Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia
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Jimbo Wales
Co-founder of Wikipedia (born 1966)
Jimmy Wales
Wales in 2023
Born
Jimmy Donal Wales
1966-08-08
August 8, 1966
(age 59)
Huntsville, Alabama
, US
Other names
Jimbo Wales
Citizenship
United States
United Kingdom
Education
Auburn University
BS
University of Alabama
MS
Occupations
Internet entrepreneur
webmaster
financial trader
Known for
Co-founding
Wikipedia
Title
President of
Fandom
(2004–present)
Chairman of the
Wikimedia Foundation
(2003–2006)
Chair
emeritus
of the Wikimedia Foundation (2006–present)
Spouses
Pamela Green
m.
1986;
div.
1993)
Christine Rohan
m.
1997;
div.
2011)
Kate Garvey
m.
2012)
Children
Jimmy Wales's voice
Recorded August 2014
Website
jimmywales.com
Signature
Jimmy Donal Wales
(born August 8, 1966) is an American internet entrepreneur and former financial trader. He is best known for co-founding
Wikipedia
, a nonprofit free encyclopedia, and
Fandom
(formerly Wikia), a for-profit
wiki hosting service
. He has also worked on
Bomis
Nupedia
WikiTribune
, and
Trust Café
(formerly
WT Social
).
Born in
Huntsville, Alabama
, Wales attended
Randolph School
and earned finance degrees from
Auburn University
and the
University of Alabama
. While in graduate school, he was teaching at two universities, but left before completing a PhD to work in finance, later becoming chief research officer at
Chicago Options Associates
In 1996, he co-founded Bomis, which funded the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003). On January 15, 2001, with
Larry Sanger
and others, he launched Wikipedia, which grew rapidly. Wales became its promoter and public face, though he has at times disputed Sanger's role, claiming sole founder status.
Wales has served on the
Wikimedia Foundation
board of trustees since its creation, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. He gives annual "State of the Wiki" addresses at
Wikimania
For his role in creating Wikipedia,
Time
named him one of the
100 most influential people in the world
in 2006.
Early life and education
Jimmy Donal Wales was born in
Huntsville, Alabama
, on August 8, 1966.
His father, Jimmy Don Wales,
was a grocery store manager, while his mother, Doris Ann (
née
Dudley
), and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning,
a small private school in the tradition of the
one-room schoolhouse
, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education.
As a child, Wales enjoyed reading.
When he was three years old, his mother bought a
World Book Encyclopedia
from a door-to-door salesman.
World Book
sent out stickers for owners to paste on the pages to update the encyclopedia, and Wales used them on his copy, stating, "I joke that I started as a kid revising the encyclopedia by stickering the one my mother bought."
10
11
During an interview in 2005 with
Brian Lamb
, Wales described his childhood private school as a "
Montessori
-influenced philosophy of education", where he "spent lots of hours poring over the
Britannica
and
World Book Encyclopedias
".
12
There were only four other children in Wales'
grade
, so the school combined the first- 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 interference and bureaucracy and very sort of snobby inspectors from the state" as a formative influence on his political philosophy.
12
After eighth grade, Wales attended
Randolph School
13
14
15
16
a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at age 16.
17
He 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."
12
He received his bachelor's degree in finance from
Auburn University
in 1986. He began his Auburn education when he was 16 years old.
He 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 Bloomington
12
17
At the University of Alabama, he played Internet fantasy games and developed his interest in the web.
He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a PhD, something he ascribed to boredom.
12
Career
The staff of Wales' Internet company
Bomis
photographed in summer 2000. Wales is third from the left in the back row with Christine
Rohan —
at the time Christine Wales, his second wife.
In 1994, Wales took a job with
Chicago Options Associates
, a
futures
and
options
trading firm in Chicago, Illinois.
12
18
19
Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage, writing computer code during his leisure time. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessive player of
multi-user dungeons
(MUDs)—a type of virtual
role-playing game
—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects.
17
20
Inspired by the successful
initial public offering
of
Netscape
in 1995, and having accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations",
Wales decided to leave the realm of financial trading and became an Internet entrepreneur.
17
In 1996, he and two partners founded
Bomis
21
a web portal featuring
user-generated
webrings
and, for a time,
softcore pornography
22
Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of
Maxim
magazine;
12
23
the Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful.
24
Lead-up to Wikipedia
Main article:
Nupedia
Logo of Nupedia
Though Bomis had at the time struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to pursue his greater passion, an online encyclopedia.
While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of
Objectivism
in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered
Larry Sanger
, a skeptic of the philosophy.
The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends.
Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it,
20
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.
12
The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics and to sell advertising alongside the entries to make a profit.
The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.
25
The idea was to have thousands of volunteers writing articles for an online encyclopedia in all languages. Initially, we found ourselves organizing the work in a very top-down, structured, academic, old-fashioned way. It was no fun for the volunteer writers because we had a lot of academic peer review 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
26
In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollected attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist
Robert C. Merton
, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.
27
In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a
wiki
by
extreme programming
enthusiast
Ben Kovitz
after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process.
28
Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck.
28
Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001.
28
The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia's experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia's information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia.
29
Despite this the wiki project, dubbed "
Wikipedia
", went live at a separate
domain
five days after its creation.
19
24
Wikipedia
Main article:
History of Wikipedia
External videos
Jimmy Wales: The birth of Wikipedia
TED
, 2005
30
Q&A
interview with Jimmy Wales
C-SPAN
, 2005
12
Lecture Jimmy Wales: Understanding failure as a route to success
Maastricht University
, 2015
31
Interview with Wales
Lex Fridman Podcast
, 2023
32
Interview with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales at Wikimania 2025, Nairobi, Kenya
Rtv
, 2025
33
Originally, Bomis planned to make Wikipedia a profitable business.
