Wales on Wikipedia

This is a chronological list of edits by Jimmy Wales to some of the articles associated with him, and their talk pages. It also includes posts made by others (such as Larry Sanger) where they are relevant to the chronology.

From these posts we learn, amongst other things, that

• Jimmy never owned the famous Ferrari that was offered as a prize in a Bomis competition. "As a legal matter" (why a legal matter?) it was purchased and owned by Bomis, but for marketing purposes, the car was referred to as Jimmy's. Because the contest winner chose to accept cash instead, it was parked in the garage of a friend of Jimmy's (which friend?). Jimmy said "I haven't bothered to maintain it, and it's too much trouble right now to sell it". He did not explain how the cash was raised for the competition winner, or whether he had actually purchased the car to pay the cash.
• On 07:22, 9 November 2005 he changed "Sanger continues to call himself the "co-founder" " to "Sanger now calls himself the "co-founder" ", implying that Sanger never originally thought of himself as a co-founder. However, Sanger claimed that "from 2001 until mid-2004, press reports of Wikipedia had, following our mutual practice, identified Jimmy and I as co-founders". Wikipedia originated in 2001.
• Jimmy's father was still working in 2006.
• Jimmy is not associated with the American Libertarian Party.

In a profile on BBC radio 4, March 2012, he said "I edited my own biography and it caused a bit of a scandal when the press found out. It didn't cause any scandal within the community because I did it openly and very publicly, but it was a very unpleasant experience".

March 2004

• Jimmy Wales jwales at bomis.com Tue Oct 30 22:02:03 UTC 2001
• 14:22, 16 Mar 2004 "As is well known, despite my benevolent dictator position around here, I am loathe to actually forbid people from doing things. But for me, this is a matter of courtesy and respect, not just for me, but for the project itself. I know that my position may not be shared by all, so I don't mean to say that those who would like to see an article about me are being discourteous or disrepectful, quite the contrary actually, it's a bit flattering of course. Speaking objectively and neutrally, if this were about anyone other than me, I would say that of course it's fine to have an article. But it is about me, and my position in the project is unique. Part of what I seek to avoid is a snarky reporter reporting on this article, as if to suggest that Wikipedia is absurd, and just a vanity project of some kind. It's important to remember that although my name has been in the papers and whatever, my day to day life is not that of a famous person of any kind. I have a small home office in an ordinary middle-class home in an ordinary middle-class neighborhood. I have a 4 year old Hyundai with a dent in the side that I drive when I do go out. I pop up here after breakfast each morning and type my wild thoughts about freedom and knowledge and neutrality and openness and wikilove. And then I go downstairs to play with my little girl. I don't feel very much like an encyclopedia-topic. :-) I've discouraged other people from creating articles about themselves, and from editing articles about themselves, although of course we don't have a firm policy against it. But I want to set the best possible example in cases like this, and I fear that if we have a general "green light" for articles about ourselves, we'll end up having to put up with some very strange and annoying arguments. Anyhow, so that's my position, and I suppose it isn't nearly as helpful as it might be if I just said "no". But I do feel pretty strongly against it. I suggest that we take a vote, and that the voters be made aware of my feelings against the existence of an article, and if nonetheless the consensus is to have it, then we may have it. I'd prefer to wait until I win the Nobel Peace Prize, though. :-) Jimbo Wales "

September 2004

The broken Ferrari, taken at the St. Petersburg meetup - January 14, 2006 [1]. Parked in the friend's garage, presumably

*02:49, 9 September 2004 Jimbo Wales "Jimbo Wales is a person.

• 02:51, 9 September 2004 I have dropped my opposition to a page about me, but I think we're going to have to watch it carefully for trolling. It might even need to be generally protected, I don't know. 02:51, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• 21:42, 9 September 2004 Some factual material that may be helpful:
  • this is my published academic work in options pricing.
  • Many press sources about me can be found on my homepage, but probably even more can be found on the WIkipedia news page.
  • Some opinions and unverifiable biographical facts:
  • While it is sort of ok to call me a "firearms enthusiast" it is more accurate to say that I take a strong interest in firearms policy and legal issues, especially constitutional issues. I own guns, but I hardly ever go shooting, and I have never in my life gone hunting. It's really more of an intellectual hobby than a practical hobby.
  • It would make the most sense I think to add "while in graduate school in the early 1990s" to the bit about my moderating the philosophy mailing list -- it puts that bit into perspective in the story of my life.
  • The Herald Sun article is talking about Australian dollars. A later article in Time estimated the number at $500,000 US dollars total. Both numbers came directly from me, so it's interesting to me to think about the process by which something I said to a journalist becomes a fact after they print it. :-)
  • The bit about 'erotic images' is true, but it makes me laugh. I think of my time at Bomis as being marked by our early entry into the internet market, our early use of and promotion of the dmoz open source data, etc. But, you know, whatever.
• 21:44, 9 September 2004 Bomis still owns the Ferrari, because the contest winner chose to accept cash instead. (This is confirmable by a photograph if anyone needs proof...)
• 21:48, 9 September 2004 archives talk page.
• 12:41, 10 September 2004 User pages are external to the encyclopedia itself. Wikipedia the project (including user pages, talk pages, policy pages, etc.) is distinct from Wikipedia the encyclopedia (which is just the article namespace). I don't think it is "wallowing in folly" to make that distinction.
• 12:43, 10 September 2004 "For marketing purposes, the car was referred to as mine. It's like "Win Bill Gates Ferrari!" But as a legal matter it was and is purchased and owned by Bomis. It now sits idle with flat tires in a friend's garage because I haven't bothered to maintain it, and it's too much trouble right now to sell it. "
• 19:16, 18 September 2004 Jimbo Wales - link to Objectivism mailing list
• 20:52, 18 September 2004 Jimbo Wales - changes birth date.

