Jimmy Wales is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the for-profit wiki hosting service Fandom.
70 Facts About Jimmy Wales
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Jimmy Wales has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social.
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Jimmy Wales earned bachelor's and master's degrees in finance from Auburn University and the University of Alabama respectively.
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In graduate school, Jimmy Wales taught at two universities; however, he departed before completing a PhD to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of Chicago Options Associates.
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In 1996, Jimmy Wales and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal primarily known for featuring adult content.
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On January 15,2001, with Larry Sanger and others, Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia, a free open-content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity.
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Jimmy Wales serves on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the charity that he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat.
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Jimmy Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, shortly before midnight on August 7,1966; however, his birth certificate lists his date of birth as August 8.
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Jimmy Wales began his Auburn education when he was 16 years old.
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Jimmy Wales then entered the PhD finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a master's degree to enter the PhD finance program at Indiana University.
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Jimmy Wales taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a PhD, something he ascribed to boredom.
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In 1994, Jimmy Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago, Illinois.
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Jimmy Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage, writing computer code during his leisure time.
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Jimmy Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine; the Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful.
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Jimmy Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.
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Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Jimmy Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10,2001.
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Jimmy Wales feared that, at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish".
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Jimmy Wales has said that he was initially so worried about the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awaken during the night and monitor what was being added.
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Jimmy Wales has said that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia, and has publicly disputed Sanger's designation as a co-founder.
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Sanger and Jimmy Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002.
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For example, Sanger and Jimmy Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and press releases as co-founders.
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In 2013, Jimmy Wales told The New York Times that the dispute is "the dumbest controversy in the history of the world".
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In late 2005, Jimmy Wales edited his biographical entry on the English Wikipedia.
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Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Jimmy Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.
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In two interviews with The Guardian in 2014, Jimmy Wales elaborated on his role on Wikipedia.
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Jimmy Wales was the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years.
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When Larry Sanger left Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales's approach was different from Sanger's.
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In mid-2003, Jimmy Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in St Petersburg, Florida and later headquartered in San Francisco, California.
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Jimmy Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006.
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Jimmy Wales has often joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he had done.
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Jimmy Wales gives an annual "State of the Wiki" address at the Wikimania conference.
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In March 2008, Jimmy Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes.
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Wool stated that Jimmy Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a statement Jimmy Wales denied.
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Later in March 2008, former Novell computer scientist Jeff Merkey said that Jimmy Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Jimmy Wales dismissed as "nonsense".
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Jimmy Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor Gil Penchina, a former vice president and general manager at eBay, on June5,2006.
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Jimmy Wales has participated in a celebrity endorsement campaign for the Swiss watchmaker Maurice Lacroix.
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On November 4,2011, Jimmy Wales delivered an hour-long address at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three.
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In May 2012, it was reported that Jimmy Wales was advising the UK government on how to make taxpayer-funded academic research available on the internet at no cost.
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In January 2014, it was announced that Jimmy Wales had joined The People's Operator as co-chair of the mobile phone network.
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On March 21,2014, Jimmy Wales spoke on a panel at a Clinton Global Initiative University conference held at Arizona State University, along with John McCain, Saudi Arabian women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif and Harvard University student Shree Bose.
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On May 26,2014, Google appointed Wales to serve on a seven-member committee on privacy in response to Google v Gonzalez, which led to Google's being inundated with requests to remove websites from their search results.
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Jimmy Wales said he wanted the committee to be viewed as "a blue-ribbon panel" by lawmakers and for the committee to advise the lawmakers as well as Google.
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In 2017, Jimmy Wales announced that he was launching an online publication called WikiTribune, to fight fake news through a combination of professional journalists and volunteer contributors.
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Jimmy Wales described it as "news by the people and for the people", and that it will be the "first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop, and at all times backed by a community checking and rechecking all facts".
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In October 2019, Jimmy Wales launched an ad-free social network, WT Social.
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The Jimmy Wales Foundation for Freedom of Expression is a UK-based charity established by Wales to fight against human rights violations in the field of freedom of expression.
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Jimmy Wales founded the charity after receiving a prize from the leader of Dubai, which he felt he could not accept given the strict censorship laws there, but claims he was not allowed to give back.
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Jimmy Wales has previously referred to himself as an Objectivist, referring to the philosophy of writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century that emphasizes reason, individualism, and capitalism.
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Jimmy Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead during his undergraduate period and, in 1992, founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy".
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An interview with Jimmy Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason.
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In 2015, Jimmy Wales signed up as the committee chair for Democrat Lawrence Lessig's 2016 presidential campaign.
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Jimmy Wales stated that he would rather see companies such as Google adhere to Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information.
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Jimmy Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s while reading about the open source movement, which advocated for the collective development and free distribution of software.
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From his background in finance, and working as a futures and options trader, Jimmy Wales developed an interest in game theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity.
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Jimmy Wales identifies this fascination as a significant basis for his developmental work on the Wikipedia project.
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Jimmy Wales has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", and he states that the idea that "participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".
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On December 11,2007, Jimmy Wales testified before to the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
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Jimmy Wales submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee entitled "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration and Access".
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So, Mr Jimmy Wales, if imitation is a form of flattery, you should feel flattered.
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Jimmy Wales stated to the BBC that the ruling was "one of the most wide-sweeping internet censorship rulings that I've ever seen".
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In 2012, the Home Secretary of the UK was petitioned by Jimmy Wales regarding his opposition to the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer to the US.
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In November 2019, Jimmy Wales accused Twitter of giving preferential treatment to high-profile figures such as Trump and Elon Musk for not banning or blocking them for their controversial statements.
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In May 2020, Jimmy Wales criticized Trump for threatening to regulate social media companies.
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In September 2021, Jimmy Wales said that Facebook and Twitter should combat misinformation and abuse on their platforms by deploying volunteer moderators to monitor controversial posts.
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Jimmy Wales has said that he is "a strong supporter of Israel".
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Jimmy Wales met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she worked as a steel trader for Mitsubishi.
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Jimmy Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after becoming disillusioned with the housing market there, moved in 2002 to St Petersburg, Florida.
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Jimmy Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography.
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Jimmy Wales married Kate Garvey at Wesley's Chapel in London on October 6,2012.
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Jimmy Wales has three daughters: one with Rohan and two with Garvey.