Jimmy Donal Wales ( born August 7, 1966 ), besides known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British [ 4 ] Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former fiscal trader. [ 3 ] He is a co-founder of the on-line non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia [ 6 ] and the for-profit world wide web hosting ship’s company Wikia, late renamed Fandom. [ 7 ] Wales has worked on other on-line projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social. Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, where he attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] He earned knight bachelor ‘s and master ‘s degrees in finance from Auburn University and the University of Alabama respectively. [ 9 ] In graduate school, Wales taught at two universities ; however, he departed before completing a ph to take a job in finance and subsequently worked as the research conductor of a Chicago futures and options tauten.
Reading: Jimmy Wales – Wikipedia
In 1996, Wales and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal site chiefly known for featuring adult content. Bomis provided the initial fund for the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia, Nupedia ( 2000–2003 ). On January 15, 2001, with Larry Sanger and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free open-content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity. As Wikipedia ‘s public profile grew, he became its promoter and spokesman. Though he is historically credited as co-founder, he has disputed this, declaring himself the sole collapse. [ 11 ] [ 12 ] Wales serves on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the jacob’s ladder that he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed “ community fall through ” seat. For his function in creating Wikipedia, the world ‘s largest encyclopedia, Time named him one of “ The 100 Most influential People in the World “ in 2006. [ 13 ]
early life and education
Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, curtly before midnight on August 7, 1966 ; however, his birth security lists his date of birth as August 8. [ 14 ] [ better source needed ] [ 15 ] His father Jimmy Sr., [ 16 ] worked as a grocery memory coach, while his beget, Doris Ann ( née Dudley ), and his grandma, Erma, ran the House of Learning, [ 17 ] [ 9 ] a little individual educate in the custom of the one-room school, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] As a child, Wales enjoyed read. [ 7 ] When he was three, his mother bought a World Book Encyclopedia from a door-to-door salesman. As he grew up and learned to read, it became an object of reverence, but Wales soon discovered that the World Book had shortcomings : no matter how much was in it, there were many more things that were not. World Book sent out stickers for owners to paste on the pages in order to update the encyclopedia, and Wales was careful to put the stickers to work, stating, “ I joke that I started as a child revising the encyclopedia by stickering the one my beget bought. ” [ 19 ] During an consultation in 2005 with Brian Lamb, Wales described his childhood private school as a “ Montessori -influenced doctrine of education ”, where he “ exhausted lots of hours poring over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias “. [ 20 ] There were merely four other children in Wales ‘s grade, so the school grouped together the first base through fourth-grade students and the fifth through eighth-grade students. As an adult, Wales was sharply critical of the government ‘s treatment of the school, citing the “ constant hindrance and bureaucracy and very sort of clannish inspectors from the state ” as a formative influence on his political philosophy. [ 20 ] After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School, [ 21 ] [ 22 ] [ 23 ] [ 24 ] a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at sixteen. [ 25 ] Wales said that the school was expensive for his family, but that “ education was always a mania in my family … you know, the identical traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a basis for a good biography. ” [ 20 ] He received his knight bachelor ‘s degree in finance from Auburn University in 1986. [ 9 ] He began his Auburn department of education when he was 16 years honest-to-god. [ 9 ] Wales then entered the PhD finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a master ‘s degree to enter the PhD finance program at Indiana University. [ 18 ] [ 20 ] [ 25 ] At the University of Alabama, he played Internet fantasy games and developed his interest in the world wide web. [ 9 ] He taught at both universities during his graduate student studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a PhD, something he ascribed to boredom. [ 18 ] [ 20 ]
career
Chicago Options Associates and Bomis