34
Sanger initially saw Wikipedia primarily as a tool to aid
Nupedia
development. Wales feared that, at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish".
19
To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching, the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed.
18
20
It was Jimmy Wales, along with other people, who came up with the broader idea of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia that would accept contributions from ordinary people.
35
Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative.
19
20
Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the
free culture movement
, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the
open-source movement
29
Wales has said that he was initially so worried about the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awaken during the night and monitor what was being added.
36
37
Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.
In a talk at
SXSW
in 2016, he recalled that he wrote the first words on Wikipedia: "
Hello world
", a phrase computer programmers often use to test new software.
38
Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project.
39
40
The broader idea he originally ascribes to other people, remarking in a 2005 memoir for
Slashdot
that "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. Of course, other people had had the idea", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on."
41
Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002;
42
Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March
1 of that year.
43
44
Early on, Bomis supplied the financial backing for Wikipedia,
40
45
and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a non-profit foundation were advanced instead.
34
Co-founder status dispute
Further information:
History of Wikipedia § Early roles of Wales and Sanger
Wales has said that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia, and has publicly disputed Sanger's designation as a co-founder.
46
Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders as early as September 2001 by
The New York Times
, and both were described as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002.
47
48
In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia.
49
Sanger assembled on his personal webpage an assortment of links that appear to confirm the status of he and Wales as co-founders.
39
50
51
In February 2006, Wales was quoted by
The Boston Globe
as calling Sanger's statements "preposterous", and in April 2009 Wales called the founder debate "silly".
52
53
In 2013, Wales told
The New York Times
that the dispute is "the dumbest controversy in the history of the world".
54
In November 2025, Wales appeared on the podcast
Jung & Naiv
for an interview with the German journalist
Tilo Jung
. Wales stood up and left after less than a minute, calling Jung's questions about his founder status "stupid".
55
In late 2005, Wales edited his biographical entry on the
English Wikipedia
. 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 Wikipedia.
56
57
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."
23
58
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.
19
23
Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content,
23
he apologized for editing his biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.
23
58
Role
In a 2004 interview with
Slashdot
, Wales outlined his vision for Wikipedia: "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."
59
Although his formal designation is board member and chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales'
social capital
within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as
benevolent dictator
constitutional monarch
and
spiritual leader
60
61
62
In two interviews with
The Guardian
in 2014, Wales elaborated on his role on Wikipedia. In the first interview, he said that while he "has always rejected" the term "benevolent dictator", he does refer to himself as the "constitutional monarch". In the second, he elaborated on his "constitutional monarch" designation, saying that, like
Queen of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II
, he has no real power.
63
64
He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years.
The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an
Internet celebrity
65
Although he had never traveled outside North America before the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project has seen him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face.
66
When Larry Sanger left Wikipedia, Wales' approach was different from Sanger's
67
in that he was fairly hands-off.
67
Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling
The New York Times
in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal."
61
In May 2010, the
BBC
reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical privileges on
Wikimedia Commons
, a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content. This came after criticism by the project's volunteer community, who considered Wales to have taken a hasty and undemocratic approach to deleting sexually explicit images he believed to "appeal solely to prurient interests".
68
Wikimedia Foundation
Wales appearing as a member of the
Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees at
Wikimania 2007
In mid-2003, Wales set up the
Wikimedia Foundation
(WMF), a non-profit organization founded in
St. Petersburg, Florida
, and later headquartered in San Francisco, California.
69
70
All Wikipedia intellectual property rights and domain names were moved to the new foundation,
71
whose purpose is to support the encyclopedia and its sister projects.
20
Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's
Board of Trustees
since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006.
72
Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of chairman
emeritus
and holds the board-appointed "
community founder's seat
" that was installed in 2008.
73
74
75
His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid.
22
Wales has often 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 but on the other hand, he weighed his belief that the donation made its success possible.
26
71
76
77
In 2020, Wales said that "I view my role as being very much like the
modern monarch of the UK
: no real power, but the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn."
78
Wales' association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes.
79
Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a statement Wales denied.
79
Then-chairperson of the foundation
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 pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".
80
Later in March 2008, former
Novell
computer scientist
Jeff Merkey said that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".
81
82
In early 2016, Wikipedia editors perceived the WMF's
Knowledge Engine
project as a
conflict of interest
for Wales, whose business Wikia might benefit from having the WMF spend a lot of money on research in respect to search.
83
Wikia attempted to develop a search engine but it was closed in 2009.
83
Wikia and later pursuits
In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the
WMF
Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company
Wikia
18
Wikia is a
wiki farm
—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including
Memory Alpha
(devoted to
Star Trek
) and
Wookieepedia
Star Wars
).
84
Another service offered by Wikia was
Wikia Search
, an open source search engine intended to challenge
Google
and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine's operations,
85
but the project was abandoned in March 2009.
86
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.
87
Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitability in September 2009.
88
In addition to his role at Wikia, Wales is a public speaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency.
89
90
He has also participated in a
celebrity endorsement
campaign for the Swiss watchmaker
Maurice Lacroix
91
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
92
His speech, which was entitled "The Future of the Internet", was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days later, on November 24, Wales appeared on the British topical debate television program
Question Time
93
In May 2012, it was reported that Wales was advising the UK government on how to make taxpayer-funded academic research available on the internet at no cost.
