Jimmy Wales: Quotes about thinking

“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.

Idea , Understanding , Thinking

“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.

Knowledge , Thinking , Learning

“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".

People , Thinking , Passion , Sincerity

“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

Thinking

“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,

People , Communication , Knowledge , Thinking

“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

“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.

Thinking , Reality

“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