March 2005

Staff of Bomis, summer 2000. Most of these guys look like they would call each other "bro"... Jeremy Rosenfeld (sitting next to Sanger) was the employee who Jimmy Wales later claimed, quite untruthfully, to be the originator of the wiki idea for Wikipedia The picture was taken by Edward O'Connor

• ‘’Wired’’, March 2005 “The Book Stops Here “, Daniel H. Pink. Based on an interview with Wales.
  • With Sanger as editor in chief, Nupedia essentially replicated the One Best Way model. He assembled a roster of academics to write articles. (Participants even had to fax in their degrees as proof of their expertise.) And he established a seven-stage process of editing, fact-checking, and peer review. "After 18 months and $250,000," Wales says, "we had 12 articles." Then an employee told Wales about Wiki software. On January 15, 2001, they launched a Wiki-fied version and within a month, they had 200 articles. In a year, they had 18,000. And on September 20, 2004, when the Hebrew edition added an article on Kazakhstan's flag, Wikipedia had its 1 millionth article. Total investment: about $500,000, most of it from Wales himself. Sanger left the project in 2002. "In the Nupedia model, there was room for an editor in chief," Wales says. "The Wiki model is too distributed for that." Sanger, a scholar at heart, returned to academic life.
• 18:34, 14 March 2005 :In my opinion, the whole bit about the Objectivism mailing list should be removed as pointless trivia. This is not a request or a policy statement, just the opinion of a knowledgeable editor. I ran a mailing list in college, so what? The extremely outdated list of mailing lists? What's the point of that? In my opinion, both these things could be safely omitted.
• 18:38, 14 March 2005 Replying to "Hello, I have added the factual information that Bomis' (main/only?) revenue is from the sale of pornography. This has been twice removed, without an explanation. Thanks, Fernsworth" he writes ":It is absolutely untrue. Bomis receives the overwhelming percentage of its revenue from advertising sales in deal with Google and Infospace. The mature audience (NOT pornography) portion of the business is significantly less than 10% of total revenues. I am no longer the CEO of bomis, and have done virtually no work on Bomis for the past two years."
• 18:39, 14 March 2005 removes a bit that was intended for his user talk page
• 18:52, 14 March 2005 with comment "I was *this close* to editing myself"
  • Yikes, I have generally avoided reading articles about me and related matters, but today I did, and I found a number of major factual problems.
  • I was *this close* to editing this article myself, but decided that my longstanding ban on editing myself is a good thing overall. So I offer my editorial suggestions here in the spirit of sharing information.
  • 1. My academic career included publication of an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal. You can look it up at the link I provided above, some months ago. This is significantly more important and relevant than that I was the moderator of a mailing list, which strikes me as rather absurd trivia.
  • The Pricing of Index Options When the Underlying Assets All Follow a Lognormal Diffusion ADVANCES IN FUTURES AND OPTIONS RESEARCH, Volume 7, 1994 Robert Brooks , Jon Corson and J. Donal Wales University of Alabama - Department of Economics, Finance and Legal Studies , University of Alabama - Department of Mathematics and Affiliation Unknown - General
  • 2. The article should reflect that I am no longer the CEO or President of Bomis.
  • 3. The question of how to describe the business of Bomis is of course an interesting one. I do not like to see it described as "pornography" because unless you have a very very uptight view of the world, it is not pornography. I'd say that 'adult content' is fine or 'content for mature audiences' or something of that nature. I leave it to the judgment of the editors, but if Bomis is pornography, so is a significant proportion of the output of Hollywood.
  • 4. It is not correct to say that "With Larry Sanger, Wales in 2001 founded..." I founded Wikipedia, Larry just worked for me. The idea for using a wiki orginally came to me from an employee -- Jeremy Rosenfeld. I am adding a note to the Bomis article's talk page about this one as well.
• 18:54, 14 March 2005 I just wanted to comment here on the idea that Larry Sanger had the idea for Wikipedia. This is not correct. The original idea of using a wiki for the encyclopedia project came to me from Jeremy Rosenfeld, an employee at that time. The encyclopedia project itself was fully conceived by me alone, and I funded it, and I hired Larry to run it -- which he did of course with the Nupedia project.
• 19:04, 14 March 2005 Another complaint "However, when the Wikipedia community ruled out advertising as a means of paying for these resources - and in order to reflect the spirit of openness and neutrality central to Wikipedia - it was decided that new arrangements were needed." This is very POV. The Wikipedia community has never "ruled out" advertising, and this article makes it seem like the reason I went the non profit route and no-advertising is in response to resistance from the community. This is not accurate. I have consistently been opposed to advertising on Wikipedia.
• 19:12, 14 March 2005 [Adds] although in the early days I thought advertising was going to eventually be necessary. Now I think advertising will never be necessary, but I wonder if someday we (the community) might decide that we could do so much good in the world with a small amount of advertising that we might choose to accept it.