94
His role reportedly involved working as "an unpaid advisor on crowdsourcing and opening up policymaking", and advising the
Department of Business, Innovation and Skills
and the UK research councils on distributing research.
94
In January 2014, it was announced that Wales had joined
The People's Operator
as co-chair of the mobile phone network.
95
On March 21, 2014, Wales spoke on a 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
96
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 societal change, and compared government suppression of the Internet to a human rights violation.
97
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 panel
" by lawmakers and for the committee to advise the lawmakers as well as Google.
98
In 2017, Wales announced that he was launching an online publication called
WikiTribune
, to fight fake news 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 checking and rechecking all facts".
99
In October 2019, Wales launched an ad-free social network,
WT Social
100
101
The Jimmy Wales Foundation for Freedom of Expression is a UK-based charity established by Wales to fight against
human rights violations
in the field of
freedom of expression
102
103
104
Wales founded the charity after receiving a prize from the leader of
Dubai
, which he felt he could not accept given the strict censorship laws there, but claims he was not allowed to give back.
103
As of 2016, the charity's CEO is Orit Kopel.
105
Political views
Personal philosophy
Wales at a
Creative Commons
board meeting in June 2008
Wales has previously referred to himself as an
Objectivist
85
referring to the philosophy of writer
Ayn Rand
in the mid-20th century that emphasizes
reason
individualism
, and
capitalism
. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel
The Fountainhead
during his undergraduate period
12
and, in 1992, founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy".
106
Though he has stated that the philosophy "colors everything I do and think",
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."
107
Jimmy Wales 2014 on
CeBIT
Global Conferences
Wikipedia Zero
When asked by
Brian Lamb
about Rand's influence on him in his appearance on
C-SPAN
's
Q&A
in September 2005, Wales cited
integrity
and "the virtue of independence" as personally important. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to a personal political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales labeled himself a
libertarian
, qualifying his remark by referring to the
Libertarian Party
as "lunatics", and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a manner that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles.
12
In a 2014 tweet, he expressed support for
open borders
108
An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine
Reason
In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".
In a 2011 interview with
The Independent
, he expressed sympathy with the
Occupy Wall Street
and
Occupy London
protesters, saying, "You don't have to be a
socialist
to say it's not right to take money from everybody and give it to a few rich people. That's not free enterprise."
109
Dan Hodges
in
The Daily Telegraph
has described Wales as a "
Labour
sympathizer".
110
In 2015, Wales offered to help
Ed Miliband
with the Labour Party's social media strategy, but Miliband declined the offer.
110
In 2015, Wales signed up as the committee chair for Democrat
Lawrence Lessig
's
2016 presidential campaign
111
In 2016, Wales and eleven other business leaders signed an open letter to American voters urging them not to vote for
Donald Trump
in that year's
presidential election
112
In May 2017, Wales said on
Quora
that he is a centrist and a
gradualist
, and believes "that slow step-by-step change is better and more sustainable and allows us to test new things with a minimum of difficult disruption in society."
113
In May 2022, Wales said that he did not identify with any particular political label.
114
In May 2024, in the run-up to the
2024 United Kingdom general election
, he was a joint signatory of a public letter of support for the UK Labour Party.
115
116
Development and management of Wikipedia
Wales at the tenth-anniversary celebration of the
Bengali Wikipedia
Wales has cited
Austrian School
economist
Friedrich Hayek
's essay, "
The Use of Knowledge in Society
", which he read as an undergraduate,
19
as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project".
Hayek argued that
information is decentralized
—that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively—and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge, rather than by a central authority.
Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s while reading about the
open source movement
, which advocated for the collective development and free distribution of
software
. He was particularly moved by "
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
", an essay which was later adapted into a
book of the same name
, by one of the founders of the movement,
Eric S. Raymond
, as it "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of
mass collaboration
."
19
From his background in finance, and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in
game theory
and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity. He identifies this fascination as a significant basis for his developmental work on the Wikipedia project.
117
He has rejected the notion 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 benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".
66
European Court of Justice ruling
On May 14, 2014, Wales strongly reacted to the
European Court of Justice
(ECJ)'s ruling on the
right of individuals to request the removal of information from Google's search results
. He stated to the BBC that the ruling was "one of the most wide-sweeping internet censorship rulings that I've ever seen".
118
In early June 2014, the
TechCrunch
media outlet interviewed Wales on the subject, as he had been invited by Google to join an advisory committee that the corporation had formed as an addition to the formal process that the ECJ requested from Google to manage such requests.
119
The May 2014 ECJ ruling required swift action from Google to implement a process that allowed people to directly contact the corporation about the removal of information that they believe is outdated or irrelevant. Google's
Larry Page
stated that 30 percent of requests received by Google since the ruling was made were categorized as "other". Wales explained in email responses that he was contacted by Google on May 28, 2014, and "The remit of the committee is to hold public hearings and issue recommendations—not just to Google but to legislators and the public."
119
When asked about his view on the ECJ's "right to be forgotten" ruling, Wales replied:
I think the decision will have no impact on people's
right to privacy
, because I don't regard truthful information in court records published by court order in a newspaper to be private information. If anything, the decision is likely to simply muddle the interesting philosophical questions and make it more difficult to make real progress on privacy issues. In the case of truthful, non-defamatory information obtained legally, I think there is no possibility of any defensible "right" to censor what other people are saying. It is important to avoid language like "data" because we aren't talking about "data"—we are talking about the suppression of knowledge.
119
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 to use the law to prevent Google from publishing truthful information." Wales concluded with an indication of his ideal outcome: "A part of the outcome should be the very strong implementation of a right to free speech in Europe—essentially the language of the First Amendment in the U.S."
