Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:38, 2 March 2008

Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales in 2005
Born	Jimmy Donal Wales (1966-08-07) August 7, 1966 (age 58) Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.A.
Nationality	United States
Other names	Jimbo
Occupation(s)	President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation
Spouse	Christine
Children	Kira
Website	www.jimmywales.com

Jimmy "Jimbo" Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966) is an American Internet entrepreneur, who is best known to the public for his role in the founding of the free, open content encyclopedia, Misplaced Pages, in 2001. He is a member of the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation and is a founder of Wikia, a privately owned free web hosting service set up by Wales in 2004.

Together with Larry Sanger, Wales created Misplaced Pages, laying the foundation for its rapid growth and popularity. The success of the project has helped popularize a trend in web development (called Web 2.0) that aims to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. As a result of his work with Misplaced Pages, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia, Wales appeared in Time magazine's 2006 list of the world's most influential people. Wales is Misplaced Pages's unofficial spokesperson.

Early life

Wales was born on August 7, 1966, in Huntsville, Alabama in the United States.

Wales' father 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. After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, Alabama. Wales has said that the school was expensive for his family, but that education was regarded as important. "Education was always a passion in my household… you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."

Wales received his Bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University and started with the Ph.D. finance program at the University of Alabama, where he left with a Master's. After that, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance program at Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a Ph.D.

Wales married his wife, Christine, in late March of 1997 in Monroe County, Florida. They have a daughter named Kira. He and his family reside in the St Petersburg, Florida, area.

According to a statement made by Wales, he is currently seperated from his wife.

Career

Chicago Options Associates and Bomis

From 1994 to 2000, Wales was the research director at Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago. By "speculating on interest rate and foreign-currency fluctuations", he had soon earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives", according to Daniel Pink of Wired Magazine. During this time, one of the projects Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis, a website featuring user-generated webrings that, according to The Atlantic Monthly, "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet". For a time the company sold erotic photographs, and Wales described the site as having had "a market similar to say Maxim magazine. So it‘s kind of a guy-oriented search engine". 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. Bomis also provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.

Nupedia and Misplaced Pages

In March 2000, Wales started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia ("the 💕"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief. Nupedia was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias. 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 "Misplaced Pages" and, with Wales, laid down the founding principles and content, establishing an Internet-based community of contributors during that year. Misplaced Pages was initially intended to be a wiki-based site for collaboration on early encyclopedic content for submission to Nupedia, but Misplaced Pages's rapid growth quickly overshadowed Nupedia's development. Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Misplaced Pages projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002; Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Misplaced Pages on March 1. 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. In a 2004 interview with Slashdot, Wales explained his motivations about Misplaced Pages, "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."

Wikimedia Foundation

In mid-2003, Wales donated Misplaced Pages to the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that he had just set up. Wales holds the position of Chair Emeritus at the foundation and is one of seven directors that make up its Board of Trustees. The work he carries out for the foundation has always been unpaid, including his appearances to promote the organisation at computer and educational conferences. In a 2007 interview, Wales said he had mixed feelings about donating Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages itself.

Wikia

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

Another service offered by Wikia is an open source web search engine named Wikia Search, intended to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it's created into the search engine's operations. On Wikia Search, Wales has stated, "I trust Google reasonably well, but that's like saying you have a favorite politician. I trust this politician, but I still want the city council to meet publicly. I still want a certain transparency in how government is run, even if you trust the person who's in charge now." According to Wales, "It is meant to take on Google by creating a search engine where all the editorial decisions are made by the general public and all the software is open."

Roles of Misplaced Pages creators

Wales has publicly disagreed with Sanger's role in the founding of Misplaced Pages. Wales has stated on numerous occasions that he is the sole founder of Misplaced Pages, which he bases on the specific fact that Sanger was his paid employee. In 2006, Wales told The Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder. However, Sanger was identified as co-founder at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times and was referred to as a founder alongside Wales in Misplaced Pages's first press release in 2002. In addition to developing Misplaced Pages in its early phase and guiding the project, Sanger was responsible for the idea of applying the wiki concept to the building of a 💕. He also coined the name of the project. He nevertheless ascribed the broader idea to Wales: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis. (…) The actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on." In response to Wales' statement, Sanger posted on his personal webpage a collection of statements confirming his role in founding Misplaced Pages, by referencing earlier versions of Misplaced Pages pages, citing Misplaced Pages press releases, and linking to early media coverage, all of which described Wales and Sanger as the co-founders. In a discussion with Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press, Wales said: "When you write this up please do not uncritically repeat Sanger's absurd claim to be the co-founder of Misplaced Pages." 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." Wales' role in the Misplaced Pages community has been described as "benevolent dictator for life".