The staff of Wales ‘ Internet company Bomis photographed in summer 2000. Wales is third from the leave in the back row, with Christine Rohan. In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trade firm in Chicago, Illinois. [ 20 ] [ 26 ] [ 27 ] Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and he wrote calculator code during his leisure time. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessional player of Multi-User Dungeons ( MUDs ) —a type of virtual role-playing game —and thereby experienced the likely of calculator networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects. [ 25 ] [ 28 ] Inspired by the signally successful initial populace offer of Netscape in 1995, and having accumulated capital through “ speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations ”, [ 17 ] Wales decided to leave the region of fiscal trade and became an Internet entrepreneur. [ 25 ] In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis, [ 17 ] [ 29 ] a world wide web portal featuring user-generated webrings and, for a clock, erotic photograph. [ 30 ] Wales described it as a “ guy-oriented search locomotive ” with a commercialize like to that of Maxim magazine ; [ 18 ] [ 20 ] [ 31 ] the Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] [ 32 ]
Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia
Though Bomis had at the fourth dimension struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the financing to pursue his greater passion, an on-line encyclopedia. [ 18 ] While moderating an on-line discussion group devoted to the doctrine of Objectivism in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger, a skeptic of the philosophy. [ 7 ] The two had engaged in detailed consider on the discipline on Wales ‘ list and then on Sanger ‘s, finally meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends. [ 7 ] Years subsequently, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia undertaking and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it, [ 28 ] Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University —to be its editor-in-chief, and in March 2000, Nupedia ( “ the free encyclopedia ” ), a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, was launched. [ 18 ] [ 20 ] The purpose behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a assortment of topics, and to sell advertise alongside the entries in holy order to make profit. [ 7 ] The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review work designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedia. [ 33 ]
The idea was to have thousands of volunteers writing articles for an on-line encyclopedia in all languages. initially we found ourselves organizing the work in a identical top-down, structured, academic, antique way. It was no fun for the volunteer writers because we had a batch of academician peer recapitulation committees who would criticize articles and give feedback. It was like handing in an essay at grad school, and basically intimidating to participate in .Jimmy Wales on the Nupedia project New Scientist, January 31, 2007[34]
In an October 2009 address, Wales recollected attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton, but being excessively intimidated to submit his beginning draft to the esteemed finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a newspaper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the discipline count. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work. [ 35 ] In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki by extreme programming enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slowly footstep of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its burdensome submission process. [ 36 ] Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia ‘s bottleneck. [ 36 ] Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. [ 36 ] The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the populace to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia ‘s technical volunteers. The majority of Nupedia ‘s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateurish capacity with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia ‘s data and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia. [ 37 ] Thus, the wiki project, dubbed “ Wikipedia ” by Sanger, [ 11 ] went know at a branch domain five days after its creation. [ 27 ] [ 32 ]
Wikipedia
primitively, Bomis planned to make Wikipedia a profitable business. [ 40 ] Sanger initially saw Wikipedia chiefly as a joyride to aid Nupedia development. Wales feared that, at worst, it might produce “ complete folderol ”. [ 27 ] To the storm of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launch, the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a little collective of editors had formed. [ 26 ] [ 28 ] It was Jimmy Wales, along with early people, who came up with the broader estimate of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia that would accept contributions from ordinary people. [ 41 ] Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia enterprise. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] Many of the early contributors to the web site were conversant with the model of the release culture bowel movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source campaign. [ 37 ] Wales has said that he was initially sol disquieted about the concept of clear edit, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awaken during the night and monitor what was being added. [ 42 ] [ 43 ] Nonetheless, the cell of early editors helped create a full-bodied, self-acting community that has proven conducive to the growth of the visualize. [ 18 ] In a talk at SXSW in 2016, he recalled that he wrote the first words on Wikipedia : “ Hello worldly concern “, a phrase computer programmers much use to test new software. [ 44 ] Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project. [ 11 ] [ 45 ] The broader mind he originally ascribes to other people, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot that “ the idea of an unfold generator, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was wholly Jimmy ‘s, not mine, and the financing was entirely by Bomis. Of course, other people had had the estimate ”, adding, “ the actual development of this encyclopedia was the tax he gave me to work on. ” [ 46 ] Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002 ; [ 47 ] Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as “ foreman organizer ” of Wikipedia on March 1 of that year. [ 48 ] [ 49 ] Early on, Bomis supplied the fiscal back for Wikipedia, [ 45 ] [ 50 ] and entertained the impression of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger ‘s deviation and plans for a non-profit foundation were advanced alternatively. [ 40 ]
Controversy regarding Wales ‘s status as co-founder
Wales has said that he is the sole collapse of Wikipedia, [ 12 ] and has publicly disputed Sanger ‘s designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least a early as September 2001 by The New York Times and as founders in Wikipedia ‘s first gear press release in January 2002. [ 52 ] [ 53 ] In August of that year, Wales identified himself as “ co-founder ” of Wikipedia. [ 54 ] Sanger assembled on his personal web page an categorization of links that appear to confirm the status of Sanger and Wales as co-founders. [ 11 ] For case, Sanger and Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and weigh releases as co-founders. [ 11 ] Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe as calling Sanger ‘s statement “ absurd ” in February 2006, [ 56 ] and called “ the wholly debate ” “ pathetic ” in an April 2009 consultation. [ 57 ] In 2013, Wales told The New York Times that the dispute is “ the dumbest controversy in the history of the world ”. [ 58 ] In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographic entry on the english Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the foliate, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia. [ 59 ] [ 60 ] 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 modern world of transparent activeness and maximal communication, the truth will out. ” [ 31 ] [ 61 ] Wales was besides observed to have modified references to Bomis in a means that was characterized as downplaying the intimate nature of some of his former company ‘s products. [ 27 ] [ 31 ] Though Wales argued that his modifications were entirely intended to improve the accuracy of the content, [ 31 ] he apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia. [ 31 ] [ 61 ]
role
In a 2004 consultation with Slashdot, Wales outlined his imagination for Wikipedia : “ Imagine a populace in which every single person on the planet is given exempt access to the sum of all human cognition. That ‘s what we ‘re doing. ” [ 62 ] Although his courtly designation is board penis and chair emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales ‘s social capital within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as beneficent authoritarian, constitutional sovereign and apparitional leader. [ 63 ] [ 64 ] [ 65 ] In two interviews with The Guardian in 2014, Wales elaborated on his function on Wikipedia. In the first interview, he said that while he “ has constantly rejected ” the term “ beneficent authoritarian ”, he does refer to himself as the “ constitutional monarch ”. In the second, he elaborated on his “ constitutional sovereign ” appointment, saying that, like Queen of the United Kingdom Elizabeth II, he has no real might. [ 1 ] [ 66 ] He was besides the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years. [ 7 ] The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an Internet celebrity. [ 67 ] Although he had never traveled outdoor North America anterior to the locate ‘s initiation, his participation in the Wikipedia project has seen him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face. [ 7 ] [ 68 ] When Larry Sanger left Wikipedia, Wales ‘s approach was different from Sanger ‘s. [ 69 ] Wales was fairly hands-off. [ 69 ] Despite interest in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his function within Wikipedia, telling The New York Times in 2008 that “ Dialing down is not an option for me … not to be besides dramatic about it, but, ‘to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every one person on the satellite in their own language, ‘ that ‘s who I am. That ‘s what I am doing. That ‘s my life finish. ” [ 64 ] In May 2010, the BBC reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical foul privileges on Wikimedia Commons ( a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content ) after criticism by the project ‘s volunteer community over what they saw as Wales ‘s hasty and undemocratic overture to deleting sexually explicit images he believed “ appeal entirely to prurient interests ”. [ 70 ]
