Misplaced Pages

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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	blog.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. Currently, 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.

Wales is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the Web 2.0 revolution. Together with Larry Sanger, Wales has helped popularize a trend in web development 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, Time magazine listed Wales in 2006 as one of the world's most influential people.

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."

He 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.

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

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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 in Misplaced Pages's first press release alongside Wales 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, who is widely acknowledged as Misplaced Pages's co-founder, 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 Reason.

Wales is credited with operating his business frugally as well as living frugally, as noted by his choice of driving a Hyundai instead of a Ferrari, which he previously drove. He attempts to use his mobile phone in Europe sparingly because of the high rates charged.

On December 6, 2007, Wales, while at the Online Information conference in London's Olympia, stated that "it's a bad educator that bans their students from reading Misplaced Pages". Wales reasoned that new editing and checking procedures make Misplaced Pages more reliable than ever.

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.
• October 6, 2006 – Wales appears on PBS' Charlie Rose. and was nominated for Beard of the Year 2006.
• January 23, 2007 – Forbes magazine ranks Wales twelfth in its first annual "The Web Celebs 25".
• 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. Anderson, Chris. "Jimmy Wales: The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Misplaced Pages", Time magazine, 2006-04-30. Retrieved on 2006-05-08.
3. ^ 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).
4. ^ Wales, J. "More birthdate nonsense". User talk:Jimbo Wales, 2007-08-07. Retrieved on 2007-08-08.
5. ^ 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)
6. ^ 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)
7. Brown, David (2007-12-11). "Jimmy Wales '83". Alumni Profiles. Randolph School. Retrieved 2007-12-18. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. http://www.nndb.com/people/953/000114611/
9. Florida Marriage Collection, 1822-1875 and 1927-2001, online at Ancestry.com
10. ^ 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)
11. Sidener, Jonathan. "Everyone's Encyclopedia". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
12. ^ Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". 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.
13. Sanger, Larry. "What Misplaced Pages is and why it matters". Retrieved 2006-04-12.
14. ^ 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.
15. Singer, Michael (January 16, 2002). "💕 Project Celebrates Year One". Jupitermedia. Internet Archive. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
16. ^ "Know It All". The New Yorker. 2006-07-31. Retrieved 2008-01-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
17. 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)
18. 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)
19. Sanger, Larry. "My role in Misplaced Pages (links)". larrysanger.org. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
20. King, Ian. "'A Wiki web they've woven'". vancouver.24hrs.ca. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
21. ^ Cadenhead, Rogers. "Misplaced Pages Founder Looks Out for Number 1". Retrieved 2006-10-15.
22. "Misplaced Pages diff showing modification by Mr. Wales". Retrieved 2006-10-15.
23. ^ Cite error: The named reference wirednews was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
24. Blakely, Rhys. "Misplaced Pages founder edits himself". Times Online. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
25. 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)
26. "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)
27. Current Biography Yearbook 2006 - Publisher: H. W. Wilson (February 28, 2007) ISBN 978-0824210748.
28. Who's Who In America: Diamond Edition - Publisher: Marquis Who's Who; 60th edition (12 October, 2005) ISBN 978-0837969909.
29. "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)
30. Cite error: The named reference fastcompany was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
31. "Jimmy Wales Will Destroy Google". Retrieved 2007-05-11.
32. 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)
33. Cite error: The named reference 2.0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
34. Coleman, Alistair (2007-12-07). "IStudents 'should use Misplaced Pages'". BBC News. Retrieved 2008-01-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
35. "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)
36. 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)
37. "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)
38. Video of Jimmy Wales on Charlie Rose, Google, 2006-10-04. Retrieven on 2008-01-15.
39. "Beard of the Year". BBC. 2006-12-14. Retrieved 2007-07-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
40. Ewalt, David M. (2007-01-23). "The Web Celeb 25". Retrieved 2007-04-23.
41. "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.
42. 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