Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 8, 1966) is an American and British internet entrepreneur and former financial trader. He is best known for co-founding Wikipedia, a nonprofit free encyclopedia, and Fandom (formerly Wikia), a for-profit wiki hosting service. He has also worked on Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and Trust Café (formerly WT Social).

Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Wales attended Randolph School and earned finance degrees from Auburn University and the University of Alabama. He worked as a financial options trader in Chicago during the 1990s before shifting his focus to the internet economy. While in graduate school, he was teaching at two universities, but left before completing a PhD to work in finance, later becoming chief research officer at Chicago Options Associates.

In 1996, Wales co-founded Bomis, which funded the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003). On January 15, 2001, with Larry Sanger and others, he launched Wikipedia, which grew rapidly. Wales became its promoter and public face, though he has at times disputed Sanger's role, claiming sole founder status.

Wales has served on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees since its creation, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. He gives annual "State of the Wiki" addresses at Wikimania. For his role in creating Wikipedia, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006.

Early life and education Jimmy Donal Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on August 8, 1966.

Originally, Bomis planned to make Wikipedia profitable. Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative. Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.

Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project.

In February 2006, Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe as calling Sanger's statements "preposterous", and in April 2009 Wales called the founder debate "silly". In November 2025, Wales appeared on the podcast Jung & Naiv for an interview with the German journalist Tilo Jung. Wales stood up and left after less than a minute, calling Jung's questions about his founder status "stupid".

In late 2005, Wales edited his biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia. He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years. Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling The New York Times in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal."

His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid.

Wales' association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes.

Wikia and later pursuits

In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company Wikia.

On November 4, 2011, Wales delivered an hour-long address at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three. His speech, which was entitled "The Future of the Internet", was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days later, on November 24, Wales appeared on the British topical debate television program Question Time.

In May 2012, it was reported that Wales was advising the UK government on how to make taxpayer-funded academic research available on the internet at no cost. His role reportedly involved working as "an unpaid advisor on crowdsourcing and opening up policymaking", and advising the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the UK research councils on distributing research. On March 21, 2014, Wales spoke on a panel at a Clinton Global Initiative University conference held at Arizona State University, along with John McCain, Saudi Arabian women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif and Harvard University student Shree Bose. The topic of discussion was "the age of participation" and the ability of an increasingly large number of citizens to "express their own opinions, pursue their own educations, and launch their own enterprises." Wales exhorted young people to use social media to try to bring about societal change, and compared government suppression of the Internet to a human rights violation.

On May 26, 2014, Google appointed Wales to serve on a seven-member committee on privacy in response to Google v. Gonzalez, which led to Google's being inundated with requests to remove websites from their search results. Wales said he wanted the committee to be viewed as "a blue-ribbon panel" by lawmakers and for the committee to advise the lawmakers as well as Google.

In 2017, Wales announced that he was launching an online publication called WikiTribune, to fight fake news through a combination of professional journalists and volunteer contributors. Wales described it as "news by the people and for the people", and that it will be the "first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop, and at all times backed by a community checking and rechecking all facts". In October 2019, Wales launched an ad-free social network, WT Social.

The Jimmy Wales Foundation for Freedom of Expression is a UK-based charity established by Wales to fight against human rights violations in the field of freedom of expression. Wales founded the charity after receiving a prize from the leader of Dubai, which he felt he could not accept given the strict censorship laws there, but claims he was not allowed to give back.

Political views

Personal philosophy

Wales has previously referred to himself as an Objectivist,

An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason. Dan Hodges in The Daily Telegraph has described Wales as a "Labour sympathizer". In 2015, Wales offered to help Ed Miliband with the Labour Party's social media strategy, but Miliband declined the offer. In 2016, Wales and eleven other business leaders signed an open letter to American voters urging them not to vote for Donald Trump in that year's presidential election. In May 2017, Wales said on Quora that he is a centrist and a gradualist, and believes "that slow step-by-step change is better and more sustainable and allows us to test new things with a minimum of difficult disruption in society." In May 2022, Wales said that he did not identify with any particular political label. In May 2024, in the run-up to the 2024 United Kingdom general election, he was a joint signatory of a public letter of support for the UK Labour Party.

Development and management of Wikipedia

Wales has cited Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek's essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate, In early June 2014, the TechCrunch media outlet interviewed Wales on the subject, as he had been invited by Google to join an advisory committee that the corporation had formed as an addition to the formal process that the ECJ requested from Google to manage such requests.

The May 2014 ECJ ruling required swift action from Google to implement a process that allowed people to directly contact the corporation about the removal of information that they believe is outdated or irrelevant. Google's Larry Page stated that 30 percent of requests received by Google since the ruling was made were categorized as "other". Wales explained in email responses that he was contacted by Google on May 28, 2014, and "The remit of the committee is to hold public hearings and issue recommendations—not just to Google but to legislators and the public." That year, he was awarded one of the Dan David Prizes, an international award of $1million given yearly at Tel Aviv University. 10 percent of the prize goes to doctoral students. Wales was chosen for spearheading what the prize committee called the "information revolution".

