Jimmy Wales helps us learn.
He helped start Wikipedia. It is a big book online. Many people can write in it. This helps us find facts. Do you like to read online?
Jimmy Wales helps us learn.
He helped start Wikipedia. It is a big book online. Many people can write in it. This helps us find facts.
Jimmy grew up in Alabama. As a boy, he loved to read. His mother even bought him a big book of facts.
Later, Jimmy worked with computers. He wanted to share knowledge with everyone. He wanted it to be free for all.
He worked with a man named Larry. Together, they made the website grow fast.
Now, many people use his site. It is a great way to learn about the world.
Jimmy Wales is an American internet entrepreneur. He is best known for starting Wikipedia.
Jimmy grew up in Alabama. As a child, he loved to read. His mother bought him a large encyclopedia. This is a book full of facts. He spent many hours reading these books. This sparked his love for learning.
Later, Jimmy worked in finance. He studied money at two universities. He also spent time playing online games. These games showed him how people work together online. He saw that computer networks could help large groups do big tasks.
In 2000, Jimmy started a project called Nupedia. It was an online encyclopedia. Experts wrote the articles. However, Nupedia grew very slowly. This was because the rules were very strict.
To fix this, Jimmy and Larry Sanger used a wiki. A wiki is a website where many people can edit pages at once. They launched Wikipedia in 2001. It grew much faster than Nupedia.
Jimmy wanted everyone to have free access to knowledge. In 2006, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people. He still helps lead the group that runs Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wales is a famous American internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Wikipedia, which is a free online encyclopedia.
He also helped start Fandom, a service that hosts many wikis. Wales wants to make sure every person has free access to all human knowledge. This big goal has made him a very important figure in the digital world. In 2006, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people on Earth.
His journey toward making Wikipedia began with a different project called Nupedia. Nupedia launched in 2000 and used a very strict process. Only experts could write the articles, and they had to go through many reviews. This made the quality high, but it also made the site grow very slowly. To solve this, Jimmy and Larry Sanger used a new way called a wiki. A wiki allows many people to edit pages at the same time. This change helped Wikipedia grow much faster than Nupedia ever did.
Jimmy's love for learning started when he was a young boy in Alabama. His family ran a small private school called the House of Learning. When he was three, his mother bought him a World Book Encyclopedia. He loved reading those books for many hours every day. He even used stickers to update the pages of his encyclopedia.
Later, he studied finance at Auburn University and the University of Alabama. He even began a PhD program at Indiana University Bloomington. These years of study helped him understand how to manage large projects.
Before he worked on encyclopedias, Jimmy worked in the world of finance. He was a researcher for a firm called Chicago Options Associates in Chicago. He also helped start a company called Bomis in 1996. Bomis provided the money that allowed him to pursue his passion for online learning. While he was studying, he also played virtual role-playing games called MUDs. These games showed him how computer networks could help people work together. He saw that large groups of people could finish huge tasks online.
Today, Jimmy Wales still plays a major role in the world of information. He serves on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation as a community founder. He also gives special speeches called "State of the Wiki" at meetings called Wikimania.
Even though he has had disagreements with others about who started Wikipedia, his impact is clear. He turned a small idea into a tool used by millions. His work shows how the internet can bring the whole world together to share facts.
Jimmy Donal Wales is an American internet entrepreneur and former financial trader. He is best known as a co-founder of Wikipedia, which is a free, nonprofit online encyclopedia.
He also co-founded Fandom, a service that hosts many different wikis for profit. Wales has worked on several other digital projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and Trust Café. His primary mission has been to provide free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Because of this massive impact, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006.
Wales's passion for information began during his childhood in Huntsville, Alabama. He was raised in a household where education was a central value. His mother, Doris Ann, and his grandmother, Erma, ran a small private school called the House of Learning. This school followed a Montessori-influenced philosophy of education. As a young child, Wales spent many hours reading encyclopedias like Britannica and World Book. He even used stickers provided by the publisher to update the information in his own books.
Before entering the world of internet entrepreneurship, Wales built a career in finance. He earned finance degrees from Auburn University and the University of Alabama. He later attended a PhD program at Indiana University Bloomington but left before finishing his dissertation. During his graduate studies, he worked as a chief research officer at Chicago Options Associates. While studying, he also played multi-user dungeons, or MUDs. These were virtual role-playing games that used computer networks. Playing these games helped him realize that networks could allow large groups of people to work together on big projects.
In 1996, Wales co-founded a web portal called Bomis. This company eventually provided the funding he needed to pursue his interest in online encyclopedias. In March 2000, Wales and Larry Sanger launched Nupedia. Nupedia was a free, peer-reviewed encyclopedia that relied on expert writers. It used a very strict submission process to ensure high quality. However, this process was very slow and created a bottleneck for growth. Wales later recalled feeling too intimidated to even submit a draft to the experts. This experience helped him realize that the Nupedia model needed to change.
To fix the slow growth of Nupedia, Sanger introduced the concept of a wiki. A wiki is a type of website that allows many people to edit content simultaneously and incrementally. This was a major shift from the expert-only model. On January 10, 2001, the Nupedia wiki was created. Five days later, Wikipedia launched as a separate domain.
Although Wales initially feared that open editing might produce "complete rubbish," the project grew rapidly. Within days, the number of articles on Wikipedia exceeded those on Nupedia. A dedicated community of editors began to form and manage the site.
Despite the success, there has been a long-running dispute regarding the founding of Wikipedia. While many sources, including The New York Times, have identified Sanger and Wales as co-founders, Wales has at times claimed sole founder status.
This disagreement has led to various public debates and even changes to Wikipedia's own biographical entries. Sanger has argued that the idea of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia was entirely Wales's idea. Regardless of the debate over titles, the project transitioned from a Bomis-funded venture toward a non-profit model. This helped ensure the encyclopedia remained a public resource.
Today, Wales remains a central figure in the Wikimedia movement. He holds a board-appointed seat as the "community founder" on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. He also delivers annual "State of the Wiki" addresses at the Wikimania conferences.
His work connects the technical world of software development with the social world of collaborative learning. By using the wiki model, he helped create a system where ordinary people can contribute to global knowledge. This system continues to serve millions of users across the entire planet.
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A free, ad-free encyclopedia for children. Every article is written at five reading levels, so the same page works for a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old — use the level switcher above to see this one change. No account needed to read.