mainly provided the necessary capital.

	Wales has sometimes been referred to in the press as the (implicitly) sole "founder" of Misplaced Pages, including in a 2004 '']'' article . Sanger has strongly contested this assertion, considering himself a co-founder along with Wales, and criticizing reports that have suggested otherwise . Jeremy Rosenfeld has been credited by Wales as the originator of the idea for a ]-model encyclopedia, although the details of this are the subject of controversy between Sanger and Wales.

	Sanger later dropped out of the project, posting a resignation on his . Sanger has since criticized Wales's approach to the project , describing Wales as being "decidedly anti-elitist"; Wales has disagreed with Sanger's viewpoint, describing himself as not anti-elitist, but "perhaps anti-credentialist." Elaborating, Wales has described his approach to Wikipedias thus: "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 Misplaced Pages... you have to enter the ] and engage with people."

	In mid-2003, Wales set up the ], a ]-based ], to support Misplaced Pages and its younger sibling projects. Since then he has become increasingly involved with promoting and speaking about the foundation's projects. As of 2005, Wales is the foundation's president and chairman of the board.

	In 2004, Wales had been quoted as saying that he spent around US$500,000 on the establishment and operations of his Wiki projects. By the end of the foundation's February 2005 fund drive, the Wikimedia Foundation was being supported entirely by grants and donations.

	More recently, perhaps inspired by the success of Misplaced Pages, Wales has founded the for-profit company ] (unrelated to ]) which hosts various wikis, and manages the ] project.

	Wales was appointed a fellow of the ] at ] in 2005. Later that year, on October 3, according to a press release , Wales joined the ] of ], a provider of ] technology to businesses.

	In late 2005, a controversy arose regarding Wales and the related Misplaced Pages entry on himself. After ''Wired'' Magazine picked up on work from ], Wales confirmed that he had edited his own biography on Misplaced Pages, a practice generally frowned upon within the Misplaced Pages community. Wales's edits were in line with his view that former editor Larry Sanger should not be considered a co-founder of Misplaced Pages. When some other editors undid his edits, Wales repeated them twice. His edits changed specific references to Misplaced Pages's origins as well as the description of Bomis. Wales said in the interview "People shouldn't do it, including me. I wish I hadn't done it."

	In late December 2005 Wales told Times Online that despite "resistance to the idea" of advertisements on Misplaced Pages, "at some point questions are going to be raised over the amount of money we are turning down" thus indirectly implying the possibilty of future ads on the site. It should be noted however that Misplaced Pages is owned by the Not for profit Wikimedia Foundation and virtually all of the site's contributors are unpaid volunteers. Wales has also been known to assure people in the past that Misplaced Pages would never run ads, and has stated that he is personally opposed to the idea.

	To promote Wikimedia, Wales travels the world, both to conferences and Wikimedia functions (like "Wikimeets" and ]). He has frequently been engaged as a speaker.

	Wales lives in ] in the ], with his wife Christine and daughter Kira. He has traveled to many countries including the ], ], and ]. He is very protective about his personal life and it is unknown to most of the general public what his interests or hobbies outside of Misplaced Pages and the Wikimedia Foundation are.

	==Published works==
	* Robert Brooks, Jon Corson and J. Donal Wales, "The Pricing of Index Options When the Underlying Assets All Follow a Lognormal Diffusion", in ''Advances in Futures and Options Research'', volume 7, 1994. Abstract available online from the ] . . See also ].

