Wikipedia.org

 www.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is a online encyclopedia written collaboratively by     contributors from around the world. The site is a wiki, which     means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the     edit this page link.                                                                    

Wikipedia was begun on 15th January 2001 by founders          Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.                                              

A bit over three years later, in March, 2004, there were 6,000  active contributors working on 600,000 articles in 50                languages. As of today, there are over 1,000,000 articles, and  every day hundreds and thousands of visitors from around         the world make tens of thousands of edits and create                thousands of new articles.                                                        

Your name:                Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

 

Position / title:           President

 

Company name:        Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

 

Website:                   www.wikipedia.org

 

Your company / website vision statement / goal:

The goal of the Wikimedia Foundation is to provide free learning resources to every single person on the planet in their own language.

"Free" means "Free as in freedom" not "free as in free beer". That is, our work is freely licensed so that others can redistribute it, modify it, and distribute their modified versions.

 

Have you always wanted to run your own business? What were some of your previous jobs / companies?

Yes. I was a futures and options trader in Chicago, and then started my own small internet firm. But Wikipedia is by far the most successful thing I have ever done.


Have you got any qualifications? Please tell us about yourself academically?

I have a master's degree in finance, and completed all the coursework (but no dissertation) in two different PhD programs in finance (University of Alabama, Indiana University).

 

How / when did the idea of your website / company come about?

About 5 years ago, I had the idea to create a free encyclopedia. An initial attempt, Nupedia, failed because I didn't yet understand the principles of organizing community action. Wikipedia was a second attempt based on a much more open model.

 

If you could give readers of this book one piece of advice what would it be?

 

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