Wikimedia Foundation
In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation ( WMF ), a non-profit administration founded in St. Petersburg, Florida and late headquartered in San Francisco, California. [ 71 ] [ 72 ] All intellectual place rights and world names pertaining to Wikipedia were moved to the modern foundation, [ 73 ] whose aim is to support the encyclopedia and its baby projects. [ 28 ] Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation ‘s Board of Trustees since it was formed and was its official president from 2003 through 2006. [ 74 ] Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of president emeritus and holds the board-appointed “ community founder ‘s seat “ that was installed in 2008. [ 75 ] [ 76 ] [ 77 ] His work for the foundation garment, including his appearances to promote it at calculator and educational conferences, has always been unpaid. [ 30 ] Wales has much joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the “ dumbest and the smartest ” thing he had done. On one hand, he estimated that Wikipedia was worth US $ 3 billion ; on the early, he weighed his impression that the contribution made its success potential. [ 34 ] [ 73 ] [ 78 ] [ 79 ] In 2020, Wales said that “ I view my function as being very much like the advanced sovereign of the UK : no real power, but the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the correct to warn. ” [ 80 ] Wales gives an annual “ State of the Wiki ” address at the Wikimania league. [ 81 ] Wales ‘s association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the initiation ‘s funds for recreational purposes. [ 82 ] Wool besides stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in function because of his spend habits, a statement Wales denied. [ 82 ] Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and erstwhile foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the initiation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own scoop ; in individual, Devouard upbraided Wales for “ constantly trying to rewrite the by ”. [ 83 ] later in March 2008, erstwhile Novell computer scientist Jeff Merkey said that Wales had edited Merkey ‘s Wikipedia submission to make it more favorable in tax return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as “ nonsense ”. [ 84 ] [ 85 ] In early 2016, Wikipedia editors perceived the WMF ‘s Knowledge Engine project as a conflict of interest for Wales, whose commercial enterprise Wikia might benefit from having the WMF spend a lot of money on research in respect to search. [ 86 ] Wikia attempted to develop a search engine but it was closed in 2009. [ 86 ]
Wikia and subsequently pursuits
In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company Wikia. [ 26 ] Wikia is a wiki grow —a solicitation of individual wikis on unlike subjects, all hosted on the same web site. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including Memory Alpha ( devoted to Star Trek ) and Wookieepedia ( Star Wars ). [ 87 ] Another service offered by Wikia was Wikia Search, an unfold informant search engine intended to challenge Google and introduce foil and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine ‘s operations, [ 88 ] but the project was abandoned in March 2009. Wales stepped depressed a Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor Gil Penchina, a former frailty president of the united states and general coach at eBay, on June 5, 2006. [ 90 ] Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitableness in September 2009. [ 91 ] In addition to his function at Wikia, Wales is a public loudspeaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency. [ 92 ] [ 93 ] He has besides participated in a fame endorsement campaign for the swiss watchmaker Maurice Lacroix. [ 94 ] On November 4, 2011, Wales delivered an hour-long address at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three. [ 95 ] His speech, which was entitled “ The future of the Internet ”, was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days late, on November 24, Wales appeared on the british topical debate television receiver course of study Question Time. [ 96 ] In May 2012, it was reported that Wales was advising the united kingdom politics on how to make taxpayer-funded academician inquiry available on the internet at no monetary value. [ 97 ] His character reportedly involved working as “ an amateur adviser on crowdsourcing and opening up policymaking ”, and advising the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the UK research councils on distributing inquiry. [ 97 ] In January 2014, it was announced that Wales had joined The People ‘s Operator as co-chair of the mobile telephone net. [ 98 ] On March 21, 2014, Wales spoke on a control panel at a Clinton Global Initiative University conference held at Arizona State University, along with John McCain, Saudi Arabian women ‘s rights activist Manal al-Sharif and Harvard University student Shree Bose. [ 99 ] The topic of discussion was “ the age of participation ” and the ability of an increasingly