119
Israel
See also:
Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict § Jimmy Wales
Wales at a
Wikimedia Israel
meeting, in 2015
Wales has visited Israel over ten times. Concerning claims that Israel engages in
apartheid
against Palestinians, Wales remarked "I'm a strong supporter of Israel, so I don't listen to those critics," according to a 2015 interview with the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
120
That year, he was awarded one of the
Dan David Prizes
, an international award of $1
million given yearly at
Tel Aviv University
(10 percent of the prize goes to doctoral students). Wales was chosen for spearheading what the prize committee called the "information revolution".
121
In 2018, the pro-Palestinian publication
Mondoweiss
ran an article by
Philip Weiss
describing Jimmy Wales as appearing to side with Israel due to a social media post condemning British politician
Jeremy Corbyn
for being silent about
Hamas rocket attacks on Israel
, missing an opportunity to immunize himself against
charges of antisemitism
. Jimmy Wales responded to
Mondoweiss
saying the article was "false and deeply offensive to me" and demanded that the article be retracted, saying that he did not support the Israeli attacks. He further went on to call
Hamas
a "terrorist organization".
122
undue weight?
discuss
In November 2025, Wales criticized the Wikipedia page for the
Gaza genocide
on its talk page. He argued that the page's assertion that Israel is committing genocide violated Wikipedia's policy to maintain a neutral point of view, stating that the article "is a particularly egregious example" of not maintaining neutrality.
123
124
125
His criticism of the Gaza genocide page was countered by other Wikipedia editors, who opined that he was dismissing the opinion of impartial organizations.
126
2025 culture wars
In October 2025, Wales gave an interview to
The New York Times
on the "culture wars", or the "speech wars",
127
a series of attempts by Republican congressmen and the Trump White House
128
to investigate and scrutinize activities and suspected "organizational bias" on Wikipedia.
129
In his interview he discussed several issues as they relate to Wikipedia saying: "Wikipedia isn't as good as I want it to be. And that's part of why people do have a certain amount of trust for us, because we try to be really transparent" and "we're designing everything for the long haul, and the only way we can last that long is not by pandering to this raging mob of the moment but by maintaining our values, maintaining our trustworthiness. We're just going to do our thing, and we’re going to do it as well as we can."
129
Other issues
Wales at the 2018
World Economic Forum
in
Davos
The January/February 2006 issue of
Maximum PC
reported that Wales refused to comply with a request from the
People's Republic of China
to
censor
"politically sensitive" Wikipedia articles—other corporate Internet companies, such as Google,
Yahoo!
and
Microsoft
, had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales stated that he would rather see companies such as Google adhere to Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information.
130
In 2010, Wales criticized whistle-blower website
WikiLeaks
and its editor-in-chief
Julian Assange
, saying that their publication of
Afghan war documents
"could be enough to get someone killed"; furthermore, he expressed irritation at their use of the name "
wiki
":
131
"What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing process".
132
On December 11, 2007, Wales testified before the United States Senate
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
133
He also submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee entitled "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration and Access".
133
: 85–90
In 2012, the
Home Secretary
of the UK was petitioned by Wales regarding his opposition to the extradition of
Richard O'Dwyer
to the US.
134
After an agreement was reached to avoid the extradition, Wales commented, "This is very exciting news, and I'm pleased to hear it ... What needs to happen next is a serious reconsideration of the U.K. extradition treaty that would allow this sort of nonsense in the first place."
135
In August 2013, Wales criticized UK Prime Minister
David Cameron
's plan for an Internet porn filter, saying that the idea was "ridiculous".
136
In November 2013, Wales also commented on the
Snowden affair
, describing
Edward Snowden
as "a hero" whom history would judge "very favorably"; additionally, Wales said the US public "would have never approved [the] sweeping surveillance program [publicized by Snowden]", had they been informed or asked about it.
137
During the
Gamergate controversy
in 2014, in response to an email from a
computer science
student claiming that Wikipedia has a "complete lack of any sort of attempt at neutrality regarding Gamergate", Wales allegedly wrote: "It is very difficult 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 [sic] by a handful of people who are not what you would hope."
138
Wales defended his comments in response to backlash from supporters of Gamergate, saying that "it isn't about what I believe. Gg is famous for harassment. Stop and think about why."
139
In November 2019, Wales accused Twitter of giving preferential treatment to high-profile figures such as Trump and
Elon Musk
for not banning or blocking them for their controversial statements.
140
In May 2020, Wales criticized Trump for threatening to regulate social media companies.
141
In September 2021, Wales said that Facebook and Twitter should combat
misinformation
and
abuse
on their platforms by deploying volunteer moderators to monitor controversial posts.
142
In October 2021, Wales said that "Protecting strong
encryption
is essential for protecting the human rights of millions of people around the world."
143
In May 2022, in response to
Elon Musk's proposed acquisition of Twitter
, Wales said that "I think he's got some good and bad ideas, based on his public statements", adding that "On the other hand, Twitter in five years' time could be much better than it is today, or Twitter could be dead in five years' time, depending on the decisions he makes."
144
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 only conspiracy theorists are pushing this narrative" to "this is one of the plausible hypotheses."
145
Personal life
Wales with his second wife, Christine Rohan, in 2007
Wales has been married three times. At the age of 20, he married Pamela Green,
146
a co-worker at a grocery store in Alabama.
66
They divorced in 1993.
He met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she worked as a steel trader for
Mitsubishi
12
17
They were married in
Monroe County, Florida
, in March 1997,
147
and had a daughter before separating in 2008.
