Jimmy Wales

From BillionQuotes

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (August 7, 1966 - ) is a U.S. Internet entrepreneur and a wiki pioneer who is best known as the head of Wikipedia, an international collaborative free content encyclopedia on the Internet, and Wikimedia Foundation.

Sourced

• We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?
  • ExpressIndia (7 September 2005)

• We help the internet not suck.
  • On C-Span (25 September 2005)

• It's a very simple and pure goal. It's something that's good for the world. We're still not there by a long shot.
  • Comment to the Birmingham News, "Alabamian is brain behind Wikipedia"

• "It's been an ongoing process of figuring out how the social model actually should work, how can you control the site to generate quality," Wales said. "It's an ongoing series of modifications."
  • Comment to the Birmingham News, "Alabamian is brain behind Wikipedia"

• It's very exciting to all of us. I travel all over the world. I think that worries my mom some, (but) it's nice.
  • Comment to the Birmingham News, "Alabamian is brain behind Wikipedia"

• It is pretty weird. A few years ago, I was just some guy sitting in front of the internet. Now I send an e-mail or edit an article and it makes headlines around the world ... I used to be just a guy – now I'm Jimmy Wales.
  • "Identity question for world's encyclopaedia", The Times

• Like the great artists Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhoff. I'm only appreciated overseas.
  • regarding a cancelled event in St. Petersburg technewsworld

• I'm more like the Queen of England — my power is decreasing over time. Soon, I'll just wave at parades. technewsworld

Unsourced

On Ayn Rand

1. LAMB: Another thing I read about you is that you are a follower or have been at some point a follower of Ayn Rand?
2. WALES: That‘s right, yes.
3. LAMB: Who was she and do you still follow her and what is it about it that you like?
4. WALES: Yes. So Ayn Rand is the – she wrote "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," as is viewed by many as, you know, something of the founder of the libertarian strain of thought in the U.S. She would have rejected quite rightly, I think, the libertarian label. But I think for me one of the core things that is very applicable to my life today is the virtue of independence – is the vision, you know, if you know the idea of Howard Roark who is the architect in "The Fountainhead" who has a vision for what he wants to accomplish and, you know, there‘s some time in the book when he is frustrated in his career because people don‘t want to build the type of buildings he wants to build. And he‘s given a choice, a difficult choice, to compromise his integrity or to essentially go out of business. And he has to go and take a job working in a quarry. And for me that model has a lot of – a lot of resonance for me. You know when I think about what I‘m doing – what I‘m doing and the way I‘m doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it‘s my artistic work.
5. LAMB: What year did you read "Atlas Shrugged" or "Fountainhead?"
6. WALES: I guess I was around 20 when I – when I read "The Fountainhead."

On Wikipedia

• "We are Wikipedians. This means that we should be: kind, thoughtful, passionate about getting it right, open, tolerant of different viewpoints, open to criticism, bold about changing our policies and also cautious about changing our policies. We are not vindictive, childish, and we don't stoop to the level of our worst critics, no matter how much we may find them to be annoying.--Jimbo Wales 15:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)"

• [Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made.
  • Comment derived from a famous statement by Otto von Bismarck: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." "Who knows?", The Guardian (26 October 2004)

• When someone just writes 'fuck, fuck, fuck', we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases - people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck.
  • "Who knows?", The Guardian (26 October 2004)

• Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.
  • Wikipedia-l mailing list (8 March 2005)

• "If I see [a contributor] is publishing shit, maybe by swearing or not making sense, I warn him," he says. "The second time he turns on, I block him."
  • "Life, the universe and Wiki", The Sydney Morning Herald (20 September 2005)

• "Everybody tells jokes, but we still need comedians."
  • [1]

• "Most people are good. They may not be saints, but they are good."

• "Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks."

Dialog

• 68.23.45.217: Are you evil?
  Jimbo Wales: Indeed.
  68.23.45.217: Is Wikipedia evil?
  Jimbo Wales: It should go without saying.
  68.23.45.217: Is Wikimedia Foundation evil?
  Jimbo Wales: Worse than that, actually.
  68.23.45.217: Are you a Todo?
  Jimbo Wales: Only on Tuesdays.
  • On his talk page on English Wikipedia (12 March 2005)

• 68.23.45.217: Which would you choose, being an administrator at Wikipedia, or being a hobo out on the streets?
  Jimbo Wales: Gee, I should suppose it is best to be both.
  • On his talk page on English Wikipedia (12 March 2005)

• 68.72.112.79: Did you ever meet Satan?
  Jimbo Wales: No, but I think we're supposed to be on a panel discussion in Amsterdam in May.
  68.72.112.79: Are you filthy rich?
  Jimbo Wales: More filthy than rich.
  68.72.112.79: Would you consider yourself an expert in any field of academics?
  Jimbo Wales: No.
  68.72.112.79: Are you planning to take over the world?
  Jimbo Wales: Yes, one click at a time.
  • On his talk page on English Wikipedia (14 March 2005)

• 68.72.112.79: Are you a graduate of Smith N. Jones High School?
  Jimbo Wales: No, they kicked me out after an unfortunate incident with a stack of Britannica... well, it's a long story. :-) Are you having fun with this?
  • On his talk page on English Wikipedia (14 March 2005)

On C-SPAN interview [2]:

• WALES: Our goal has always been Britannica or better quality. We don‘t always achieve that.
• LAMB: Would you put them out of business?
• WALES: You know, I don‘t know. I used to think so but I just was in Germany where Wikipedia is really big in Germany[..]. And Brockhaus is the – is the publisher of the Britannica style traditional encyclopedia. And their sales are up 30 percent in the last year even though Wikipedia is going through the roof. And I think there‘s a certain maybe there ends up being some complementarity to it that people[..]. So Wikipedia helps people to remember that hey, there is actually something to having a group of people edit, monitor, and put a level of trust to information. And so that makes Brockhaus more appealing, makes Wikipedia more appealing. So it‘s hard to say.

Attributed

• Jimbo Wales: who is babel?
  Angela: I don't know. "Google:babel free translators events" brings up Wikipedia as the first hit :)
  Jimbo Wales: damn wikipedia spam
  Jimbo Wales: those people are taking over the internet

• And so, we don't need a business model, we're just doing it. ~ 200?

• Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for us. It's for them. It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so. ( 23 Oct 2005)

• I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years.
  • When asked about encyclopedias like World Book and Encyclopædia Britannica.

• 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. (July 2004)

• • Response to what Wikimedia would do in the hypothetical situation that Answers.com tried to exert control over Wikipedia's content. (24 Oct 2005)

Quotes of others about Wales

• Jimmy and Wikipedia are THE Wiki brand. ~ Joichi Ito

See also

• Wikipedia

fi:Jimmy Wales pl:Jimmy Wales zh:吉米·威爾士