large number of citizens to “ express their own opinions, pursue their own educations, and launch their own enterprises. ” Wales exhorted young people to use social media to try to bring about social change, and compared government suppression of the Internet to a homo rights misdemeanor. [ 100 ] On May 26, 2014, Google appointed Wales to serve on a seven-member committee on privacy in response to Google v. Gonzalez, which led to Google ‘s being inundated with requests to remove websites from their search results. Wales said he wanted the committee to be viewed as “ a blue-ribbon empanel ” by lawmakers and for the committee to advise the lawmakers deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as Google. [ 101 ] In 2017, Wales announced that he was launching an on-line publication called WikiTribune, with a goal to fight talk through one’s hat newsworthiness through a combination of professional journalists and volunteer contributors. Wales described it as “ news by the people and for the people ”, and that it will be the “ first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop, and at all times backed by a community check and rechecking all facts ”. [ 102 ] In October 2019, Wales launched an ad-free social network, WT Social. [ 103 ] [ 104 ] The Jimmy Wales Foundation for Freedom of Expression is a UK-based charity established by Wales to fight against homo rights violations in the field of exemption of formula. [ 105 ] [ 106 ] [ 107 ] Wales founded the charity after receiving a pry from the drawing card of Dubai, which he felt he could not accept given the hard-and-fast censoring laws there, but claims he was not allowed to give back. [ 106 ] As of 2016, the charity ‘s CEO is Orit Kopel. [ 108 ]
Political and economic views
personal doctrine
Wales at the Creative Commons Board Meeting in June 2008 Wales is a self-avowed Objectivist, [ 88 ] referring to the philosophy invented by writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th hundred that emphasizes reason, individuality, and capitalism. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand ‘s novel The Fountainhead during his undergraduate period [ 20 ] and, in 1992, founded an electronic mail list devoted to “ Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy ”. [ 7 ] [ 109 ] Though he has stated that the doctrine “ colours everything I do and think ”, [ 7 ] 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. ” [ 110 ]
CeBIT Global Conferences, Wikipedia Zero Jimmy Wales 2014 on When asked by Brian Lamb about Rand ‘s charm on him in his appearance on C-SPAN ‘s Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and “ the merit of independence ” as personally authoritative. When asked if he could trace “ the Ayn Rand connection ” to a personal political doctrine at the time of the interview, Wales labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his comment by referring to the Libertarian Party as “ lunatics ”, and citing “ exemption, shore leave, basically person rights, that idea of dealing with early people in a manner that is not initiating force against them ” as his guide principles. [ 20 ] An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason. [ 18 ] In that profile, he described his political views as “ center-right “. [ 18 ] In a 2011 interview with The Independent, he expressed sympathy with the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London protesters, saying, “ You do n’t have to be a socialistic to say it ‘s not properly to take money from everybody and give it to a few rich people. That ‘s not free enterprise. ” [ 111 ]
Dan Hodges in The Telegraph has described Wales as a “ labor sympathizer ”. [ 112 ] In 2015, he offered to help Ed Miliband with the Labour Party ‘s social media scheme, but Miliband turned him down. [ 112 ] In 2015, Wales signed up as the committee chair for Democrat Lawrence Lessig ‘s 2016 presidential political campaign. [ 113 ] In 2016, Wales and eleven other business leaders signed on to an open letter to American voters urging them not to vote for Donald Trump in that year ‘s presidential election. [ 114 ] In May 2017, Wales said on Quora that he is a centrist and a gradualist, and believes “ that dense bit-by-bit change is better and more sustainable and allows us to test new things with a minimal of difficult disturbance in club. ” [ 115 ] In May 2022, Wales said that he did not identify with any particular political label. [ 116 ]
philosophy in commit
The January/February 2006 exit of Maximum PC reported that Wales refused to comply with a request from the People ‘s Republic of China to censor “ politically sensible ” Wikipedia articles—other corporate internet companies, such as Google, Yahoo ! and Microsoft, had already yielded to chinese government atmospheric pressure. Wales stated that he would quite see companies such as Google adhere to Wikipedia ‘s policy of exemption of data. [ 117 ] In 2010, Wales criticized whistle-blower web site WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief julian Assange, saying that their issue of Afghan war documents “ could be adequate to get person killed ” ; furthermore, he expressed annoyance at their use of the name “ wiki “ : [ 118 ] “ What they ‘re doing is not actually a wiki. The effect of wiki is a collaborative edit march ”. [ 119 ]
