page_title: Jimmy Wales
section_title: Development and management of Wikipedia
hierarchical_section_title: Jimmy Wales / Political and economic views / Development and management of Wikipedia
caption_attribution_description: বাংলা: ২৬ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ তারিখে বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ার ১০ম বার্ষিকী উদযাপন অনুষ্ঠানে জিমি ওয়েলস, হোটেল রেডিসন ব্লু ওয়াটার গার্ডেন, ঢাকা, বাংলাদেশ English: Jimbo at Bengali Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebration gala event, Dhaka on 26th February, 2015 at Hotel Radisson Blu Water garden, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
context_page_description: Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American-British Internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the for-profit web hosting company Wikia.
  Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, where he attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in finance from Auburn University and the University of Alabama respectively. In graduate school, Wales taught at two universities; however, he departed before completing a PhD to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of a Chicago futures and options firm.
  In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. Bomis provided the initial funding for the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia, Nupedia, and its successor, Wikipedia. On January 15, 2001, with Larry Sanger and others, Wales launched Wikipedia—a free, open-content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity. As Wikipedia's public profile grew, he became its promoter and spokesman. Though he is historically credited as co-founder, he has disputed this, declaring himself the sole founder.
context_section_description: Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek's essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate, as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project". Hayek argued that information is decentralized—that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively—and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge, rather than by a central authority. Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement, which advocated for the collective development and free distribution of software. He was particularly moved by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay which was later adapted into a book of the same name, by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, as it "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration."
  From his background in finance, and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity. He identifies this fascination as a significant basis for his developmental work on the Wikipedia project. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating that the idea of "participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".
caption: Wales at the tenth anniversary celebration of the Bengali Wikipedia
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