Jimmy Wales Quotes (48 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Jimmy Wales: 48 quotes 6 likes

Famous Jimmy Wales Quotes

“A few things are absolute and non-negotiable, though. NPOV for example.”

Jimmy Wales

“It's of course a very very big deal to do something like this, it is unprecedented for English Wikipedia.”

Jimmy Wales

“We're already taking back the Internet. With your help, we can take back the world.”

Jimmy Wales

“I don't see any particular problem with that.”

Jimmy Wales

Responding to http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-March/066648.html the deletion of a Wikipedia article from non-administrator view, while the article's deletion was being reviewed by the community. (27 March 2007)

“We are going to change the [GNU] Free Documentation License in such a way that Wikipedia will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook my 50th birthday party. This is a party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia.”

Jimmy Wales

Announcing that the Wikimedia Foundation Board has voted to enable Wikipedia to be licensed under a Creative Commons license. "Wikipedia to be Licensed Under Creative Commons" (30 November 2007) http://blog.jamendo.com/index.php/2007/12/01/breaking-news-wikipedia-switches-to-creative-commons/

“I don't really agree that most academics frown when they hear Wikipedia. Most academics I find quite passionate about the concept of Wikipedia and like it quite a bit. […] The number of academics who really really don't like Wikipedia is really quite small and we find that they get reported on in the media far out of proportion to the amount they actually exist.”

Jimmy Wales

Wikimania 2008 Alexandria, press conference, 0'14 (August 2008)

Jimmy Wales Quotes about people

“It turns out a lot of people don’t get it. Wikipedia is like rock’n’roll; it’s a cultural shift.”

Jimmy Wales

Wales to Computerworld, "Wikipedia founder gazes into site's future" (18 August 2006) http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/0/E33CA972AD48588CCC2571C7001C3649?OpenDocument, based on an earlier interview at Wikimania

“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.”

Jimmy Wales

Foundation-l mailing list http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/017898.html (23 October 2005)

“Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

Jimmy Wales

Source: The Encyclopedist’s Lair, The New York Times, November 18, 2007, 2007-11-19 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-domains-t.html?ex=1196139600&en=25f7b166ceba3519&ei=5070&emc=eta1,

“I have my team focused on the front end, working on the user experience, and making sure we have all the wiki-like tools people need to work on the site. We're just cranking away.”

Jimmy Wales

About Wikia Search, in an interview with Susan Kuchinskas in iMediaConnection, March 26, 2009 http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/22475.asp (only days before Wales would shut down Wikia Search and lay off two developers)

“Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentives.”

Jimmy Wales

Interview with Reason magazine (June 2007) http://reason.com/news/show/119689.html

“I have said this many times in the past and will say it many times in the future I am sure: some people need to find a different hobby, because whatever they are here for, it is not to help build an encyclopedia.”

Jimmy Wales

Comment about "drama mongers" on the Wikipedia Administrator's noticeboard, (23 November 2007) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive330&diff=prev&oldid=173346013

Jimmy Wales Quotes about thinking

“We come from geek culture, we come from the free software movement, we have a lot of technologists involved. If we had done the same sort of comparison on poets or artists, I think that we would not have fared nearly as well.”

Jimmy Wales

Wales to the Miami Herald, "Will Wikipedia change history?" http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/technology/15328352.htm

“I think that argument is completely morally bankrupt, and I think people know that when they make it. There's a very big difference between having a sincere, passionate interest in a topic and being a paid shill … Particularly for PR firms, it's something they should really very strongly avoid: ever touching an article.”

Jimmy Wales

PRWeek (30 Jan 2007) http://www.prweek.com/us/login/required/629646 In response to suggestions Wikipedia might change policies to allow PR firms to edit the site without breaking a rule called "WP:AUTO".

“Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others. When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission efficiently.”

Jimmy Wales

Wikimedia donation page https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=spontaneous&utm_source=fr-redir&utm_campaign=spontaneous&rdfrom=%2F%2Fwikimediafoundation.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DFundraising%26redirect%3Dno.

“Hayek's work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project. … [O]ne can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek.”

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales, cited by Katherine Mangu-Ward, " Wikipedia and Beyond: Jimmy Wales' sprawling vision http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/30/wikipedia-and-beyond," Reason (June 2007).
Also cited by Morton Winston and Ralph Edelbach, Society, Ethics, and Technology 4th ed. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012), p. 200.

“I think that reality exists and that it's knowable”

Jimmy Wales

Quoted in an artwork, also depicting Wales, in the 2018 exhibition 'Internet Giants : Masters of the Universe' by Langlands & Bell.

“I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think.”

Jimmy Wales

As quoted in "Wikimedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds," by Robin "Roblimo" Miller, Slashdot (28 July 2004)

Jimmy Wales Quotes

“When someone just writes 'f**k, f**k, f**k', we just fix it, laugh and move on.”

Jimmy Wales

As quoted in "Who knows?", The Guardian (26 October 2004)
Context: When someone just writes 'f**k, f**k, f**k', 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.

“The real struggle is not between the right and the left — that's where most people assume — but it's between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks. And no side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on either of those qualities.”

Jimmy Wales

"How a ragtag band created Wikipedia" http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/37 - TED Talk (July 2005); this has sometimes appeared paraphrased as "The real struggle is not between the right and the left but between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks."
Context: Most people understand the need for neutrality. The real struggle is not between the right and the left — that's where most people assume — but it's between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks. And no side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on either of those qualities.

People , Jerk

“We are a passionate community of volunteers who are trying to create a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet.”