Misplaced Pages biography

In late 2005, Wales edited his own biography page on Misplaced Pages. In this regard, Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that Wales had removed references to Larry Sanger as the co-founder of Misplaced Pages. 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." 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. An article in the July 31 2006, issue of The New Yorker magazine expanded on this topic:

"Even Wales has been caught airbrushing his Misplaced Pages entry—eighteen times in the past year. He is particularly sensitive about references to the porn traffic on his Web portal. 'Adult content' or 'glamour photography' are the terms that he prefers, though, as one user pointed out on the site, they are perhaps not the most precise way to describe lesbian strip-poker threesomes. (In January, Wales agreed to a compromise: 'erotic photography.')"

In both cases, Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content. He apologized for editing his own biography, which is a practice generally frowned upon at Misplaced Pages. Wales said in the Wired interview, "People should not do it, including me. I wish I had not done it."

Wales had previously edited his entries on Misplaced Pages and on the Wikimedia Foundation's website in 2004 to indicate his date of birth is August 7, 1966. He also made a statement in 2006 in which he wrote in part: "My date of birth is not August 8, 1966." The Encyclopædia Britannica, Current Biography, and Who’s Who in America support these statements. 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. On July 27, 2007, when asked by Oregonian reporter Mike Rogoway when his birthday was, Wales is reported to have mysteriously stated, "Nobody knows." Moreover, on his blog, Rogoway claims that a Florida public records search shows that Wales’ drivers license lists his date of birth as August 8, 1966. In August 2007, Wales expanded on this in his Misplaced Pages talk page by stating, in part: "In any event, the quotes in the Oregonian are correct."

Personal philosophy

Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", and has named his daughter Kira after the heroine in Ayn Rand's We the Living, 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." When asked by Brian Lamb in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A about Rand, Wales cited "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales reluctantly labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles. From 1992 to 1996, he ran the electronic mailing list "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy." An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine ReasonCite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Honors and awards

• Mid-2005 – Wales is appointed as a member of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
• October 3, 2005 – According to a press release, Wales joins the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses.
• 2006 – Wales joins the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization Creative Commons.
• May 8, 2006 – Wales is the first person listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the special edition of Time ("The lives and ideas of the world's most influential people"), listing 100 influential people.
• June 3, 2006 – Wales receives an honorary degree from Knox College.
• May 3, 2006 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation awards him a Pioneer Award.
• January 23, 2007 – Forbes magazine ranks Wales twelfth in its first annual "The Web Celebs 25".

Other notable media appearances

• October 6, 2006 – Wales appears on PBS' Charlie Rose.
• April 2, 2007 – Wales is featured in the April 2, 2007, issue of Time magazine in the article "10 Questions: Jimmy Wales". He answers ten questions culled from Time's readership. His is the second interview to consist of reader questions (the first being Chris Rock). Previously, the questions had been composed by a Time staff member. In his replies, he acknowledges the limitations of Misplaced Pages, while defending its usefulness.
• April 26, 2007 – Wales has a run-in with The Chaser, an Australian satire group. He is used in the first occurrence of the "Mr. Ten Questions" segment in Season 2 of The Chaser's War on Everything, in which a "reporter" (a.k.a. Andrew Hansen) asks the victim ten questions of variable relevance without pausing for a response until all questions are asked. Wales manages to score a 4 out of 10; however, some of the answers did not seem to match the questions being asked. Hansen also states that he edited Wales' page to state that he was a teenage drug lord from Malaysia. This change has since been reverted.

Published work

• 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.