August 2005

• 17:49, 2 August 2005 Wikipedia editing process.
• 03:52, 11 August 2005 The majority owner of Bomis is Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), and it has never had venture capital. Minority stakeholders include Tim Shell and one silent partner.
• 17:21, 13 August 2005 Removes "However, Wales is still the majority stock holder [of Bomis] as of 2005".
• 05:48, 23 August 2005 No, it is not true. I can't recall ever making any political donations.
• 05:49, 23 August 2005 :Anyhow I don't recall anyone ever calling me the "God King" of Wikipedia, except for Raul being quoted to that effect in Wired.
• 05:50, 23 August 2005 changes timestamp from 05:49, 23 August 2005 to 05:50, 23 August 2005
• 05:53, 23 August 2005 It is still live, I'm just a terrible blogger.
• 06:05, 23 August 2005 Removes old material and asks people to leave messages on his talk page.

September 2005

• 12:36, 3 September 2005
  • Someone did in fact call me last night while I was having dinner. He did not identify himself although I asked several times. He did, in fact, ask me if I am outraged about the $10 billion Congress approved for FEMA. It is true that I said that I'm not outraged, and also that I am generally opposed to taxation. It seemed that we were about to get into a more nuanced discussion of my position, but he hung up on me.
  • Based on the voice and extrapolating from a prior phone call, my 'interviewer' was Lir. Probably a check of the ip numbers could confirm the location sufficient to prove this. (He is or was a student in Iowa.) Based further on the sound of the voice, he was either drunk or on drugs.
  • It's really a shame that he hung up on me, because I do enjoy talking to Lir.
  • In case anyone is wondering what I think about taxation and emergency aid: emergency aid in a time of disaster is a tricky thing -- at some point it moves beyond legitimate use of existing (military, emergency management) resources and becomes a bailout for wealthy or upper middle class (and politically influential) landowners who have chosen to locate valuable buildings in precarious places. A perfect example of this would be my own house, which is located in a neighborhood only 5 feet above sea level, and which will certainly be disastrously flooded in any direct hurricane strike. It would be extremely expensive to buy flood insurance at market rates, but no matter -- flood insurance is heavily subsidized. Thanks, tax payers! I oppose this type of government intervention into the economy, and one reason that I do is that it distorts prices in such a way which leads to disaster eventually.
  • I do not think my position on such matters is particularly interesting or noteworthy for the article about me. I have positions on all sorts of political topics. "Libertarian" is not accurate except in the broadest sense to describe my political views. In particular, I gladly disassociate myself from the US Libertarian party, and from the libertarian movement surrounding it.
• 13:22, 4 September 2005 changes "including a "Bomis Babes" softcore pornography section" to including a "Bomis Babes" adult content section.
• 17:05, 4 September 2005 reverts back to 'adult content' with the comment "this has been discussed on the talk page. Please do not change it back without consulting with me personally"
• 17:08, 4 September 2005 The correct terminology is 'adult content'. If this is pornography, then so is much of mainstream culture. I do not think we should adopt the definitions of the Taliban or the Southern Baptist Convention.
• 09:23, 5 September 2005 According to the article, I am 'independently wealthy'? Can someone cite a source for that? My point is equally valid for other 'facts' in the article.-
• 02:36, 6 September 2005
  • This is much better. "Independently wealthy" sounds to me like a loaded phrase, whereas the Wired quote is much milder. I'll take a look in a few days when I have time for other items that sound more like speculation or interpretation than citation. Of course the very strange thing for me is that even the citations depend on the accuracy of journalists, and I have been quite disappointed on average in those. I do recommend the Florida Trend article, it is the best one yet, because the reporter bothered to spend several days with me, and she fact checked the article herself before a fact checker from the magazine also fact checked it. Most reporters simply repeat what they are told.
  • I question whether it is common for anyone in the community actually wryly calls me "GodKing" -- I feel that this was a misunderstanding on the part of Dan Pink (or perhaps Raul, who I believe is quoted there) based on a lack of knowledge of the term in wiki culture. It's a bit of a shame for us to repeat something that I think is a journalistic error, but to adhere to our general rules of sourcing, I don't think you should cite what I say on this talk page. :-)