146
12
66
They divorced in 2011.
Wales moved to
San Diego
in 1998, and after becoming disillusioned with the housing market there, moved in 2002 to
St. Petersburg, Florida
17
45
148
He had a brief relationship with
Canadian conservative
columnist
Rachel Marsden
in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography.
149
After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a
conflict of interest
, he stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia,
150
151
a statement Marsden disputed.
152
Wales married
Kate Garvey
at
Wesley's Chapel
in London on October 6, 2012.
153
Garvey is
Tony Blair
's former
diary secretary
; the couple met in
Davos
, Switzerland.
154
155
Wales has two daughters with Garvey in addition to his daughter with Rohan.
63
156
Wales is
irreligious
. In an interview with
Big Think
, he said his philosophy is firmly rooted in
reason
, and that he is a complete non-believer.
157
He is a passionate cook.
78
158
Wales has lived in London since 2012,
159
and became a
British citizen
in 2019.
160
In 2021, on
The Tim Ferriss Show
podcast, he revealed that he secretly lived in
Buenos Aires
Argentina
, for one month after reading Ferriss's book
The 4-Hour Workweek
161
Wales's book
The Seven Rules of Trust
was published in October 2025 by
Penguin Random House
. It was described by the publisher as a "sweeping reflection on the global crisis of credibility and knowledge" with the book examining the "rules of trust" that enabled the growth and success of Wikipedia.
162
Publications
Brooks, Robert; Corson, Jon; Wales, Jimmy Donal (1994). "The Pricing of Index Options When the Underlying Assets All Follow a Lognormal Diffusion".
Advances in Futures and Options Research
SSRN
5735
Mons, B.
Ashburner, M.
; Chichester, C.; Van Mulligen, E.; Weeber, M.; Den Dunnen, J.; Van Ommen, G. J.; Musen, M.; Cockerill, M.; Hermjakob, H.; Mons, A.; Packer, A.; Pacheco, R.;
Lewis, S.
; Berkeley, A.; Melton, W.; Barris, N.;
Wales, J.
; Meijssen, G.;
Moeller, E.
; Roes, P.; Borner, K.;
Bairoch, A.
(2008).
"Calling on a million minds for community annotation in WikiProteins"
Genome Biology
(5): R89.
doi
10.1186/gb-2008-9-5-r89
ISSN
1465-6906
PMC
2441475
PMID
18507872
Wales, Jimmy; Weckerle, Andrea (December 31, 2008). "Foreword". In
Fraser, Matthew
Dutta, Soumitra
(eds.).
Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World
(1st ed.).
Wiley
ISBN
978-0-470-74014-9
OCLC
233939846
Wales, Jimmy; Weckerle, Andrea (January 8, 2009).
"Commentary: Create a tech-friendly U.S. government"
. CNN. Archived from
the original
on August 16, 2011
. Retrieved
December 29,
2009
Wales, Jimmy; Weckerle, Andrea (February 10, 2009). "Foreword". In
Powell, Juliette
(ed.).
33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking
(1st ed.).
Financial Times Press
ISBN
978-0-13-715435-7
OCLC
244066502
Wales, Jimmy; Weckerle, Andrea (March 3, 2009). "Foreword". In
Weber, Larry
(ed.).
Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business
(2nd ed.).
Wiley
ISBN
978-0-470-41097-4
OCLC
244060887
Wales, Jimmy (March 17, 2009). "Foreword". In
Lih, Andrew
(ed.).
The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
(1st ed.).
Hyperion
ISBN
978-1-4013-0371-6
OCLC
232977686
Wales, Jimmy; Weckerle, Andrea (March 30, 2009).
"Most Define User-Generated Content Too Narrowly"
Advertising Age
80
. Retrieved
May 4,
2009
{{
cite journal
}}
: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (
link
Wales, Jimmy; Weckerle, Andrea (December 28, 2009).
"Keep a Civil Cybertongue"
The Wall Street Journal
Archived
from the original on May 19, 2017
. Retrieved
August 8,
2017
Wales, Jimmy;
Gardner, Dan
(October 28, 2025).
The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last
(1st ed.).
Penguin Random House
ISBN
978-0-593-72746-1
Distinctions
Wales at the 2011
Gottlieb Duttweiler Awards
Show
Wales receives an honorary doctorate from
Maastricht University
, 2015
Jimmy Wales accepting the
Dan David Prize
at
Tel Aviv University
, 2015
Wales is a former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008,
163
and a former board member of
Socialtext
164
He is a member of the
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School,
12
the advisory board of the
MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
165
and the board of directors at
Creative Commons
166
and
Hunch.com
167
In 2006, Wales was listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the
TIME
100
168
and number 12 in
Forbes
"The Web Celebs 25".
169
Wales has also given a lecture in the Stuart Regen Visionary series at
New Museum
which "honors special individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture and are actively imagining a better future"
170
and by the
World Economic Forum
as one of the
Young Global Leaders
of 2007.
171
The 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award,
172
and on behalf of the Wikimedia project the
Quadriga
award of Werkstatt Deutschland for
A Mission of Enlightenment
173
The 2009 Nokia Foundation annual award,
174
the Business Process Award at the 7th Annual Innovation Awards and Summit by
The Economist
175
In April 2011, Wales served on the jury of the
Tribeca Film Festival
176
Wales has received a
Pioneer Award
177
the
Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize
and the Leonardo European Corporate Learning Award
178
in 2011,
179
180
the Monaco Media Prize.