	<!--==Rumours about his death==
	According to this web page, there was a person who vandalised this page and reported that Jimmy Wales had been shot dead by a friend of Siegenthaler. A false article in Wikipediasaid that Siegenthaler killed President Kennedy. This page had been set as 'protected from vandalising' for a while before. -->

	==References==
	* {{News reference
	\| lastname = Pink \| firstname = Daniel H.
	\| title=The Book Stops Here
	\| org=Wired
	\| date=] ]
	\| url=http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html?pg=3&topic=wiki&topic_set=
	}}
	# {{note\|Cadenhead}} {{Web reference
	\| title=Misplaced Pages Founder Looks Out for Number 1
	\| url=http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2828/wikipedia-founder-looks-out-number-1
	\| date=19 December
	\| year=2005
	}}
	# {{note\|BomisArchived}} {{Web reference
	\| title=The History of Bomis
	\| url=http://web.archive.org/web/20001003173849/http://www.bomis.com/about/bomisstory.html
	\| date=3 October
	\| year=2000
	}}
	# {{note\|wired}} {{News reference
	\| author=]
	\| date=December 19, 2005
	\| url=http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69880,00.html
	\| title=Misplaced Pages Founder Edits Own Bio
	\| org=Wired News
	}}
	# {{note\|Times Online}} {{News reference
	\| author=]
	\| date=December 30, 2005
	\| url=http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
	\| title=Misplaced Pages chief considers taking ads
	\| org=Times Online
	}}

	==External links==
	{{Spoken Misplaced Pages\|Jimmy Wales.ogg\|2005-04-06}}
	{{commons\|category:Jimbo Wales\|Jimbo Wales}}
	{{wikiquote}}<!-- -------------- -->
	{{wikinews\|Interview with Jimbo Wales}}
	*
	*
	* <!-- please do not make this an internal link; see ] and this article's talk page for reasons -->
	* against Wales and Misplaced Pages
	===News media===
	* {{News reference
	\| url = http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-06-30-wiki_x.htm
	\| title = It's a Wiki world out there for the Web's groupmind
	\| org = USA Today
	\| date = ]
	}}
	* {{News reference
	\| url = http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2005/09/26/focus4.html
	\| title = St. Petersburg tech brain creates 'wiki' world with online encyclopedia
	\| org = Tampa Bay Business Journal
	\| author = Michael Hinman
	\| date = ]
	}}
	* {{News reference
	\| url = http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/
	\| title = Misplaced Pages founder admits serious quality problems
	\| org = The Register
	\| author = ]
	\| date = ]
	}}
	* {{News reference
	\| url = http://www.npost.com/interview.jsp?intID=INT00126
	\| title = Interview with Jimmy Wales, WikiPedia Founder
	\| org = nPost.com
	\| author = Nathan C. Kaiser
	\| date = ]
	}}
	* {{News reference
	\| url = http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6298340/site/newsweek/
	\| title = It's Like a Blog, But It's a Wiki
	\| org = Newsweek
	\| author = Brad Stone
	\| date = ]
	}}
	* {{News reference
	\| url = http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1136024385322320.xml&coll=2
	\| title = Alabamian is brain behind Misplaced Pages
	\| org = The Birmingham News
	\| author = Joseph D. Bryant
	\| date = ]
	}}
	* {{ News Reference
	\| url =http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
	\| title = Misplaced Pages Chief considers taking ads
	\| org = Times Online
	\| author = Rhys Blakely
	\| date = ]
	}}
	===Audio/Video===
	* ]th, 2005 - hosted by ]
	* Video of Jimmy Wales talk given at the Oxford Internet Institute - recorded ] ].
	* 40 minutes from a talk Jimmy held at Stanford on ] ] available as an avi in torrent form and licensed under the Creative Commons (Quicktime: , )
	* - recorded ] ]
	* ], ] by ]'s ]
	* on Wednesday, ], ]
	* 9 minutes, from Media Alliance event held in San Francisco on ] ]
	*, ], ]
	* recorded ]], posted ]]

	<!-- Metadata: see ] -->
	{{Persondata
	\|NAME=Wales, Jimmy Donal
	\|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Wales, Jimbo
	\|SHORT DESCRIPTION=American ] ], ] pioneer; founder of ]
	\|DATE OF BIRTH=], ]
	\|PLACE OF BIRTH=]
	\|DATE OF DEATH=
	\|PLACE OF DEATH=
	}}


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Revision as of 01:07, 5 January 2006

"Reporters are always asking me why I'm doing this, why Wikipedians do this? I think you know why.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I'm doing this for the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community."