Jimmy Wales

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Jimmy Wales (November 2004)

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966) is the founder and President of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation which operates Wikipedia and several other wiki projects. Wales is also founder of the for-profit company Wikia, which is legally unrelated to Wikimedia, within which he co-founded the Wikicities project.

Life before Wikipedia

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. His father, now retired, was a grocery store manager while Wales was growing up. Wales's mother Doris and grandmother Erma ran a small private school, "in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse," where he also went to school. There were four children in his grade most of the time, so the school grouped together first through fourth grades and fifth through eighth grades. A 2005 Time magazine article incorrectly reported that Wales was home schooled.^[1] Strictly speaking Wales was not, but he did note that his schooling experience was "in a sense similar" since his mother and grandmother were his primary teachers. Students had a fair amount of freedom to study whatever they liked; the school's philosophy of education was significantly influenced by Montessori. Wales spent many hours poring over the World Book Encyclopedia during this time. After eighth grade, Wales went to Randolph School, a college prep school, which was and is an early adopter of computer labs and other technology for direct student use. This prep school was expensive for the family, since they had few means, but Wales reports that his family believed education was very 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 undergraduate degree from Auburn University and his masters from the University of Alabama. Later, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama and Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but he did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a postgraduate degree at these institutions. Wales went on to become a futures and options trader in Chicago, and within a few years had earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives." ^[2]

In 1996, Wales founded a search portal called Bomis, which also sold erotic photographs until mid-2005. Because of his past position with Bomis, Wales was asked in a September 2005 C-SPAN interview about his involvement with what the interviewer, Brian Lamb, called "dirty pictures." In response, Wales described Bomis as a "guy-oriented search engine."^[3] In an interview with Wired, he also explained that he disputed the categorization of Bomis content as "soft-core pornography": "If R-rated movies are porn, it was porn. In other words, no, it was not." ^[4] Wales is no longer actively involved in the company.

In March 2000, he started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia.com ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief. While Wales was CEO, Bomis donated over $100,000 (primarily through salaries and providing free Internet access) to Nupedia and Wikipedia, and continued supporting them into 2002.

Delete the Raymond Samuels internet site!

Wikipedia is an internet clique of pretensious geeks with no accountability. They now owe $400,000 for the use of the Raymond Samuels name; and will be billed accordingly.

Jimmy Wales is an apparent fascist.

Do not donate to his corruption organization.

Wikipedia is an apparent front for ulawful activities which include slander and intellectual property theft.

Other activities

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Wales in May 2005

Perhaps inspired by the success of Wikipedia, Wales has founded the for-profit company Wikia (unrelated to Wikimedia), which hosts various wikis and manages the Wikicities project.

Wales was appointed a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in 2005. Later that year, on October 3, according to a press release^[5], Wales joined the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses.

Wales has also been a passionate adherent of Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by author Ayn Rand. From 1992 to 1996 he ran the electronic mailing list "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy"^[6], and in 2002, he began moderating Atlantis, an Objectivism-related mailing list on the Objectivist community site We the Living.

Wales lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his wife Christine and daughter Kira. He has traveled to many countries, including the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France. He is protective about his personal life^{[citation needed]}, and his interests and hobbies outside of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation are mostly unknown to the general public.^{[citation needed]}

Published works

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. Abstract available online from the Social Science Research Network. See also Log-normal distribution.

End material

Footnotes

^ Taylor, Chris (29 May). "It's a Wiki, Wiki World". Time Magazine. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
^ Pink, Daniel H (March). "The Book Stops Here". Wired Magazine. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
^ [1]
^ Cadenhead, Rogers (19 December). "Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
^ "Wikipedia Founder Joins Socialtext Board". 3 October 2005. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |org= ignored (help)
^ Template:Newsgroup reference Google