181
Wales has also received honorary degrees from
Knox College
182
Amherst College
183
Stevenson University
183
184
Argentina's Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21,
185
and Russia's
MIREA
University.
186
On December 5, 2013, Wales was awarded the
UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal
in Copenhagen, Denmark at a conference on "An Open World" to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
Niels Bohr
's atomic theory. His presentation on "Wikipedia, Democracy and the Internet" emphasized the need to expand Wikipedia into virtually all the languages of the world. The "
Wikipedia Zero
" initiative was beginning to prove successful in encouraging telecommunications companies to provide children in the developing world with free access to Wikipedia for educational purposes.
187
188
Wales was inducted into the
Internet Hall of Fame
in 2013.
189
In February 2014, Wales was named one of "25 Web Superstars" by
The Daily Telegraph
190
On May 17, 2014, Wales was awarded a
Doctorate Honoris Causa
by the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the
Università della Svizzera italiana
(USI Lugano, Switzerland).
191
On June 25, 2014, Wales received an honorary degree of
Doctor of Letters
from Nobel laureate
Muhammad Yunus
at
Glasgow Caledonian University
in Scotland.
192
On July 10, 2014, Wales received the UK Tech4Good Awards "Special Award" for establishing Wikipedia. He was one of eight winners in various categories meant to honor organizations and individuals who use digital technology to improve the lives of others.
193
194
In December 2014, Wales shared the inaugural $1
million
Mohammed bin Rashid Knowledge Award
with
World Wide Web
inventor
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
195
In January 2015,
Maastricht University
awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa to Wales.
196
On April 25, 2015, Wales received the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service along with
Jon Bon Jovi
and
Edward Norton
197
On May 17, 2015, Wales received the
Dan David Prize
of $1
million in the "Present" category (others won that amount for "Past" and "Future" contributions to society).
198
He was awarded the prize for "launching the world's largest online encyclopedia".
199
In January 2016, Wales, along with
Baroness Rebuck
, became a non-executive director of the
Guardian Media Group
200
201
In 2017, it was announced that he would be stepping down.
202
On February 2, 2016, he received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the
Université Catholique de Louvain
203
204
In June 2016, during the opening ceremony on
Wikimania 2016
, Wales was awarded honorary citizenship of
Esino Lario
205
In September 2017, he was awarded the
President's Medal
of the
British Academy
"for facilitating the spread of information via his work creating and developing Wikipedia, the world's largest free online encyclopedia".
206
See also
List of Wikipedia people
Notes
Sources vary on Wales' birth date.
References to his birth date as August 7 are incorrect.
This was due to a mismatch on his birth certificate, causing other official documents to be incorrect. Wales has since confirmed his birth date as August 8.
References
Footnotes
Toor, Amar (July 15, 2012).
"Jimmy Wales, Mary Gardiner address Wikipedia's gender gap at Wikimania conference"
The Verge
Archived
from the original on July 8, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Jimmy Wales | Biography & Wikipedia Founder | Britannica Money"
Encyclopedia Britannica
Archived
from the original on February 22, 2026
. Retrieved
March 2,
2026
Garside, Juliette (August 2, 2014).
"Jimmy Wales: digital champion of free speech"
The Guardian
ISSN
0261-3077
Archived
from the original on July 10, 2017
. Retrieved
March 2,
2026
Rogoway, Mike (July 27, 2007).
"Wikipedia & its founder disagree on his birth date"
The Oregonian
Archived
from the original on November 28, 2021
. Retrieved
March 3,
2026
Weckler, Adrian (November 16, 2017).
'When Kellyanne Conway spoke of alternative facts, my head exploded' - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales"
Irish Independent
Pink, Daniel H. (March 13, 2005).
"The Book Stops Here"
Wired
. Vol. 13, no. 3. Archived from
the original
on March 4, 2005
. Retrieved
October 31,
2008
Wilson, Claire M.
"Jimmy Wales"
Encyclopedia of Alabama
Archived
from the original on December 20, 2019
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Mangu-Ward, Katherine (June 2007).
"Wikipedia and beyond: Jimmy Wales's sprawling vision"
Reason
. Vol. 39, no. 2. p. 21.
Archived
from the original on July 25, 2021
. Retrieved
August 13,
2021
"Brain scan: The free-knowledge fundamentalist"
The Economist
. June 5, 2008. Archived from
the original
on June 9, 2008
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Isaacson, Walter
(2014).
The Innovators
Simon & Schuster
. p. 534.
ISBN
1-4767-0869-X
Isaacson, Walter (October 19, 2014).
"You Can Look It Up: The Wikipedia Story"
The Daily Beast
Archived
from the original on June 13, 2019
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Lamb, Brian
(September 25, 2005).
"Q&A: Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder"
C-SPAN
Archived
from the original on October 6, 2014
. Retrieved
October 31,
2006
Brown, David (December 11, 2007).
"Jimmy Wales '83"
Alumni Profiles
Randolph School
. Archived from
the original
on April 18, 2010
. Retrieved
October 31,
2008
Moore, Rebecca (January 7, 2013). "
Jimmy Wales '83: 'Information evangelist'
Archived
October 31, 2018, at the
Wayback Machine
", Randolph School. Retrieved August 12, 2014.
Profile
". BBC Radio 4. March 18, 2012. Retrieved August 12, 2014.
"Todd Chambers' answer to [Pictures or it didn't happen] what was jimmy wales' high school life like?"
. Quora.
Archived
from the original on August 10, 2022
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Barnett, Cynthia (September 2005).
"Wiki Mania"
Florida Trend
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the original
on October 17, 2006.
McNichol, Tom (May 1, 2007).
