Jimmy Wales

From Encyc

Jimmy Wales, a.k.a. Jimbo Wales, is the de facto leader of Wikipedia. He cofounded the encyclopedia with Larry Sanger, but later began claiming to be the online encyclopedia's sole founder.

Contents 1 Salary 2 Founder of Wikipedia question 3 Leader of Wikipedia question 4 Jimbo's vision - what he wants Wikipedia to be 5 Biographies on Wikipedia 6 Pornography on Wikimedia Commons 7 Relationship with Wikileaks 8 New life in England 9 Quotes 10 Notes 11 External links

Salary

For over five years, Jimmy Wales' biography on Wikipedia claimed that he was independently wealthy, giving the impression that he founded Wikipedia out of altruism. According to Wikipedia, Wales made enough money while working in the finance industry in Chicago to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives".^[1] An article in Wired was cited.^[2] However on the talk page, Wales claimed that his net worth was considerably less: "I do not have millions of dollars. I do not even have one million dollars."^[3][4] The error was finally corrected on July 18, 2011.^[5]

As reported by Gregory Kohs in The Examiner in 2011, Wales stated a net worth of around a half a million dollars in his divorce settlement. He reported spending around $21,000 a month.

It is likely that Wales makes his living from Wikipedia. He is not paid directly by the Wikimedia Foundation, and he claims that he is not reimbursed for expenses while conducting Wikipedia business, even when traveling to board meetings. The way Mr. Wales makes a living is by getting $50,000 to $70,000 per speaking engagement when he goes and lectures about Wikipedia.^[6][7][8][9].

He also uses these speaking opportunities to publicize a side project, Wikia, which is for-profit. Wikipedia deviates from its usual low tolerance for spam, allowing thousands of links to Wikia and not giving them the usual "no follow" treatment, thus elevating Wikia's search engine rankings. This "interwiki" treatment is not always available to other websites. At the same time "deletionist" supporters encourage removal of content from Wikipedia and relocation to Wikia, where it can be monetized by being displayed along with advertising.

Founder of Wikipedia question

There are 3 names: Jimbo Wales, Larry Sanger and Ben Kovitz.

There is no doubt that Jimbo Wales was the founder of Nupedia, which was the forerunner to Wikipedia. However, Larry Sanger claims that Jimbo Wales was not the sole founder of Wikipedia - Larry Sanger claims that Larry Sanger himself was a co-founder.

The reality is that it was Ben Kovitz's idea to use an open sourced model for Nupedia. Ben Kovitz discussed the idea with Larry Sanger, who agreed to it, and Larry Sanger then presented it to his boss, Jimbo Wales.

In technical terms, Ben Kovitz was the founder, however Ben Kovitz had nothing to do with the project beyond that, so does not wish to be described as such. Larry Sanger did more than anyone else to implement it, but Jimbo Wales was the boss the entire time.

Leader of Wikipedia question

Wikipedia is currently managed by the Wikimedia foundation (it was initially run by Bomis, but this ceased several years ago). Jimbo Wales is not the head of the Wikimedia foundation, hence Jimbo Wales cannot accurately be described as the leader of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation could, in theory at least, fire Jimbo Wales.

The reality, however, is that what Jimbo says goes, and he has more actual power than anyone else. Other than a few nit pickers, nobody seriously questions whether or not Jimbo Wales runs it.

Wikitruth describes Jimbo Wales as the God-King.

Jimbo's vision - what he wants Wikipedia to be

Jimbo Wales wants Wikipedia to be open for everyone. He does not like to ban anyone, and indeed refused to ban anyone at all initially and did not allow admins to have the ability to ban. Jimbo is also keen on privacy, to the extent that admins cannot even see IP addresses, and to see something as commonplace as an IP address requires special magical CheckUser abilities that only a select few have.

Sadly, such rules end up being abused and making it less private than ever and more able to be abused with power tripping and corruption than a more open system.

Jimbo's vision is to create a serious encyclopaedia. He doesn't particularly like it when people make fun of it, or treat it as anything less than super serious.

Biographies on Wikipedia

"I'd be happy to have, in theory, a good, neutral biography on every single person on the planet." - Jimmy Wales^[10]

While Jimmy Wales uses his influence to control his own biography on Wikipedia, he is less willing to help prevent defamation and invasion of privacy on other biography pages.

His Wikipedia biography has propagated misleading information about his wealth for several years now, and, unlike most of Wikipedia, cannot be edited unless the user first registers an account and waits several days. According to Wikipedia, the article is "semi-protected to prevent libelous additions".

There is also confusion about Wales' date of birth, confusion which he refuses to clear up without conditions. Encyclopedia Britannica lists August 7, 1966. Wales says that this is wrong, but refuses to provide Britannica with the correct date and supporting documentation unless they promise not to publish his date of birth.^[11]

Pornography on Wikimedia Commons

In May 2010, Jimbo attempted to delete some of the pornography from Wikimedia Commons. He was condemned by a majority of Wikimedians and pressured to remove some administrative tools from his "founder" software status.

Wikipedia was started by Bomis, an internet company that offered adult content. Bomis was founded by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Bomis funded Wikipedia in the early days before Wikipedia began accepting donations.

Relationship with Wikileaks

Jimmy Wales claims to have no connection with Wikileaks (wikileaks.org). However his company, Wikia, owned the domain names wikileaks.com, wikileaks.net, and wikileaks.us. All three of these sites directed visitors to Wikileaks content, including classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents, before Wikia sold the domain names to Wikileaks.

New life in England

Jimmy Wales recently moved to the United Kingdom, and makes frequent trips to the United States. He lives with his wife, Kate Garvey of Freud Communications^[12], a former advisor to Tony Blair. Their first child was born in 2011, and they married in the fall of 2012^[13]. Commentators on the Wikipedia Review described this as "Jimbo's imminent love child".^[14]

As of July 28, 2011, Wales' biography in Wikipedia still said that he "has one child". ^[15].

As of October 23, 2011, Wikipedia fails to acknowledge the existence of his second child^[16], even though he mentions the baby in an interview with the Independent.^[17] This was corrected in January 2012.^[18]

Wikipedia currently lists his residence as St. Petersburg, Florida.^[19]

Quotes

• "It is unfortunate that there was any debate at all here. This was pretty clearly a case of trolling. I would recommend a checkuser on various parties involved to see who else we ought to block in this nonsense. People are really missing the point if they think we should allow this kind of nonsense to go on. This is an encyclopedia, not a free speech zone for trolls.--Jimbo Wales 16:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)"

Notes

External links

• Jimmy Wales' net worth by Gregory Kohs, in The Examiner
• Jimmy Wales, the nobody everybody knows about - Valleywag
• Is Jimmy Wales an embezzler?
• Criticism of Jimmy Wales

• User:Jimmy Wales (talk) (contribs) (logs) (blocklog)
  • Edit patterns from Wannabekate's edit counter
  • June 2008 stats for popularity and chatter