October 2005

• 09:42, 20 October 2005
  • 1. The Bomis Babe Report was a blog, and was based on slashcode.
  • 2. I do reject the terms 'benevolent dictator' and 'GodKing' and so does the community. The only place these ever come up are outside the community, in the press, and often because our article has been so wrong on this point at times.
  • 3. The bit about me retaining "effective control" is ludicrous. I have no control whatsoever over the other board members, including Michael and Tim. As best, this is POV speculation.
• 09:40, 20 October 2005 Changes
  • ""Bomis Babes" erotica section" to ""Bomis Babes" blog based on Slashdcode."
  • Changes "Wales is sometimes considered Wikipedia's "benevolent dictator". Despite the creation of the Wikimedia Foundation, he retained ultimate control by appointing, in addition to himself, two business partners who are not active Wikipedia editors to the five-member board, thus effectively having a controlling three-vote majority. However, he has stated that if the two members of the board who edit Wikipedia vote the same way on something, he will cast his vote in their favor, effectively giving them the controlling majority." to "Wales is sometimes described in the press as Wikipedia's "benevolent dictator", despite his own disavowal of the term and ongoing community rejection of that term."
• 09:45, 20 October 2005 changes "Slashdcode" to "Slashcode".
• 09:46, 20 October 2005 yes. I'm from Alabama. My real name is Jimmy. Strange, perhaps, but true.
• 12:13, 28 October 2005 Deletes " "Bomis Babes" pornography section".
• 12:17, 28 October 2005
  • The blog was not about pornography. It was not about erotica. It covered all manner of topics under the general topic of 'babes', including mainstream actresses, etc.
  • It is not fitting at all. I am not "considered" the benevolent dictator nor "called" it. The entire community rejects the term. I do not have the final say on things, the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation does. Being the president of a nonprofit organization is nothing remotely like being a dictator. If you disagree, fine, but Wikipedia is not the place for your original research.
  • Both Michael and Tim are active in the business matters of the foundation.
• 12:47, 28 October 2005 Deletes "Wales functions as Wikipedia's "benevolent dictator", although he disapproves of the term. Despite the creation of the Wikimedia Foundation, he retained ultimate control by appointing, in addition to himself, two business partners who are not active Wikipedia editors to the five-member board, thus effectively having a controlling three-vote majority. However, he has stated that if the two members of the board who edit Wikipedia vote the same way on something, he will cast his vote in their favor, effectively giving them the controlling majority. He has also stated that the "benevolent dictator" term is mostly used by the press and is rejected by the Wikipedia community." with comment "removing original research and editorial".
• 23:22, 28 October 2005 changes "Wales and Sanger set up Wikipedia" to "Wales set up Wikipedia".
• 01:47, 29 October 2005 changes 'Tampa' to 'St Petersburg'.

November 2005

• 07:17, 9 November 2005 changes
  • "Wales and Sanger set up Wikipedia" to "Wales set up Wikipedia",
  • "Sanger did most of the early development of Wikipedia" to "Sanger did most of the early development of Nupedia"
  • "Because Sanger was Wales's employee, Wales considers himself the sole founder of Wikipedia" to the now ungrammatical "Because Sanger, Wales considers himself the sole founder of Wikipedia"
• 07:22, 9 November 2005 changes "Sanger continues to call himself the "co-founder" " to "Sanger now calls himself the "co-founder" ".
• 07:23, 9 November 2005 I was there, and I know the history. I set up Wikipedia. I fixed the broad outlines of early policy, and Larry worked under my direct supervision at every stage of the process. The current article, even with my edits, contains considerable incorrect editorialization, it's just that I don't even know where to begin in correcting it.