"Building a Wiki World"
Business 2.0
CNN
. Archived from
the original
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. Retrieved
October 31,
2007
Schiff, Stacy
(July 31, 2006).
"Know It All"
The New Yorker
Archived
from the original on September 30, 2014
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Even Wales has been caught airbrushing his Wikipedia 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')."
Poe (2006)
, p. 93: "Wales, though, was a businessman. He wanted to build a free encyclopedia, and Wikipedia offered a very rapid and economically efficient means to that end. The articles flooded in, many were good, and they cost him almost nothing. [...] In 2003, Wales [decided to] diminish his own authority by transferring Wikipedia and all of its assets to the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, whose sole purpose is to set general policy for Wikipedia and its allied projects. [...] Wales's benign rule has allowed Wikipedia to do what it does best: grow. The numbers are staggering."
Poe (2006)
, p. 88: "In 1996, Wales and two partners founded a Web directory called Bomis. [...] Wales focused on the bottom-up strategy using Web rings, and it worked. Bomis users built hundreds of rings—on cars, computers, sports, and especially 'babes' (e.g., the Anna Kournikova Web ring), effectively creating an index of the 'laddie' Web. Instead of helping all users find all content, Bomis found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet, helping guys find guy stuff."
Brennen, Jensen (June 26, 2006). "Access for All".
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
. Vol. 18, no. 18.
Hansen, Evan (December 19, 2005).
"Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio"
Wired
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
{{
cite magazine
}}
: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (
link
Rosenzweig, Roy
(June 2006).
"Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past"
The Journal of American History
93
(1):
117–
146.
doi
10.2307/4486062
JSTOR
4486062
. Archived from
the original
(reprint)
on April 25, 2010
. Retrieved
April 22,
2009
Gouthro, Liane (March 14, 2000).
"Building the world's biggest encyclopedia"
PC World
. CNN. Archived from
the original
on March 3, 2006
. Retrieved
October 31,
2008
Marks, Paul (February 3, 2007).
"Interview with Jimmy Wales: Knowledge to the people"
(video)
New Scientist
193
(2589): 44.
doi
10.1016/S0262-4079(07)60293-0
Archived
from the original on December 21, 2008
. Retrieved
October 31,
2008
Yale University (October 7, 2009).
"The Future of Free Culture: Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia"
. Event occurs at 43:19.
Archived
from the original on December 21, 2021
. Retrieved
August 18,
2011
– via YouTube.
Poe (2006)
, p. 91: "The wiki [technology] quickly gained a devoted following within the software community. And there it remained until January 2001, when Sanger had dinner with an old friend named Ben Kovitz. [...] Over tacos that night, Sanger explained his concerns about Nupedia's lack of progress, the root cause of which was its serial editorial system. [...] Kovitz brought up the wiki and sketched out 'wiki magic,' the mysterious process by which communities with common interests work to improve wiki pages by incremental contributions. If it worked for the rambunctious hacker culture of programming, Kovitz said, it could work for any online collaborative project. The wiki could break the Nupedia bottleneck by permitting volunteers to work simultaneously all over the project. [...] Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The initial purpose was to get the public to add entries that would then be "fed into the Nupedia process" of authorization."
Sidener, Jonathan (December 6, 2004).
"Everyone's encyclopedia"
U-T San Diego
. p. C1. Archived from
the original
on February 21, 2009
. Retrieved
April 22,
2009
Wales, Jimmy (July 2005).
"Jimmy Wales: The birth of Wikipedia"
TED
Archived
from the original on May 7, 2019
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Lecture Jimmy Wales: Understanding failure as a route to success"
Maastricht University
on YouTube. January 2015.
Archived
from the original on August 10, 2022
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
– via YouTube.
"Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia - Lex Fridman Podcast #385"
Lex Fridman Podcast
. June 18, 2023.
Archived
from the original on August 11, 2023
. Retrieved
September 2,
2023
– via YouTube.
Hossain, Delwar.
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. Rtv news. Rtv news.
Archived
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. Retrieved
August 23,
2025
Finkelstein, Seth (September 25, 2008).
"Wikipedia isn't about human potential, whatever Wales says"
The Guardian
Archived
from the original on December 26, 2018
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Sanger, Larry (November 1, 2005).
"The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir"
. In DiBona, Chris; Cooper, Danese; Stone, Mark (eds.).
Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution
. O'Reilly Media, Inc. p.
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ISBN
978-0-596-00802-4
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. I was merely a grateful employee; I thought I was very lucky to have a job like that land in my lap. Of course, other people had had the idea...
Getz, Arlene (February 1, 2007).
"In Search of an Online Utopia"
Newsweek
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. Penguin Group. p. 71.
ISBN
978-1-59184-231-6
OCLC
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Carson, Biz (March 13, 2016).
"The first words on Wikipedia were a nerdy programmer in-joke"
Business Insider
Archived
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(March 25, 2007).
"Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia"
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Archived
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The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy PhD who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, 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.
Singer, Michael (January 16, 2002).
"Free Encyclopedia Project Celebrates Year One"
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{{
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link
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Archived
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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.
"Free Encyclopedia Project, Wikipedia, Creates 20,000 Articles in a Year (Wikipedia 2002 Press release)"
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Archived
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I'm Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia, the open content encyclopedias.
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{{
cite news
}}
: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (
link
"Wikipedia-Gründer Jimmy Wales nennt Tilo Jungs Fragen »dumm«"
[Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls Tilo Jung's questions "stupid"].
Der Spiegel
(in German). November 15, 2025.
ISSN
2195-1349
. Retrieved
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from the original on October 18, 2020
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Ngak, Chenda (June 26, 2013).