References

1. ^ Doran, James (2006-12-23). "Curiousity filled the biggest textbook in the world". Times Online. Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 2007-08-24.
2. ^ Singer, Michael (January 16, 2002). "💕 Project Celebrates Year One". Jupitermedia. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2008-02-27.
3. Poe, Marshall. "The Hive", The Atlantic Monthly, September 2006. Retrieved on 2008-02-29. "Wales, though, was a businessman. He wanted to build a 💕, and Misplaced Pages offered a very rapid and economically efficient means to that end. The articles flooded in, many were good, and they cost him almost nothing...Wales’s benign rule has allowed Misplaced Pages to do what it does best: grow. The numbers are staggering."
4. Anderson, Chris. "Jimmy Wales: The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Misplaced Pages", Time magazine, 2006-04-30. Retrieved on 2006-05-08.
5. ^ Rogoway, M. July 27, 2007 "Misplaced Pages & its founder disagree on his birth date,". Silicon Forest, (The Oregonian), 2007-07-27. Retrieved on 2007-08-08. Note: In his blog, Wales endorses this news article. Cite error: The named reference "dob" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
6. ^ Wales, J. "More birthdate nonsense". User talk:Jimbo Wales, 2007-08-07. Retrieved on 2007-08-08.
7. ^ Wales, Jimbo (2004-09-18). "Edit by Jimbo Wales at Wikimedia Foundation". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2007-08-08. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. ^ Lamb, Brian (2005-09-25). "Q&A: Jimmy Wales, Misplaced Pages founder". C-SPAN. Retrieved 2006-07-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. Brown, David (2007-12-11). "Jimmy Wales '83". Alumni Profiles. Randolph School. Retrieved 2007-12-18. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. http://www.nndb.com/people/953/000114611/
11. Florida Marriage Collection, 1822-1875 and 1927-2001, online at Ancestry.com
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Statement%2C_March_1st%2C_2008
13. ^ Pink, Daniel H. (2005-03-13). "The Book Stops Here". Wired. Retrieved 2006-10-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Cite error: The named reference "bookstopshere" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
14. Poe, Marshall. "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly, 2006-09-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
15. ^ Brennen, Jensen (2006-06-29). "Access for All". Chronicle of Philanthropy. Vol. 18, no. 18. USA: Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
16. Mangu-Ward, Katherine (June 2007). "Misplaced Pages and beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision". Reason. Vol. 39, no. 2. Reason Foundation. p. 21. Retrieved 2008-01-16.
17. ^ Hansen, Evan. "Misplaced Pages Founder Edits Own Bio". Wired News. Wired. Retrieved 2006-02-14.
18. Gouthro, Liane (2000-03-14). "Building the world's biggest encyclopedia". PCWorld. CNN. Retrieved 2007-11-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. ^ McNichol, Tom (2007-03-01). "Building a Wiki World". Business 2.0. CNN. Retrieved 2007-03-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
20. My resignation—Larry Sanger 2002-03-01. Retrieved on 2006-10-19.
21. Misplaced Pages's co-founder eyes a Digital Universe 2006-01-06.
22. In Search of an Online Utopia. msnbc.msn, 2007-02-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
23. Wales, Jimmy (2004-07-28). ""Misplaced Pages Founder Jimmy Wales Replies"". Slashdot. Retrieved 2006-06-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
24. ^ Marks, Paul (2007-02-03). "Knowledge to the people.(Jimmy Wales)(Interview)". New Scientist. Vol. 193.2589. Reed Business Information Ltd. p. 44. Retrieved 2008-02-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
25. "Open media to connect communities", BBC News, 2005-11-05. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
26. Wikimedia foundation bylaws. Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
27. Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
28. Wikia. Main Page, 2007-05-12. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
29. ^ ""Why Is This Man Smiling?"". Fast Company. March 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-02."Wales revealed that Wikia, his for-profit Silicon Valley startup, was working on Search Wikia, which he touted as "the search engine that changes everything … Just as Misplaced Pages revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search."
30. Lewine, Edward (2007-11-18). "The Encyclopedist's Lair". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 2007-11-23. Greatest misconception about Misplaced Pages: We aren't democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we're actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn't be writing.
31. ^ Knott, Janet (2006-02-12). "Bias, sabotage haunt Misplaced Pages's free world". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2006-04-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
