Jimmy Wales: Quotes about personality

Jimmy Wales is Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur. Explore interesting quotes on personality.
Jimmy Wales: 96   quotes 6   likes

“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

“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

“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

“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)

War , People , Education , Drink

“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

“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