December 2005

• 22:36, 1 December 2005 changes "best known as the co-founder " to "best known as the founder"
• 22:38, 1 December 2005 changes "Wales and Larry Sanger set up Wikipedia" to "Wales set up Wikipedia"
• 05:09, 2 December 2005 I am in no way trying to belittle his contributions. If anything I think it is a belittlement of him to be casual about what he did -- and did not -- do.
• 05:10, 2 December 2005 changes "Sanger initially came up with the idea to make the encylopedia wiki-based and coined the name 'wikipedia'" to "Jeremy Rosenfeld initially came up with the idea to make the encylopedia wiki-based and coined the name 'wikipedia'.
• 05:10, 2 December 2005 Adds Sanger's name back in as coining the name 'Wikipedia'.
• 00:27, 10 December 2005 - libel by IP.
• 01:22 PM 19 Dec 2005 "Wikipedia Founder Looks Out for Number 1" by Rogers Cadenhead. Cadenhead highlights the edits from 'cofounder' to 'founder' by Jimmy earlier in the month, as well as his attempts to tone down or remove claims about pornographic content.
• 20:26, 19 December 2005 [Larry spots the edits made on 2 December] I just saw this blog post [by Cadenhead] which brought me to this page. I must say I am amused. Having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out.
  • Anyway, here are several points I wish people would bear in mind when they write about who got Wikipedia started:
  • I was there (which thankfully no one is denying yet), and I've written a long memoir, which I put a great deal of work into, called "The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia." This has been published in O'Reilly's Open Sources 2.0. I wrote it honestly and attempted to give Jimmy credit for what he is responsible for. I wish he would do the same for me.
  • I have already taken Jimmy to task for his claim that a Jeremy Rosenfeld first had the idea for, or proposed, making a wiki encyclopedia (see the whole thread and especially this post). In fact, it does not matter the slightest bit when Jimmy first heard of wikis, or from whom, because it was when I heard of wikis, and when I was thinking about how to solve Nupedia's problems, that I proposed to Jimmy the idea of a wiki encyclopedia. The next day a new wiki was created for me to work on. I proceeded to create the first pages of what became Wikipedia. Jimmy, in claiming that he "set up" the wiki, or that he got the idea from Jeremy Rosenfeld (who I believe was a link weeder for the celebrity rings on Bomis.com), is, I regret to say, perpetrating a self-serving myth. I had thought he would have stopped doing so after being called on it in public (on Wikipedia-l); it is amazing that he continues.
  • The notion, as Jimmy suggests above, that "Larry worked under my direct supervision at every stage of the process" is highly misleading. I was answerable to Jimmy, but that hardly means that he was giving me orders and I was carrying them out. That is not at all the case. In terms of the design of Wikipedia's policy and recruitment and so forth, I was given very free rein. Again, see my memoir: he said from the first few days that I started working on Nupedia that I had free rein to design the encyclopedia projects as I wished. I did not talk to Jimmy very much about what I was doing on Wikipedia (although we did discuss things), and in the first year, Jimmy was actually relatively in the background.
  • From 2001 until mid-2004, press reports of Wikipedia had, following our mutual practice, identified Jimmy and I as co-founders. Since mid-2004, Jimmy started calling himself "the founder." Since earlier this year he has actually gone farther, to rewrite this article about himself, and to give interviews with the press, to make it look as if I had very little to do with Wikipedia. The fact--which Jimmy does not (yet) deny--is that my proposal of a wiki-based encyclopedia led to the creation of Wikipedia, and very many of the basic practices and policies that Wikipedia still follows were started by me.
  • Also, from 2001 until 2004, the various articles mentioning the origin of Wikipedia, including history of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and Larry Sanger, all reflected actual historical fact, as explained here. It was only when Wikipedia emerged into the broader public eye, and Jimmy started jetting around the world, that he found it convenient to encourage the rewriting of these articles, or to rewrite them himself (!), and to give interviews to the press that ignored my role and emphasized his own. I'm frankly not at all upset, however, because I am thinking long-term, and I know that the truth will out.
  • Wired 12.19.05 "Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio" by Evan Hansen. Wired picks up on the blog by Cadenhead] and on Larry's response.
• 15:20, 20 December 2005 " "As of 2005, Wales was conspicuously trying to obscure his past links to the world of female glamour photography due to criticism from the religious Right." -- This is absolutely absurd. "

