Jimmy Wales

Childhood

Jimmy Wales was born the August 7th 1966 with Huntsville in Alabama. His/her father worked as director of trade of grocer while his/her mother, Doris, and his/her grandmother, Erma, directed a small private school of only one room in which Jimmy received its education.

As the classes were made up of a small number of pupils (that of Jimmy was most of the time made up of four pupils), the children were gathered in two groups according to their level:

the first group: with the 4^e rank (from 6 to 10 years)
the second group: 5^e with the 8^e rank (from 10 to 14 years)

Studies

After the 8^e year, Jimmy Wales becomes pupil of the Randolph School, a school located in Alabama at Huntsville which prepares at the entry at the university. The latter was one of the first schools to support the use of new technologies and in particular of data processing near the students thanks to engine rooms. Wales affirmed that the school had been expensive for its family but that this formation was regarded as important: " Education was always has passion in my household… you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that ace has base for has good life." “At the house, education was always a passion… You see, this very traditional approach of knowledge and the training as a base for a good life. ”.

Thereafter, it obtained a license ( bachelor ) of finance to the Université Auburn then began the program from the doctorate (Ph.D.) of finance to the Université of Alabama from where it left on the level the Maîtrise ( master ). Then, it continued to follow the courses of the doctorate to the Université of Indiana. It became finally Professor of Université Doctorant and taught in these two universities during its studies, but did not write its thesis necessary to obtaining Ph.D (Thèse of doctorate).

Career

From 1994 to 2000, Wales worked as research director with the Chicago Options Associates . According to Daniel Pink of the magazine Wired, thanks to speculation on interest rates and the fluctuations of the currencies étrangères, it could gain enough money to be able to live him and his wife the remainder of her existence.

Bomis.com and Nupedia

For this period (in 1996), one of the projects which Jimmy Wales undertook was the creation of Bomis, an erotic search engine of type not COM which later helped the financing of Wikipédia during its beginnings. Wales described Bomis as being an erotic “search engine rather intended for the guys” selling of the images S similar generally to those of the Maximal magazine with sometimes of the women very slightly vêtues.

During an interview in 2007, he declared that in 1999, he had made the study then carried out a software making it possible to produce a multilingual encyclopedia in line, but which he was however too slow to be able to be used.

In March 2000, Jimmy Wales founds and finances (thanks to Bomis) Nupedia, a free project of Encyclopédie of nature open and corrected by pars. He engages for that Larry Sanger like Editor association. Jimmy Wales wishes in the beginning a quality comparable with the professional Encyclopédie S of the market with selected free contributors, but their scarcity causes the closing of Nupedia the September 26th 2003, with only 24 finished articles and 74 articles under development.

Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation

After Larry Sanger publicly proposed on January 10th, 2001 the idea to use a wiki to create an encyclopedia, Wales installed a Moteur wiki on a waiter provided by Bomis and authorized Sanger to continue the project under its monitoring.

Wikipédia thus started the January 15th 2001, with Larry Sanger like Editor association Salarié. It is the latter which gave the name Wikipedia to the project. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger posed the principles founders together, writes the first articles and bench a community via Internet during this first year of existence. At the beginning, Wikipedia was designed to be a wiki contributing shares to Nupedia. However Wikipedia very quickly grew until exceeding the capacities of checking of the new articles of Nupedia. Wales also declared that at the beginning of the project, it was so anxious for this new concept which it could awake in the middle of the night to check if the site had not been degraded.

March 1st 2002, following the suppression of the financing of Bomis, Larry Sanger resigned of the project. In the middle of the year 2003, Jimmy Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit-making organization based with St Petersburg in Florida to support Wikipedia like its other affiliated projects recently created.

It formed a committee of five members who are itself, two of his colleagues (who are not active wikipédiens) and two members representative of the community having been elected.

During an interview with Slashdot, he explained which are its motivations for Wikipedia: " Imagine has off world in which every individual person one the planet is given free access to the sum all human knowledge. That' S what we' Re doing." ( Imagine a world in which each one can have everywhere on the Planet free access to the sum of all the human knowledge. It is what we do )

It has, with Angela Beesley, founded the company Wikia, Inc.

Presence in the media

2005

In 2005, Wales was indicated member of the Berkman Center for the Internet and the company of the Faculty of Law of Harvard. October 3rd, according to a press review, Wales became member of the direction of Socialtext, a company proposing of the Wiki solutions for the professional market.

2006

In 2006, he became member of the direction of Creative Commons, a non-profit-making association.

the May 3rd, it received Pioneer Award on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
the June 3rd, it received a Honoris causa Knox College.
the May 8th, it was classified first nobody of the category “Scientists and Thinkers” of Time 100, an special edition of magazine Time which lists the 100 people having more influence.
the November 4th, Wales was the guest of Wait Wait… Don' T Such Me! , a ludic and cultural weekly emission of NPR, an American radio. The subject was: “that must be true, I read it on Wikipédia”. He badly answered the three questions of the quiz which were asked to him.
the October 6th, Wales was the guest of PBS' Charlie Pink.

Current location

The October 21st 2006, the French Florence Nibart-Devouard succeeds to him the presidency of the Fondation Wikimedia, of which he is from now on honorary president.

He lives with Saint-Petersburg in Florida, with his Christine wife and his Kira daughter.

Convictions

Jimbo Wales is an impassioned follower of the objectivism stated by the American Philosophe Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982). By its philosophical convictions, it could be regarded as a Libertarien even if it refuses to employ this term: “the category people would made me in that' S most accessible would Be libertarian” ). In connection with the economy, it supports the Capitalisme and allots to the ideas of the liberal thinker Friedrich Hayek an important influence in the creation of Wikipédia.

Article on Wikipédia

The modifications made by Jimmy Wales to her own biography on Wikipédia were noticed by the media. Jimmy Wales erased the mention of Larry Sanger like cofounder of Wikipedia (this last being by statute a employed paid of the project), and striping the mention of pornography relating to Bomis (which had not-pornographic contents).

Quotations

I regard as a requirement Moral for our total mission never not to give up our values of Liberté (with the Freedom of expression, with our engagement with the Neutralité and the gathering), all that to satisfy any requirement emanating from such or such Gouvernement. We are a Encyclopédie Libre. With all that implies.

The Idée is to propose a Encyclopédie Gratuite with all the inhabitants of the planet, in their clean Langue, written and corrected by voluntary of all the Pays. The beginning, I ensured the Financement with my equities. Now, we organize collections of support on the Net and we receive Subvention S of foundations. Our Budget is of 1 million dollars per annum (800 000 euros). It is used to remunerate our single employee, to pay waiters and data-processing connections. We never made advertizing campaign, but we grow quickly.

“You probably expected that Encyclopedia Britannica, or one of the large world libraries, becomes the principal site of reference on the Web. In fact, it is Wikipédia which holds this title: an encyclopedia amateur created mainly by poor authors and editors even worse. Most insane is to see at which point it goes. ”

Jack Schofield and Jimmy Wales (Where Wikipedia works, 8/13/2007)

See too

: biography.
: page of user Wikipedia of Jimmy Wales.

External bonds

personal Official site and blog
Translation of the interview on slashdot of August 2004
Wikicities
Three questions with Jimmy Wales (Le Monde)
Maintenance one hour with Brian Lamb in the emission Q&A (questions and answers) about the chain US C-SPAN (25 sep 2005)
“Wikipédia: the founder changes his clean bio”, on Cyberpresse , December 20th 2005.

References

Random links: