Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (August 7, 1966) is an American internet entrepreneur, one of the two founders of Wikipedia.
He was born on August 7, 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. After graduating from a small private school, he attended the Randolph School, a college preparatory school. He studied economics at Auburn University. He later earned his doctorate and master's degrees in the same field from the University of Alabama and Indiana University Bloomington. As a research director, he worked for a while in the finance industry.
In 1996, he and two of his friends founded a web portal targeting men called Bomis. While this portal was for men, it later both financed and hosted the controlled encyclopedia Nupedia (which was Wikipedia's predecessor). Jimmy Wales rose in his career as the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages Wikipedia and various Wiki projects, and also the founder of Wikia, a hosting service unaffiliated with Wikimedia.
The story of Wikipedia's founding actually begins when Jimmy Wales becomes the Chairman of the Board of Bomis, an adult content-oriented search engine provider. Wales started working with Larry Sanger in 2000 to launch Nupedia, a volunteer-based encyclopedia for the online environment. With a limited source of information such as 12 originally published articles, Nupedia requires a fast flow of content. But Sanger and Waller struggle to find a platform that doesn't require extensive investment or programming. Thereupon, on January 15, 2001, Wales established a platform with Larry Sanger and his friends. The name of this platform is Wikipedia, which is a combination of the words "Wiki", which derives from the Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" (quick or informational), and "Pedia", which comes from the word paideia, which means "comprehensive cultural education system" in Ancient Greek Civilization. The site uses wiki technology, where anyone in the world with a computer connected to the internet can add, remove and edit all pages. Thus, an open-coded, free and free online encyclopedia is formed, the content of which is prepared jointly by volunteers from all over the world.
The site, which initially had no content in a language other than English, quickly becomes available in many languages around the world. This success undoubtedly belongs to his friends as much as Wales.
While one of the partners initially planned to make Wikipedia a profitable business, Wales worried that the site would become a disinformation dump. However, even a few days after its establishment, the rapid increase in the number of his writings relieved Wales and his friends and gave the signals of success. Afterwards, Wales became the organizer and spokesperson of the rapidly growing project. As a matter of fact, Wikipedia is often referred to as Jimmy Wales today. In addition, Jimmy Wales defines Wikipedia as "the effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest quality in their own language to every person on earth".
A modern Babylonian library
There are 42 million accounts registered with Wikipedia today. In addition, over 120 thousand editors and writers actively support the platform.
Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopedia and is included in the top 100 websites in the world due to its free access to information. The only difference from these sites is that it is the only non-profit site among them. On this site, which is not managed for commercial purposes, the articles are prepared by volunteers and the content is provided free of charge/ad-free. Despite all this unconventional business model, Wikipedia has content in more than 300 languages and even the articles written in English alone exceed 6 million.
July 2021
Co-founder of Wikipedia, Dr. Larry Sanger said that the platform no longer provides reliable information and has been turned into a propaganda tool by some users.
Sanger made statements on the YouTube channel Lockdown TV of the culture and idea magazine Unherd.
Stating that Wikipedia is not the same as it used to be and that it is now giving the events in a biased way, Sanger said, "This creates a desire for some people to take control of Wikipedia."
Stating that the platform is used to manipulate information about certain events, Sanger said, "There is a big, bad, complicated game played behind the scenes to make the articles reflect what someone wants them to say."
Stating that some large companies employ salaried personnel to influence public opinion by writing on the platform, Sanger said:
“Of course, there are people who want to be told what to think by an authority figure like a religious leader, party officials, or a dictator. But a source that appeals to such impulses would only do evil.
Such a resource also becomes a useful tool for those seeking to manipulate public perceptions of reality for their own benefit. When it is systematic, it is called 'propaganda'. And that's what we're really dealing with at Wikipedia.
There is also a whole industry that monitors and edits Wikipedia pages about their customers. Some of them cannot be blocked because Wikipedia editors are not required to reveal their identities."