Jimmy Wales

Wikimania 2008 Alexandria, press conference, 0'20 (August 2008), asked about Google Knol
Context: We are a passionate community of volunteers who are trying to create a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. So we don't often think in terms of competition. We are going to do what we do and we hope Google does wonderful things as well. … If we were approaching this as a business we would think always: Oh, how can we position ourselves on the market... We just don't do any of that stuff.

Communication , Passion , Personality

“There’s plenty of rude stuff online. People say things online that they would be ashamed to say face to face. If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.”

Jimmy Wales

Source: As quoted in "The Encyclopedist’s Lair" in The New York Times (19 November 2007)

“If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.”

Jimmy Wales

As quoted in "The Encyclopedist’s Lair" in The New York Times (19 November 2007)
Context: There’s plenty of rude stuff online. People say things online that they would be ashamed to say face to face. If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.

People

“Real people are involved, and they can be hurt by your words. We are not tabloid journalism, we are an encyclopedia.”

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales on Biographies of living persons article

People , Hurt

“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.”

Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia-l mailing list (8 March 2005) http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020469.html

Communication , Question , Effort , Personality

“[Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made.”

Jimmy Wales

Who knows?, The Guardian, October 26, 2004, 2007-02-09 http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1335837,00.html, (Alluding to a famous quote "Laws are like sausages — it is better not to see them being made.", generally attributed to Otto von Bismarck.)

“Given enough time humans will screw up Wikipedia just as they have screwed up everything else, but so far it's not too bad.”

Jimmy Wales

Berkman Center (May 15, 2008) http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9945028-80.html

Time

“Wikipedia is a non-profit. It was either the dumbest thing I ever did or the smartest thing I ever did.”

Jimmy Wales

Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006, published in "The wisdom of one" (25 April 2007) http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-wisdom-of-one/2007/04/24/1177180647120.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

“Random speculative pseudo information should be removed, unless it can be sourced.”

Jimmy Wales

Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046440.html - Email to WikiEN-l, Tue May 16 20:30:15 UTC 2006
About falseness

“What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse."”

Jimmy Wales

It isn't.
Boingboing.net, Jimmy Wales tells "energy workers" that Wikipedia won't publish woo, "the work of lunatic charlatans isn't the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'" http://boingboing.net/2014/03/26/jimmy-wales-tells-energy-wor.html

“We've always had a love/hate relationship with numbers.”

Jimmy Wales

Love , Hate

“I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

Jimmy Wales

On controversy regarding fraudulent claims of credentials by the Wikipedian Essjay, in an e-mail to editors of The New Yorker, as quoted in The New York Times (5 March 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/technology/05wikipedia.html?ex=1330750800&en=bce61db72670b609&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Problem

“Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information”

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales. Keynote speech, Wikimania, August 2006. May 19, 2006
About falseness

Falseness

“I'm on it pretty much all the time. I edit Wikipedia every day, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm reading the news. During one of the US elections, I actually went through my computer and I blocked myself from looking at the major newspaper sites and Google News because I wasn't getting any work done.”

Jimmy Wales

The Independent, October 23rd 2011 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jimmy-wales-the-internets-shy-evangelist-2374679.html

Time , Reading

“I think MySpace is doomed, I give them about two more years…. I think Facebook is the next Microsoft in both the bad and the good senses. That's an amazing company that is going to do a lot of good and bad things.”

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales on tech's future, Orlando Sentinel http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2007-11-03/business/horowitz03_1_wikipedia-jimmy-wales-copyright (03 November 2007)

Thinking , Sense

“To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters.”

Jimmy Wales

Long displayed quote on his User page at Wikipedia, and many other Wikimedia projects

School , Personality

“EssJay was appointed at the request of and unanimous support of the ArbCom.”

Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia-l mailing list http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/083549.html (17 October 2007)

Support

“IAR is policy, always has been.”

Jimmy Wales

Edit comment http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules&diff=70516723, removing attempts to minimize the significance of the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules policy statement (19 August 2006)

“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?”

Jimmy Wales

As quoted in ExpressIndia (7 September 2005) http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=54191

“Ideally, our rules should be formed in such a fashion that an ordinary helpful kind thoughtful person doesn't really even need to know the rules. You just get to work, do something fun, and nobody hassles you as long as you are being thoughtful and kind.”

Jimmy Wales

User talk statement (7 April 2005) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Ignore_all_rules/Archive_1#from_User_talk:Jimbo_Wales

Fashion , Help , Personality

“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.”

Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia-l mailing list (18 December 2005, 15:39 UTC)

Passion , Change

“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.”

Jimmy Wales

"Identity question for world's encyclopaedia", The Times (30 December 2005) http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article782970.ece?print=yes&randnum=1188516145101

World , Guy

“Quite frankly, several of the people who contributed to the article should be banned from coming near a keyboard until they have learned to engage in proper encyclopedia writing.”

Jimmy Wales

Source: In a discussion about Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:BonziBUDDY&diff=74314772&oldid=74246581 (07 September 2006)

People , Learning

“Freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education.”

Jimmy Wales

While talking about Wikibooks project; TED - Jimmy Wales: How a ragtag band created Wikipedia http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html, July 2005

Education

“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.”

Jimmy Wales

As quoted in "Wikimedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds," http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1351230 by Robin "Roblimo" Miller, Slashdot (28 July 2004)

World , Imagination , Knowledge , Personality

“Myspace hurts my eyes.”

Jimmy Wales

Interview with news24.com http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_2102112,00.html (April 2007)

Hurt

“Should there be competing articles, so that you would have the Catholic article on abortion, the evangelical Christian version, and the Planned Parenthood version.”

Jimmy Wales

Source: Reminiscing in Jimmy Wales: “Wikipedia is from a different era” https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2021/01/jimmy-wales-wikipedia-different-era" (January 14, 2021)