40 Fun Facts About Jimmy Wales

Which programmers' test phrase does Jimmy Wales say he typed as the very first words on Wikipedia?

Hello world is the line coders traditionally print to confirm that new software works, and Wales told a 2016 SXSW audience he used it to try out the brand-new site.

Which philosophy student hired by Jimmy Wales in 2000 went on to become Wikipedia's disputed co-founder?

Larry Sanger proposed building the encyclopedia on wiki software after a friend showed him the idea, yet Wales has long insisted that he alone founded the site.

As a boy, Jimmy Wales kept the family encyclopedia up to date using what, mailed out by its publisher?

Stickers came from World Book for owners to paste over outdated entries, and Wales jokes that he began revising the encyclopedia as a kid.

Which web company, home to Wookieepedia, did Jimmy Wales co-found in 2004 under the name Wikicities?

Fandom was first imagined as a set of community sites for people living in the same city, hence the old name, before followers of films, TV and games took it over.

Which Wikipedia article did Jimmy Wales apologize for editing in 2005, a practice the site discourages?

His own biography lost its references to a co-founder and gained a gentler account of his earlier adult-content business, changes a writer spotted in the public logs.

In which US city did Jimmy Wales trade futures and options during the 1990s before turning to the web?

Chicago is where he speculated on interest rates and foreign currencies, building up the capital that later let him quit and start a web company.

Jimmy Wales rejects the label benevolent dictator; which title does he use for his Wikipedia role instead?

Constitutional monarch is his choice because, like the Queen, the title brings no actual power: he says the job mostly involves a lot of waving.

Jimmy Wales met his future Wikipedia co-founder on a mailing list he ran about which novelist's philosophy?

Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which prizes reason and individualism, won Wales over after he read The Fountainhead as an undergraduate.

Jimmy Wales jokes that which decision about Wikipedia was both the dumbest and the smartest thing he ever did?

Giving it away to a non-profit foundation cost him a site he valued at $3 billion, yet he believes the donation is what made its success possible.

Jimmy Wales was born in which Alabama city, nicknamed the Rocket City for its ties to the space program?

Huntsville is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and growing up amid the optimism of the space race fed his love of technology.

By which nickname, also part of his Wikipedia username, is Jimmy Wales known to the site's editors?

Jimbo appears in his account name, Jimbo Wales, the only account that belongs to Wikipedia's special founder group.

Kate Garvey, who married Jimmy Wales in 2012, spent years as diary secretary to which British prime minister?

Tony Blair's long-serving aide wed Wales before about 200 guests, and her maid of honor's toast teased her for picking the one famous web entrepreneur who never became a billionaire.

Which European capital did Jimmy Wales make his home in the 2010s, later taking the country's citizenship?

London became the Alabama native's home, and he added British citizenship to his American passport in 2019.

Jimmy Wales's company launched Wikia Search in 2008 as an open-source challenger to which web giant?

Google kept its ranking code secret, so Wales promised a search engine whose workings were public, but hardly anyone used it and it closed in 2009.

Jimmy Wales warned in 2010 that which site's release of Afghan war documents could get someone killed?

WikiLeaks also annoyed him by borrowing the word wiki, since the site has none of the collaborative editing the term is meant to describe.

Which whistleblower did Jimmy Wales call a hero in 2013, predicting that history would judge him very favorably?

Edward Snowden had exposed mass surveillance that, Wales argued, the American public would never have approved had anyone asked them first.

Which country's mid-2000s request to censor politically sensitive Wikipedia articles did Jimmy Wales refuse?

China had already won concessions from Yahoo and Microsoft, but Wales said he would rather see such companies adopt Wikipedia's stance on free information.

In Wikipedia's early days, what did a worried Jimmy Wales do at night because anyone could change the site?

He woke up to check it because he feared an open encyclopedia might fill with complete rubbish, but a self-policing band of volunteers soon formed.

Jimmy Wales earned two degrees in which subject before abandoning a doctorate out of boredom?

Finance led him to a trading floor rather than a lecture hall: he taught at two universities but never wrote the dissertation a PhD required.

Which dot-com pioneer's 1995 stock market debut inspired Jimmy Wales to quit trading for the web?

Netscape made the leading early web browser, and a year after its shares soared Wales co-founded his own site, a search portal aimed at men.

