Jimmy Wales
From Wikinfo
(Redirected from Jimbo)
- For criticism see Criticism of Jimmy_Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966) is an Internet entrepreneur and a wiki enthusiast.
Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of Alabama. He worked as a professional futures and options trader in Chicago. He also admires the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, and while in graduate school owned and moderated an Internet mailing list known as the "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy." In the mid-1990s Wales started Bomis, a search portal focusing on aspects of pop culture, which also sells original content. More recently, he founded Wikia, a wiki-style search engine.
With Larry Sanger, Wales founded Wikipedia, a wiki-based online encyclopedia derived from the free software model. He and Sanger had previously worked on the now-defunct Nupedia encyclopedia project. Wales is currently the director of the Wikimedia Foundation, a Tampa-based non-profit organization that encompasses Wikipedia and its younger sister projects. Time magazine reported that Wales had spent around US$500,000 on the establishment and operations of his Wiki projects.
Wales previously lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his wife Christine and his daughter Kira. He has been reported to be separated from his wife.
See also
External links and further reading
- Personal home page
- Personal blog
- Photos from Jimbo Wales on Flickr
- USA Today interview
- Newsweek article
- Extremely outdated list of Objectivism mailing lists
- Wales' Wikipedia user page
- "Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World" article by Noam Cohen in The New York Times March 17, 2008
| This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Jimmy Wales. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of this Wikinfo article is available under the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. |
