Misplaced Pages

Jimmy Wales

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Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales in December 2008
BornJimmy Donal Wales
(1966-08-07) August 7, 1966 (age 58)
Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.A.
NationalityAmerican
Other namesJimbo
Alma materAuburn University
University of Alabama
Indiana University Bloomington
Occupation(s)President of Wikia, Inc.; Board member and Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation
WebsitePersonal weblog
English Misplaced Pages userpage
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article.

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966) is an American Internet entrepreneur known for his role in the creation of Misplaced Pages, a free, open-content encyclopedia launched in 2001. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, holding the board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Wikia, a privately owned, free Web-hosting service, along with Angela Beesley.

Together with Larry Sanger and others, Wales helped lay the foundation for Misplaced Pages, which subsequently enjoyed rapid growth and popularity. As Misplaced Pages expanded and its public profile grew, Wales took on the role of the project's spokesman and promoter through speaking engagements and media appearances. As early as 2001, Wales has been referred to as a co-founder of Misplaced Pages, but he disputes the "co-" designation.

Wales' work developing Misplaced Pages, 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. Wales is the de facto leader of Misplaced Pages; his position on the project has gained broad media attention and has led to controversy.

Early life and education

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, United States. According to his 1997 marriage certificate (to Christine Rohan) and a number of other sources, he was born on August 7, 1966, although there is some uncertainty about his birth date, which is given as August 8, 1966 on his driver's license. His father, Jimmy, 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. Wales has said that the school was expensive for his family, but that "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 entered the Ph.D. finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a Master's degree. 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 for a Ph.D., something which he has ascribed to boredom.

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. During this time, one of the projects Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis which featured user-generated webrings and 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 a "guy-oriented search engine" with a similar market to Maxim. 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 did not become successful, but in March 2000 hosted and provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.

Nupedia and Misplaced Pages

Main article: History of 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 the early years, Wales supplied the financial backing for the project. 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

Main article: Wikimedia Foundation

In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit organization founded in St. Petersburg, Florida, and now based in San Francisco, California. 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. The work he carries out for the foundation has always been unpaid, including his appearances to promote the organization at computer and educational conferences. In a 2007 interview, Wales said that he thought that "donating" Misplaced Pages to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he'd done. On the one hand, he noted, Misplaced Pages was worth US$3 billion (by his estimation); on the other, donating it made possible the success he achieved.

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. 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 for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket. Later in March 2008, it was alleged by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Misplaced Pages entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense."

Wikia

Main article: Wikia

In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company Wikia, Inc. Wikia is a wiki farm—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. Its most popular wikis include Memory Alpha (devoted to Star Trek), WoWWiki (World of Warcraft) and Wookieepedia (Star Wars). 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. 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.

Biographical and Misplaced Pages issues

Philosopher Larry Sanger, whom Wales hired as editor-in-chief of Nupedia

Roles of Misplaced Pages creators

Further information: ]

Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Misplaced Pages and has publicly disputed Larry Sanger's designation as a co-founder of Misplaced Pages, describing the claim as "preposterous" to The Boston Globe in 2006. 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 💕, and for the name "Misplaced Pages". 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." 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 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 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, constitutional monarch, digital evangelist and spiritual leader.

Misplaced Pages biography

In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographical entry on the English Misplaced Pages. 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 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 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. In an article in the July 31, 2006, issue of The New Yorker magazine, Stacy Schiff expanded on this topic, stating that Wales was "caught airbrushing his Misplaced Pages entry—eighteen times in the past year" and that he was "sensitive about references to the porn traffic on his Web portal". 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, 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."

Personal life

Jimmy Wales with his second wife Christine

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." Late in March 1997, Wales married his second wife, Christine, in Monroe County, Florida. They have a daughter named Kira and are separated. As of 2007, Wales resided in the St. Petersburg, Florida, area.

Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Misplaced Pages biography. After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales announced in March 2008 on his Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. Marsden claimed to have learned about the breakup by reading about it on Misplaced Pages.