Development and management of Wikipedia
Wales at the tenth anniversary celebration of the Bengali Wikipedia Wales cites austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek ‘s try, “ The Use of Knowledge in Society “, which he read as an undergraduate, [ 27 ] as “ central ” to his thinking about “ how to manage the Wikipedia project ”. [ 18 ] Hayek argued that information is decentralized —that each individual only knows a modest fraction of what is known collectively—and that as a consequence, decisions are best made by those with local anesthetic cognition, quite than by a central assurance. [ 18 ] Wales reconsidered Hayek ‘s test in the 1990s, while reading about the candid source drift, which advocated for the collective development and dislodge distribution of software. He was particularly moved by “ The Cathedral and the Bazaar “, an essay which was late adapted into a book of the like name, by one of the founders of the drift, Eric S. Raymond, as it “ opened [ his ] eyes to the possibilities of multitude collaboration. ” [ 27 ] From his background in finance, and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in crippled theory and the impression of incentives on human collaborative activeness. He identifies this fascination as a significant footing for his developmental exploit on the Wikipedia plan. [ 120 ] He has rejected the impression that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as “ sacrificing your own values for others ”, and he states that the idea that “ participating in a beneficent effort to parcel information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me ”. [ 68 ]
testimony before Senate Homeland Security Committee
On December 11, 2007, Wales testified before to the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. [ 121 ] [ 122 ] He besides submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee entitled “ E-Government 2.0 : Improving Innovation, Collaboration and Access ”. [ 123 ] Senator Joseph Lieberman introduced Wales by stating :
We are identical gladiolus to have as a witness Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, one of the most shudder examples of what collaborative technology can produce. We have asked Mr. Wales to take us through some of the ideas behind Wikipedia and then to relate them to our legal power, which is to say to help us understand how similar technologies and collaborative activities can be applied to government for greater data sharing and communication, both within the government, but besides between the government and the populace. In fact, quite encouragingly, the news community has already developed and is using a process collaborative technology that they call Intellipedia, which is based directly on the Wikipedia exemplary. so, Mr. Wales, if imitation is a shape of flattery, you should feel flattered. And the calculate of this is to foster collaboration and information across the intelligence community, obviously on a close site. [ 124 ]
european Court of Justice Google rule
On May 14, 2014, Wales powerfully reacted to the european Court of Justice ( ECJ ) ‘s predominate on the right of individuals to request the removal of information from Google ‘s search results. He stated to the BBC that the rule was “ one of the most wide-sweeping internet censoring rulings that I ‘ve ever seen ”. [ 125 ] In early June 2014, the TechCrunch media wall socket interviewed Wales on the submit, as he had been invited by Google to join an advisory committee that the corporation had formed as an addition to the courtly work that the ECJ requested from Google to manage such requests. [ 126 ] The May 2014 ECJ rule required fleet action from Google to implement a march that allowed people to immediately contact the pot about the removal of data that they believe is outdated or irrelevant. Google ‘s Larry Page revealed that 30 percentage of requests received by Google since the rule was made were categorized as “ other ”. Wales explained in electronic mail responses that he was contacted by Google on May 28, 2014, and “ The remission of the committee is to hold populace hearings and issue recommendations—not equitable to Google but to legislators and the public. ” [ 126 ] When asked about his horizon on the ECJ ‘s “ right to be forgotten ” govern, Wales replied :
I think the decision will have no impact on people ‘s correctly to privacy, because I do n’t regard truthful information in court records published by court orderliness in a newspaper to be secret information. If anything, the decision is likely to simply muddle the concern philosophic questions and make it more unmanageable to make real progress on privacy issues. In the font of truthful, non-defamatory information obtained legally, I think there is no possibility of any defendable “ right ” to censor what other people are saying. It is authoritative to avoid speech like “ data ” because we are n’t talking about “ data ” —we are talking about the inhibition of cognition. [ 126 ]