32. Sidener, Jonathan. "Everyone's Encyclopedia". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
33. Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-10-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)"I can start an article that will consist of one paragraph, and then a real expert will come along and add three paragraphs and clean up my one paragraph," said Larry Sanger of Las Vegas, who founded Misplaced Pages with Mr. Wales.
34. Sanger, Larry. "What Misplaced Pages is and why it matters". Retrieved 2006-04-12.
35. ^ Bergstein, Brian (2007-03-25). "Sanger says he co-started Misplaced Pages". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-26. The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Misplaced Pages, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim does not seem particularly controversial—Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, is not happy about it. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)—Brian Bergstein.
36. ^ "Know It All". The New Yorker. 2006-07-31. Retrieved 2008-01-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
37. Sanger, Larry (2005-04-18). "The Early History of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages: A Memoir". Slashdot. Retrieved 2005-04-18. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
38. Mitchell, Dan (2005-12-24). "Insider Editing at Misplaced Pages". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
39. Sanger, Larry. "My role in Misplaced Pages (links)". larrysanger.org. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
40. King, Ian. "'A Wiki web they've woven'". vancouver.24hrs.ca. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
41. ^ Cadenhead, Rogers. "Misplaced Pages Founder Looks Out for Number 1". Retrieved 2006-10-15.
42. "Misplaced Pages diff showing modification by Mr. Wales". Retrieved 2006-10-15.
43. Blakely, Rhys. "Misplaced Pages founder edits himself". Times Online. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
44. Wales, Jimbo (2004-09-18). "Edit by Jimbo Wales at Misplaced Pages". Misplaced Pages. Retrieved 2007-08-08. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
45. "Wales claim birthdate is not [[August 8]], [[1966]]". Misplaced Pages. 2006-07-11. Retrieved 2007-08-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help)
46. Current Biography Yearbook 2006 - Publisher: H. W. Wilson (February 28, 2007) ISBN 978-0824210748.
47. Who's Who In America: Diamond Edition - Publisher: Marquis Who's Who; 60th edition (12 October, 2005) ISBN 978-0837969909.
48. "Jimmy Wales's date of birth". Researcher's Note. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004-09-18. Retrieved 2007-08-08. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
49. "Jimmy Wales Will Destroy Google". Retrieved 2007-05-11.
50. Wales, Jimmy (1992-09-23). "Re: Objectivism of Ayn Rand". Newsgroup: talk.philosophy.misc. Bv1u8x.Bnv@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
51. "Creative Commons Adds Two New Board Members". Creative Commons. 2006-03-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |2008-01-15url= (help); Text "accessdate" ignored (help)
52. Anderson, Chris (2006-05-08). "Jimmy Wales: The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Misplaced Pages". Time. Retrieved 2006-04-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
53. "EFF Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with Pioneer Awards". Kansas City infoZine News. 2006-04-28. Retrieved 2006-06-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
54. Ewalt, David M. (2007-01-23). "The Web Celeb 25". Retrieved 2007-04-23.
55. Video of Jimmy Wales on Charlie Rose, Google, 2006-10-04. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
56. "10 Questions: Jimmy Wales". Time Magazine. 2007-03-27. Retrieved 2007-03-24. The key is to look at the quality of articles. The quality of Misplaced Pages today, compared with three years ago, is a dramatic improvement. But people do need to be aware of how it is created and edited so they can treat it with the appropriate caution. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)—Jimmy Wales.
57. Moses, Asher (2007-04-26). "Chaser's war on Misplaced Pages founder". Brisbane Times. Retrieved 2007-04-29. Given Wales's widely publicised goal of giving "every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge", Hansen evidently thought Wales would be a prime candidate for The Chaser's "Mr Ten Questions" segment. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

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• 1966 births
• American bloggers
• American businesspeople
• American Internet personalities
• Auburn University alumni
• Berkman Fellows
• History of Misplaced Pages
• Indiana University alumni
• Living people
• Objectivists
• People from Florida
• People from Huntsville, Alabama
• University of Alabama alumni
• Wikimedia Foundation
• Misplaced Pages people