Philosophy

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, although he has said "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." He ran an electronic mailing list on "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". When asked about Rand by Brian Lamb in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A in September 2005, 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. An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason, in which Wales cited Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek's work on price theory and decentralised information The Use of Knowledge in Society as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Misplaced Pages project".

Honors, awards and positions

Jimmy Wales receiving the Quadriga award on October 3, 2008

Published work

References

  1. ^ "Jimmy Wales". Britannica Book of the Year. 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-25.. In support of this date, the Britannica article cites:
    • "Jimmy Wales". Monroe, Florida's County Clerk website (Marriage License Database). Retrieved 2008-05-21.
    • Current Biography Yearbook. H. W. Wilson. February 28, 2007. ISBN 978-0824210748. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
    • Who's Who In America: Diamond Edition (60 ed.). Marquis Who's Who. October 12, 2005. ISBN 978-0837969909.
  2. ^ "Brain scan: The free-knowledge fundamentalist". Technology Quarterly. The Economist. 2008-06-05. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
  3. Keen, Andrew (2008-06-02). "Andrew Keen on New Media". The Independent. Retrieved 2008-06-08.
  4. "Board of Trustees/Restructure Announcement". Wikimedia Foundation website. April 26, 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  5. ^ Singer, Michael (January 16, 2002). "💕 Project Celebrates Year One". Jupitermedia. Retrieved 2008-02-27. {{cite news}}: |archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)
  6. Poe, Marshall (2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved February 29, 2008. 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. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  7. ^ Meyers, Peter (September 20, 2001). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2008-10-31. 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. —Larry Sanger.
  8. ^ Bergstein, Brian (March 25, 2007). "Sanger says he co-started Misplaced Pages". MSNBC. 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.
  9. ^ Anderson, Chris (April 30, 2006). "Jimmy Wales: The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Misplaced Pages". Time. Retrieved February 17, 2008.
  10. Frith, Holden (March 26, 2007). "Misplaced Pages founder launches rival online encyclopaedia". The Times. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
  12. ^ Mangu-Ward, Katherine (June 2007). "Misplaced Pages and beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision". Reason. Vol. 39, no. 2. Reason Foundation. p. 21. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  13. Rogoway, Mike (July 27, 2007). "Misplaced Pages & its founder disagree on his birth date". Silicon Forest. The Oregonian. Retrieved October 31, 2008.. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  14. Kazek, Kelly (August 11, 2006). "Geek to chic: Misplaced Pages founder a celebrity". The News Courier. Doris Wales' husband, Jimmy, wasn't sure what she was thinking when she bought a World Book Encyclopedia set from a traveling salesman in 1968.
  15. ^ Lamb, Brian (September 25, 2005). "Q&A: Jimmy Wales, Misplaced Pages founder". C-SPAN. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  16. Brown, David (2007-12-11). "Jimmy Wales '83". Alumni Profiles. Randolph School. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  17. ^ McNichol, Tom (May 1, 2007). "Building a Wiki World". Business 2.0. CNN. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  18. ^ Pink, Daniel H. (March 13, 2005). "The Book Stops Here". Wired. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  19. Poe, Marshall (September 1, 2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  20. ^ Brennen, Jensen (2006-06-29). "Access for All". Chronicle of Philanthropy. Vol. 18, no. 18. USA: Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.
  21. ^ Hansen, Evan. "Misplaced Pages Founder Edits Own Bio". Wired. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  22. Gouthro, Liane (March 14, 2000). "Building the world's biggest encyclopedia". PCWorld. CNN. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  23. Sanger Larry (March 5, 2007). "My resignation--Larry Sanger". meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  24. Terdiman, Daniel (January 6, 2006). "Misplaced Pages's co-founder eyes a Digital Universe". CNET News. Retrieved on October 31, 2008.