January 2006

• 12:35, 5 January 2006
  • In this edit [2] is the comment "correcting bad facts" but you changed it from one wrong version to an even worse vesion.
  • The actual historical fact, to my knowledge not contested by anyone, is that I registered the domain name, I tested several different wiki packages, installing several to test, and then I installed the Wikipedia software. I made the first edits. This was absolutely not over any objections of mine but as the culmination of many many months of me complaining to Larry that the problem with Nupedia could be solved with a more open editing model.
• 12:43, 5 January 2006
  • Of course if anyone actually did make soft porn, and then tried to hide it, they would of course be in the wrong. But notice that there are two separate threads of this critique which have to be thoughtfully sorted out. The first question is the question of what Bomis was, and what to call it. I think "softcore pornography" is ludicriously POV. Indeed I am of the opinion that given the fact that since the glamour photography on the site was never more than a very tiny part of the entire business, it is as silly to even mention it in this article as it would be to mention it in the Marriott International article. I won't win that battle, though, and so what I strongly recommend is that we go back to what was a generally accepted compromise of 'erotic photography'. I will still find this article absurd to mention that, but whatever. I can live with that.
  • The other question is whether this article should treat this as some kind of controversy. To my knowledge it absolutely is not a controversy. Other than, as Dan T. puts it, "two-bit trolls", I am not aware of this being controversial. Matt Gies seems to agree on that point, am I right? So what I 7recommend is that we should entirely eliminate the suggestion that it's controversial and simply state it as a plain fact.
  • There is a horrible problem in this article of violation of WP:CITE. Statements are changed back and forth over and over with absolutely no external references.
• 12:47, 5 January 2006 Reference to class action lawsuit against Wales.
• 12:56, 5 January 2006
  • "In late 2005, a controversy arose regarding Wales and the related Wikipedia entry on himself. After Wired Magazine picked up on work from Rogers Cadenhead, Wales confirmed that he had edited his own biography on Wikipedia,"
  • I have no real suggestions about how this alleged controversy (was there a controversy?) should be presented it, except to say that we should absolutely not follow the lead of uninformed media. This wording suggests that Rogers Cadenhead sleuthed out some secret and then upon questeioning by Wired, I confirmed it. The actual facts of the matter is that all edits to this article by me have been done openly, under my publicly known username, and so there was no need for me to "confirm" it. This sentence contains an implication which I think will mislead readers of this article.
  • Perhaps something like this: "Wales has from time to time edited the article about himself in Wikipedia, in an open and public fashion, interacting with other editors on the talk page in the normal fashion."
  • The context of the alleged "controversy" is this: Adam Curry was caught (secretly) editing the entry about himself, and someone traced the ip number to him, he was confronted about it and admitted it. Then, a couple of weeks later, the media picked up on a bloggers report about me editing about myself, and they seemed to assume that it was the same sort of thing.
  • Now whether or not me editing about myself is actually controversial, I leave to others to decide. But what I do think makes sense is that we accurately report the story, and not suggest that I did this secretly and only confirmed it after being confronted by a magazine.
• 12:57, 5 January 2006 I recommend the term 'erotic photography' as a neutral description.
• 13:04, 5 January 2006 I think that Ronabop's point is quite a good one. "There exists a photo of a porn star wearing a Bomis t-shirt" somehow translates to "Bomis is porn"? Not in any rational universe, it doesn't.
• 13:08, 5 January 2006
  • There are several items on this talk page which do not appear to about this article, but are rather inquiries for me which should have been left on my user talk page, or simply rants against me. I don't want to be accused of in any way stifling open discussion about this article, so I'm reluctant to remove or archive any of it myself. Could someone do that?
  • What I would recommend is that we archive all the points that are more than a week or two old, so that we can have a cleaner workspace to work on the errors in the article.
• 13:16, 5 January 2006

This edit inaccurately portrays even what the absurd Times Online story said. "Despite resistance to the idea" by me is relevant, as the current paragraph gives the impression that over community objections, I'm considering advertising in Wikipedia. The bit about "been known to assure people in the past" adds to the misimpression, in addition to being plainly false. I have been saying exactly the same thing about advertising for many many years. After the Times Online story appeared, I was interviewed by other outlets, who then more accurately reported on this.