Wales then provided further explanation, drawing a comparison with Wikipedia : “ You do not have a right to use the law to prevent Wikipedia editors from writing truthful information, nor do you have a right field to use the law to prevent Google from publishing truthful information. ” Wales concluded with an indication of his ideal result : “ A separate of the result should be the identical solid execution of a right to free speech in Europe—essentially the linguistic process of the First Amendment in the U.S. ” [ 126 ]
other issues
In 2012, the Home Secretary of the U.K. was petitioned by Wales in esteem to his opposition to the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer to the U.S. [ 127 ] After an agreement was reached to avoid the extradition, Wales commented, “ This is identical excite newsworthiness, and I ‘m please to hear it … What needs to happen following is a dangerous reconsideration of the UK extradition treaty that would allow this sort of nonsense in the first base stead. ” [ 128 ] In August 2013, Wales criticized U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron ‘s plan for an Internet porn-filter, saying that the idea was “ farcical ”. [ 129 ] In November 2013, Wales besides commented on the Snowden affair, describing Edward Snowden as “ a hero ” whom history would judge “ very favorably ” ; additionally, Wales said the U.S. populace “ would have never approved [ the ] sweep surveillance plan [ publicized by Snowden ] ”, had they been informed or asked about it. [ 130 ] During the Gamergate controversy in 2014, in response to an e-mail from a computer science scholar, Wales allegedly said of the Gamergate movement that “ It is identical unmanageable for me to buy into the notion that gamergate is ‘really about ethics in journalism ‘ when every single experience I have personally had with it involved pro-gg people insulting, threatening, doxxing, etc. ” and that the movement “ has been permanently tarnished and highjacked by a handful of people who are not what you would hope. ” [ 131 ] In November 2019, Wales accused Twitter of giving discriminatory treatment to high-profile figures such as Trump and Elon Musk for not banning or blocking them for their controversial statements. [ 132 ] In May 2020, Wales criticized Trump for threatening to regulate social media companies. [ 133 ] In September 2021, Wales said that Facebook and Twitter should combat misinformation and pervert on their platforms by deploying volunteer moderators to monitor controversial posts. [ 134 ] In October 2021, Wales said that “ Protecting strong encoding is all-important for protecting the human rights of millions of people around the worldly concern. ” [ 135 ] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wales stated on Wikipedia that the consensus in the mainstream media surrounding the lab leak theory seemed to have shifted from “ this is highly unlikely, and entirely conspiracy theorists are pushing this narrative ” to “ this is one of the plausible hypotheses. ” [ 136 ] Wales has visited Israel over ten-spot times and taken over $ 1M in donations from Israeli universities. He has said that he is “ a potent athletic supporter of Israel ”. [ 137 ]
personal life
Wales with his second wife, Christine Rohan Jimmy Wales has been married three times. At the historic period of twenty dollar bill, he married Pamela Green, [ 3 ] a colleague at a grocery store in Alabama. [ 68 ] They divorced in 1993. [ 9 ] He met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she was working as a steel trader for Mitsubishi. [ 20 ] [ 25 ] The pair were married in Monroe County, Florida in March 1997, [ 138 ] and had a daughter before separating in 2008. [ 3 ] [ 20 ] [ 68 ] Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after becoming disillusioned with the housing market there, relocated in 2002 to St. Petersburg, Florida. [ 25 ] [ 50 ] [ 139 ] Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian button-down columnist Rachel Marsden in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography. [ 140 ] After accusations that Wales ‘s kinship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and said that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia, [ 141 ] [ 142 ] a argument which was disputed by Marsden. [ 143 ] Wales married Kate Garvey at Wesley ‘s Chapel in London on October 6, 2012. [ 144 ] She is Tony Blair ‘s former diary repository, whom Wales met in Davos, Switzerland. [ 145 ] [ 146 ] Wales has three daughters : one with Rohan and two with Garvey. [ 1 ] [ 147 ] Wales is an atheist. In an interview with Big Think, he said his personal philosophy is hard rooted in reason and he is a complete non-believer. [ 148 ] Wales has lived in London, England, since 2012. [ 149 ] He became a british citizen in 2019. [ 4 ] In 2021, on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, Wales revealed that he secretly moved to Argentina for one calendar month after reading Ferriss ‘s script The 4-Hour Workweek. [ 150 ] According to Wales, he is a passionate chef. [ 80 ]
Publications
Distinctions
Wales receives an honorary doctor’s degree from Maastricht University, 2015
See besides
References
bibliography
far read
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