  25. "In Search of an Online Utopia". msnbc.msn. February 1, 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-04-18. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  26. Miller, Rob "Roblimo" (July 28, 2004). "Misplaced Pages Founder Jimmy Wales Responds". Slashdot. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  27. Twist, Jo (November 5, 2005). "Open media to connect communities", BBC News. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  28. Wikimedia foundation bylaws. Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  29. Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  30. Marks, Paul (February 3, 2007). "Interview with Jimmy Wales: Knowledge to the people" (Video). New Scientist. 193 (2589). Reed Business Information Ltd.: 44. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  31. Moses, Asher (March 5, 2008). "Misplaced Pages's Jimmy Wales accused of expenses rort", Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  32. ^ Kim, Ryan (March 5, 2007). "Allegations swirl around Misplaced Pages's Wales". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  33. Moses, Asher (March 11, 2008). "More woes for Misplaced Pages's Jimmy Wales". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
  34. "Wiki boss 'edited for donation'". BBC News. March 12, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  35. Wikia homepage. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
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  37. ^ Deutschman, Alan (March 2007). "Why Is This Man Smiling?". Fast Company. Retrieved 2008-10-31. "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."
  38. "Wikia taps eBay exec as CEO". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved 2006-06-05.
  40. Mehegan, David (February 12, 2006). "Bias, sabotage haunt Misplaced Pages's free world". The Boston Globe. The New York Times Company. p. 4. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  41. Sanger, Larry (January 18, 2002). "What Misplaced Pages is and why it matters". meta.wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  42. ^ Schiff, Stacy (2006-07-31). "Know It All". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
    "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')."
  43. Sanger, Larry (April 18, 2005). "The Early History of Nupedia and Misplaced Pages: A Memoir". Slashdot. Retrieved 2005-10-31.
  44. Mitchell, Dan (December 24, 2005). "Insider Editing at Misplaced Pages". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  45. Sanger, Larry. "My role in Misplaced Pages (links)". larrysanger.org. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  46. Cohen, Noam (March 17, 2008). "Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved December 29, 2008.
  47. Cadenhead, Rogers (December 19, 2005). "Misplaced Pages Founder Looks Out for Number 1". cadenhead.org. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
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  50. Florida Marriage Collection, 1822-1875 and 1927-2001 (Requires paid membership to view). Ancestry.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  51. Lewine, Edward (November 18, 2007). "The Encyclopedist's Lair". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
    "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."
  52. The Canadian Press (March 2, 2008). "Canadian pundit, Misplaced Pages founder in messy breakup". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  53. ^ Moses, Ahser (March 4, 2008). "Ex takes her revenge on Mr Misplaced Pages". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  54. Bergstein, Brian (March 5, 2008). "Misplaced Pages's Wales defends breakup, expenses". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  56. Sirius, R.U. (July 29, 2007). "Jimmy Wales Will Destroy Google". 10 Zen Monkeys. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  57. Wales, Jimmy (September 23, 1992). "Re: Objectivism of Ayn Rand". Newsgroup: talk.philosophy.misc. Bv1u8x.Bnv@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  58. "Jimmy Wales Joins Socialtext Board of Directors; Misplaced Pages Founder to Advise Leader in Enterprise Wiki Solutions" (Press release). SocialText. October 3, 2005. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  59. Garlick, Mia (March 30, 2006). "Creative Commons Adds Two New Board Members". Creative Commons. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  60. "Knox College Honorary Degrees", knox.edu. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  61. "EFF Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with Pioneer Awards". Kansas City infoZine News. April 28, 2006. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  62. "People: Advisory board", cci.mit.edu. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  63. Ewalt, David M. (January 23, 2007). "The Web Celeb 25". Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  64. "Participants > Speakers > Jimmy Wales". iCommonsSummit.org. 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  65. "Corum announces Jimmy Wales as The Global Brand Icon of the Year Award". MattBaily.ca. September 14, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  66. "Die Quadriga Award for 'A Mission of Enlightenment' – 2008", loomarea.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
  67. "The Economist Innovation Awards and Summit". economist.com. October 30, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-08.

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