• 13:22, 5 January 2006 Wait My mistake, I linked to the wrong edit. This edit is perfectly fine. I'll have to find the one I was complaining about. :-) [He is referring to this
• 13:27, 5 January 2006 This is the questionable edit. Notice how it is made by an anonymous redshirt and flagged as a minor edit. Notice how it takes credit away from Larry Sanger while mangling the historical facts. I know that people love to view this dispute as me thinking Larry gets too much credit, but in fact I think that in general Larry does not get enough credit. All I care about here is simple historical accuracy.
• 13:35, 5 January 2006 If we simply count the news sites, I think it is quite clear that I am best known as "the" founder of Wikipedia. Given that there is (apparently) some controversy over that, I think the article should start off with something like an earlier revision: best known as "the head of Wikipedia" or similar, and then the controversy, if there is a controversy, should be discussed later on in the article Probably relevant to the controversy: "To be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's".
• 15:58, 5 January 2006
  • Well, it's a quote by Larry. (His history, posted on Slashdot.) I don't know if the quote should be included but it should certainly inform the debate.
  • [Replying to Is there any early statement by you where you describe your vision of Nupedia? That would be useful and interesting, I think.] It certainly would be. :-) I've been hunting around for this sort of thing but unfortunately my very oldest email archives are missing, as are the very early email archives of Nupedia itself. :-( The email archives I have do include some very interesting tidbits that haven't been made public, but I really have to think about whether and when I'd like to do that.
• 16:02, 5 January 2006 I normally use 'President'. I frequently in talks describe my role in Wikipedia as being analagous to 'constitutional monarch' but even that is a bit of a stretched analogy. I think it's pretty hard to find an exact term for it, especially using political analogies, since this is not a government but an encyclopedia project.
• 15:03, 6 January 2006 Absolutely not true. Michael Davis and Tim Shell are independent voices, people who I trust because of long association. It is absurd for this article to claim that I somehow control them. At the very very very very least this is original research, and then beyond that of course it is highly POV.
• 15:33, 6 January 2006 The biography of me is not the appropriate place for your original speculations about the composition of the board. It absolutely is a far-fetched conclusion that they would side with me; they very often do not. Contrary to your POV-pushing, the reason for them to be on the board is precisely for their experience in business and internet, as well as their support for the overall vision I set forth for our projects from the very beginning. This is not about me having personal control, it is about ensuring long-term stability. We have always regarded the current board as a transitional phase as we grow and learn as a community what the best approach is. However, and I think this is the important point here, a biography in Wikipedia is not the place for you to put your own speculations, far-fetched or otherwise. You need to provide actual sources -- I recommend magazine articles, books, newspaper stories, interview transcripts, television appearances. Wikipedia is not the place for editorializing.
• 15:40, 6 January 2006 "peddler of pornography" I'd love to see a cite for "some critics" other than Internet trolls. "Some critics" have accused me of raping little boys at home, shall we include that criticism as well? In grade school, someone called me a "doody head", I think we ought to include that. My point is: describing Bomis as having something to do with erotic photography is about the same, in my mind, as describing Marriot Hotels as being a pornography distribution business. I will not win that fight. But I continue to argue that treating this as a "controversy" is silly.
  • The quote from Wired News was not a response to people criticizing me for being a "peddler of pornography". The interviewer asked me why I edited that out of the article, and I responded: it's a simple factual error. The Wired quote, therefore, either doesn't belong in the article at all or, perhaps, it should go into the section which explains why I edited my own biography.
  • My own view is that there are a number of trolls who hang out on this page and write false things about me. Because I made the mistake of reading the article and editing on impulse, it made the news. This doesn't change the fact that the alleged "critics" here are not the story.
• 17:05, 6 January 2006 "atlantis/wetheliving" I still think the best reference to Ayn Rand would be the magazine article in Florida Trend, or perhaps my interview with C-SPAN. Random links to google groups are original research and we have a proper reference, so why not use that? In any event, Atlantis was an unmoderated forum, always, and I was never the moderator of any mailing lists of the wetheliving community. Bomis never owned or operated the site.
• 18:21, 6 January 2006 "Wetheliving was hosted by Bomis for some period of time. "

February 2006

• 00:39, 24 February 2006 I physically set up the site and made the first edits.
• 00:41, 24 February 2006 Without making any further statements about the facts of the matter, I should point out that NPOV requires that in any case where there is a controversy, Wikipedia must not take a stand. Of course, here, we do take a stand, the stand that is mostly negative about me, and of course I can't edit it because if I do it will make world headlines. But it is inappropriate, to say the very least, to say that Bomis published "softcore pornography" when that is very much in dispute.
• 00:58, 24 February 2006 Things about which Larry and I agree
  • Based solely on some comments earlier on the page...
  • 1. "If Jimmy says he installed the wiki software, then I'm sure he did."
  • 2."Jimmy, if you're reading this: do you agree that I had the idea that caused Wikipedia to come into being? Also, do you agree that I played a key role in spearheading the project, formulating and enforcing policy, and so forth? If you agree on those two things, then what is our alleged controversy about?"
  • I agree that Larry proposing a wiki was causally relevant in the start of Wikipedia. I had been complaining for a very long time about the top-down approach he took at Nupedia, and the wiki way much more closely matched my original concept.
  • And I agree that, along with at least a dozen other equally important people (for example The Cunctator, whom Larry wanted to ban as a troll), Larry played a key role in spearheading the project, formulating and enforcing policy, and so forth.
  • 3. "Jimmy must have meant (you can ask him) is that Nupedia's editors and peer reviewers wouldn't go for a wiki feature. He himself was always behind it, as far as I recall."
  • Yes. It has been strangely reported that Wikipedia was set up against my objections. Larry and I can both agree that that's a complete fiction.
  • A separate point of some potential relevance:
  • To my knowledge, Larry was never called co-founder during his tenure at Wikipedia, and the term only started to be used after he left Wikipedia and began to refer to himself in that way. Maybe I'm wrong about that; I would like to see the evidence. It would be interesting to do research in the archives of Wikipedia itself to try to find the first such reference.-
• 01:08, 24 February 2006 A separate point of some potential relevance:
  • To my knowledge, Larry was never called co-founder during his tenure at Wikipedia, and the term only started to be used after he left Wikipedia and began to refer to himself in that way. Maybe I'm wrong about that; I would like to see the evidence. It would be interesting to do research in the archives of Wikipedia itself to try to find the first such reference.
  • The current version of the article suggests that I was happy with Larry being called the co-founder for a long time, and then suddenly tried to grab credit for myself. This is preposterous. I have never thought of Larry as the co-founder, and I don't think it's a very plausible claim. I have always called myself the founder. And I always will, regardless of whether Wikipedia gets it right or not.
  • Larry and a lot of very good people deserve credit for a lot of amazing work. But as Larry himself graciously concedes, "to be clear, the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine." To me that settles it, to him it doesn't. History will decide.

May 2006

• 21:32, 26 May 2006 The ususal dreadful mistake. I made the usual dreadful mistake of reading the bio about me. :(
  • 1. "Although Objectivism holds that selfishness is good and altruism is evil, Wales claims that his Wikipedia activities do not serve a selfish end but are for the good of the world ("I am doing this for the child in Africa")." Do we have a source for me claming that my "Wikipedia activities do not serve a selfish end"? No, we do not. That's an interpretation of what it means when I say "I am doing this for the child in Africa"! (For what is it worth, I think it is in my rational self interest to care about what happens to kids in Africa, and far from being destructive of my self-interest, it is beneficial to my self-interest.
  • 2. My alleged date of birth is sourced to a website which clearly just copied the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia article about me. Circular. :)
  • 3. "To this end, he travels both to conferences and Wikimedia functions (like "Wikimeets" and Wikimania) on the Foundation's travel budget ($25,000 in 2005 [10])" - this makes it sound like I spend $25,000 per year of the foundation's money on travel. Totally untrue.
  • 4. "The article suggests that Wales attempted to escape the social stigma of having within Bomis "a section with adult photos called 'Bomis Babes.'"" - the article in question says nothing about social stigma.
  • 5. "He was even once described as "Ayn Rand-obsessed".[22] " - by anyone notable, or a blog?
  • 6. The link to Slashdot's publication of Larry's memoir incorrectly attributes the work to Timothy Lord. Timothy Lord is the slashdot editor who posted it. :)
  • 7. "though he has acknowledged that there was no causal connection between this suggestion and the creation of Wikipedia." - no, that isn't what I said. There is a big difference between acknowledging that Larry's mention of wikis to me "actually and directly" led to me installing the first wiki software, and "acknowledging" that there was no causal connection at all between Jeremy's suggestion. Jeremy suggested it first, then my daughter wa born and I was busy with that, and when I got back Larry suggested it, and I set up the wiki. There is more to the story than that, but I am just making light editorial comments today, and have no desire to see this edit linked to as even more original research in the article.

July 2006

• 16:25, 11 July 2006 Page should be reverted to version before anon edits
  • The extensive recent anon editing to this page have made it significantly worse than normal, and should be, in my opinion, reverted or anyhow significantly edited. I note the following factual errors, some of which are based on original research:
  • I am commenting today on this version. I will not bother commenting on some of the really bad writing, such as "modern computer labs and other technology equipment".
  • I have never been a foreign currency speculator.
  • My date of birth is not August 8, 1966.
  • My father is not retired.
  • "Within two years (1994 to 1996) had earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives." - We state as fact something that even Wired Magazine does not state as fact (because, as written, it is not true).
  • "he has since then declined to comment about the matter" is false.
  • "He is a vocal supporter of David Kelley" is false.
• 16:27, 11 July 2006 I do not have millions of dollars. I do not even have one million dollars
• 14:28, 14 July 2006 More complaints
  • Atlantis was never a moderated mailing list, and I was never the moderator of it. This was a mailing list which was hosted as a courtesy to a friend for a few years, and it was owned and operated by him. If you follow the link to the archive.org page (WP:NOR, not that this rule seems to apply to my article for some unexplained reason!) you will find my name listed as "run by"... this only means that I was the administrator of the mailing list in the technical sense at that time. Not moderator. (I frankly think that the entire mention of both this mailing list and the other one are absurd original research unless and until they are mentioned in a publication!)
  • It is quite frankly absurd to quote the talk page of the article in the article. WP:NOR. If it is not published in a mainstream publication, it does not belong in Wikipedia. Period.
  • 3 days ago, my father was not retired. Today, he is still not retired.
  • Again, the "earned enough to support himself" is contested, and should be written as "According to Wired Magazine" if it is to be included at all.
  • Claiming that "the Wikipedia community" considered Larry to be co-founder wildly oversteps the cite, which indicates that perhaps some people thought so.
  • Wired Magazine and Wired News are entirely separate entities. See the Roger Cadenhead reference.
• 20:27, 14 July 2006

August 2006

• 18:11, 9 August 2006
• 21:35, 19 August 2006

See also

• Jimmy Wales
• Advertising
• Origin of the wiki

Links

• Wikipediocracy discussion