"Aaron Swartz among inductees to Internet Hall of Fame"
. CBS News.
Archived
from the original on August 22, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Curtis, Sophie (February 28, 2014).
"25 years of the World Wide Web: 25 Web superstars"
The Daily Telegraph
Archived
from the original on January 11, 2022
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Cantoni, Lorenzo (May 17, 2014).
"Jimmy Wales doctor honoris causa in Communication Sciences"
. ELearning + ETourism (blog of Lorenzo Cantoni, dean of the Faculty).
Archived
from the original on June 29, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Scotland Tonight: Wikipedia founder honoured in Glasgow"
STV News
. June 25, 2014. Archived from
the original
on July 13, 2014
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Smolaks, Max (July 11, 2014).
"Tech4Good Awards Celebrate Digital Inclusion"
Tech Week Europe
. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Tech4Good Awards 2014 Winners"
. Tech4Good Awards. July 10, 2014.
Archived
from the original on September 18, 2020
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Shabandri, Muaz (December 8, 2014).
"Web inventor, Wiki co-founder share $1m Knowledge Award"
khaleejtimes.com
. Archived from
the original
on December 26, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Maastricht University awards honorary doctorates to Frans Timmermans and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales"
Maastricht University
. Archived from
the original
on December 24, 2014
. Retrieved
November 23,
2014
"Photos from the 36th Annual Common Wealth Awards"
bonjovi.com
. March 20, 2015. Archived from
the original
on December 26, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Dan David Foundation to award three prizes of $1 million to six world renowned laureates"
Jerusalem Post
. February 11, 2015.
Archived
from the original on June 29, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Elis, Niv (February 10, 2015).
"Wikipedia co-founder, genome project leader among recipients of Dan David Prize"
Jerusalem Post
Archived
from the original on June 29, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Ponsford, Dominic (January 27, 2016).
"Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Gail Rebuck join Guardian Media Group board"
Press Gazette
Archived
from the original on May 1, 2016
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Sweney, Mark (January 27, 2016).
"Baroness Rebuck and Jimmy Wales join Guardian Media Group board"
The Guardian
Archived
from the original on November 22, 2021
. Retrieved
April 3,
2022
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wages war on 'fake news' with crowdfunded news site WikiTribune.
In:
Mirror
, 25 April 2017.
Belga
(February 2, 2016).
"Eduardo Suplicy, Paola Vigano et Jimmy Wales faits Docteurs honoris causa de l'UCL"
L'Avenir
Archived
from the original on June 29, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Schmitz, Bruno (February 2, 2016).
"UCL: Trois penseurs utopistes pour régler les problèmes belges?"
RTBF
Archived
from the original on July 1, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
"Esino Lario, cittadinanza onoraria al "papà" di Wikipedia"
[Esino Lario, honorary citizenship to the "father" of Wikipedia].
Il Giorno
(in Italian). June 24, 2016.
Archived
from the original on November 22, 2022
. Retrieved
November 22,
2022
"From Wikipedia to Roman coins: British Academy recognises excellence in the humanities and social sciences"
British Academy
. September 27, 2017
. Retrieved
December 26,
2017
Bibliography
Poe, Marshall
(September 2006).
"The Hive"
The Atlantic Monthly
298
(2):
86–
94.
Archived
from the original on July 4, 2008
. Retrieved
February 29,
2008
Further reading
Shariatmadari, David,
"‘People thought I was a communist doing this as a non-profit’: Is Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales the Last Decent Tech Baron?"
The Guardian,
Oct. 27, 2025.
Wales, Jimmy (July 2005).
"The Birth of Wikipedia – Jimmy Wales Recalls How He Assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers," Gave Them Tools for Collaborating and Created Wikipedia, the Self-Organizing, Self-Correcting, Never-Finished Online Encyclopedia"
TED talks
Archived
from the original on May 7, 2019
. Retrieved
September 22,
2025
Wikimania: Meet the Wikipedians. Those "Persnickety," Techy Types Who Keep Your Favorite Internet Information Website Brimming with Data
Archived
August 2, 2020, at the
Wayback Machine
."
60 Minutes
Morley Safer
interviewing Jimmy Wales. First aired on April 5, 2015. Rebroadcast on July 26, 2015.
On Being w/Krista Tippett
Archived
January 9, 2017, at the
Wayback Machine
; Jimmy Wales – The Sum of All Human Knowledge (broadcast WAMU American University) September 11, 2016
Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales is Taking on Facebook and the Dangers Lurking in the Rise of Artificial Intelligence
", by Fred Guterl,
Newsweek
, December 12, 2019.
External links
Jimmy Wales
at Wikipedia's
sister projects
Media
from Commons
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from Wikinews
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from Wikiquote
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from Wikisource
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from Wikidata
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from Meta-Wiki
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Jimmy Wales
at
IMDb
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on
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Appearances
on
C-SPAN
Jimmy Wales
at
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User page
on
Wikipedia
Wikia userpage (User:Jimbo Wales)
Roberts, Russ
(March 9, 2009).
"Wales on Wikipedia"
EconTalk
Library of Economics and Liberty
Wikipedia:Role of Jimmy Wales
– Wales' role in the
English Wikipedia
as described by its editors
You can Look It Up: The Wikipedia Story
" (archived) – Excerpt from the 2014 book
The Innovators
by
Walter Isaacson
Wales, Jimmy (December 9, 2016).
"How Wikipedia Works"
cato.org
Cato Institute
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, discusses the site, how it's treated by governments, and how it's fueled by its users.
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