Which expert-written encyclopedia did Jimmy Wales launch in 2000, only for its slow peer review to stall it?

Nupedia put every article through a seven-step approval process and finished only about two dozen before it shut in 2003, long after its wiki side project had outgrown it.

Which men's web portal, co-founded by Jimmy Wales in 1996, paid for Wikipedia during its first years?

Bomis took its name from the founders' joke that they were bitter old men in suits, and its money covered the young encyclopedia's bills until a foundation took over.

In which Florida city did Jimmy Wales set up the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation in 2003?

St. Petersburg was where his dot-com firm had moved its offices, and the foundation stayed in Florida until it relocated to San Francisco a few years later.

At which university in his home state did Jimmy Wales start his bachelor's degree aged only sixteen?

Auburn awarded him his degree in 1986, and he moved on to postgraduate study at the state's other big campus in Tuscaloosa.

Which online games did Jimmy Wales play obsessively as a student, showing him how strangers could collaborate?

Multi-user dungeons, or MUDs, let many players share one virtual realm, and Wales says they showed him what large groups could build together online.

Which Austrian economist's essay on scattered knowledge shaped how Jimmy Wales manages Wikipedia?

Friedrich Hayek argued that each person knows only a sliver of what is known collectively, so decisions are best left to those with local knowledge.

In which South American city did Jimmy Wales secretly live for a month after reading The 4-Hour Workweek?

Buenos Aires was his hideaway, a detail he revealed in 2021 to the book's author, Tim Ferriss, on Ferriss's own podcast.

Jimmy Wales's 2025 book sets out seven rules of which quality, the one he credits for Wikipedia's success?

Trust is what his publisher says the planet is running short of, and the book draws its rules from how strangers learned to rely on one another on Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales started a free-speech foundation after receiving a prize from the ruler of which Gulf emirate?

Dubai's strict censorship laws made him feel he could not keep the award, and he says he was not allowed to hand it back, so he set out to defend free expression instead.

Which news site did Jimmy Wales launch in 2017, pairing paid journalists with volunteers to fight fake news?

WikiTribune was reportedly prompted by a White House aide's talk of alternative facts, but the site never took off and was folded into a social platform in 2019.

Jimmy Wales, who taught one daughter to code, named another after which 19th-century British mathematician?

Ada Lovelace wrote what is believed to be the first algorithm for a machine, and Wales has said he would love his daughters to work in technology.

Which auction house offered Jimmy Wales's Strawberry iMac and an NFT of his first Wikipedia edit in 2021?

Christie's got $750,000 for the NFT, whose buyer can alter a recreated 2001 home page that resets itself on a timer.

Which rock star invited Jimmy Wales to a 2007 meeting at Davos and introduced him to world leaders?

Bono's invitation is said to mark his arrival on the international stage, and it was at the same Swiss resort that Wales met his third wife.

Which magazine put Jimmy Wales on its 2006 list of the 100 most influential people on the planet?

Time's nod came only five years after launch, when Wikipedia had already become one of the most popular sites on the web.

Jimmy Wales became co-chair of The People's Operator in 2014; what kind of ethical business was it?

Mobile phone network TPO let customers steer part of their bills to good causes, but its shares lost nearly 90 percent and it entered administration in 2019.

Which Labour leader turned down Jimmy Wales's 2015 offer to help with the party's social media strategy?

Ed Miliband said no, though Wales stayed friendly to the party: in 2024 he co-signed a public letter backing it before the British general election.

Which early home computer did Jimmy Wales's family own when few households in their Alabama city had one?

Tandy TRS-80 machines were sold through Radio Shack stores, and Wales remembers his mother as a devoted lover of gadgets.

Jimmy Wales was too intimidated to submit his draft encyclopedia article about which Nobel-winning economist?

Robert Merton's field was the pricing of options, which Wales knew from the trading floor, yet facing professors as reviewers convinced him expert-only writing would fail.

Who wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the open-source essay that sold Jimmy Wales on mass collaboration?

Eric S. Raymond contrasted software built by a closed team with code improved in the open by a crowd, the model Wales would borrow for an encyclopedia.

Jimmy Wales chaired the committee for which Harvard law professor's short-lived 2016 presidential campaign?

Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons, sought the Democratic nomination but withdrew before the primaries after being shut out of the televised debates.