In 2018, the pro-Palestinian publication Mondoweiss ran an article by Philip Weiss describing Wales as appearing to side with Israel due to a social media post condemning British politician Jeremy Corbyn for being silent about Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, missing an opportunity to immunize himself against charges of antisemitism. Wales responded to Mondoweiss saying the article was "false and deeply offensive to me" and demanded that the article be retracted, saying that he did not support the Israeli attacks. He further went on to call Hamas a "terrorist organization".

In November 2025, Wales criticized the Wikipedia article on the Gaza genocide via its talk page. He argued that the article's assertion that Israel is committing genocide violated Wikipedia's policy to maintain a neutral point of view, stating that the article "is a particularly egregious example" of not maintaining neutrality. His criticism of the Gaza genocide page was countered by other Wikipedia editors, who argued that he was dismissing assessments by organizations they regarded as impartial.

2025 culture wars In October 2025, Wales gave an interview to The New York Times on the "culture wars", or the "speech wars", a series of attempts by Republican congressmen and the Trump White House to investigate and scrutinize activities and suspected "organizational bias" on Wikipedia.

In his interview he discussed several issues as they relate to Wikipedia saying: "Wikipedia isn't as good as I want it to be. And that's part of why people do have a certain amount of trust for us, because we try to be really transparent" and "we're designing everything for the long haul, and the only way we can last that long is not by pandering to this raging mob of the moment but by maintaining our values, maintaining our trustworthiness. We're just going to do our thing, and we’re going to do it as well as we can." In 2010, Wales criticized whistle-blower website WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents "could be enough to get someone killed"; furthermore, he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki": "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing process".

On December 11, 2007, Wales testified before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee entitled "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration and Access".

In 2012, the Home Secretary of the UK was petitioned by Wales regarding his opposition to the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer to the US. After an agreement was reached to avoid the extradition, Wales commented, "This is very exciting news, and I'm pleased to hear it ... What needs to happen next is a serious reconsideration of the U.K. extradition treaty that would allow this sort of nonsense in the first place."

In August 2013, Wales criticized UK Prime Minister David Cameron's plan for an Internet porn filter, saying that the idea was "ridiculous". In November 2013, Wales also commented on the Snowden affair, describing Edward Snowden as "a hero" whom history would judge "very favorably"; additionally, Wales said the US public "would have never approved [the] sweeping surveillance program [publicized by Snowden]", had they been informed or asked about it.

During the Gamergate controversy in 2014, in response to an email from a computer science student claiming that Wikipedia has a "complete lack of any sort of attempt at neutrality regarding Gamergate", Wales allegedly wrote: "It is very difficult for me to buy into the notion that gamergate is 'really about ethics in journalism' when every single experience I have personally had with it involved pro-gg people insulting, threatening, doxxing, etc." and that the movement "has been permanently tarnished and highjacked [sic] by a handful of people who are not what you would hope." Wales defended his comments in response to backlash from supporters of Gamergate, saying that "it isn't about what I believe. Gg is famous for harassment. Stop and think about why."

In November 2019, Wales accused Twitter of giving preferential treatment to high-profile figures such as Trump and Elon Musk for not banning or blocking them for their controversial statements. In May 2020, Wales criticized Trump for threatening to regulate social media companies.

In September 2021, Wales said that Facebook and Twitter should combat misinformation and abuse on their platforms by deploying volunteer moderators to monitor controversial posts. In October 2021, Wales said that "Protecting strong encryption is essential for protecting the human rights of millions of people around the world."

In May 2022, in response to Elon Musk's proposed acquisition of Twitter, Wales said that "I think he's got some good and bad ideas, based on his public statements", adding that "On the other hand, Twitter in five years' time could be much better than it is today, or Twitter could be dead in five years' time, depending on the decisions he makes." During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wales stated on Wikipedia that the consensus in the mainstream media surrounding the lab leak theory seemed to have shifted from "this is highly unlikely, and only conspiracy theorists are pushing this narrative" to "this is one of the plausible hypotheses."

Personal life

Wales has been married three times. At the age of 20, he married Pamela Green, a co-worker at a grocery store in Alabama. and had a daughter before separating in 2008. Garvey is Tony Blair's former diary secretary; the couple met in Davos, Switzerland. Wales has two daughters with Garvey in addition to his daughter with Rohan. Wales is irreligious. In an interview with Big Think, he said his philosophy is firmly rooted in reason, and that he is a complete non-believer. He is a passionate cook.

Wales has lived in London since 2012, and became a British citizen in 2019. In 2021, on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, he revealed that he secretly lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for one month after reading Ferriss's book The 4-Hour Workweek.

Wales's book The Seven Rules of Trust was published in October 2025 by Penguin Random House. It was described by the publisher as a "sweeping reflection on the global crisis of credibility and knowledge" with the book examining the "rules of trust" that enabled the growth and success of Wikipedia.

Publications

Honours

Awards 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award, 2013 UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal 2013: Induction into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013. 2014: Tech4Good Awards "Special Award" 2014: Mohammed bin Rashid Knowledge Award 2015: Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service 2015: The Dan David Prize 2017: The President's Medal of the British Academy

Honorary degrees Honorary degrees from Knox College, and Russia's MIREA University. 2014: Doctorate Honoris Causa by the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the (USI Lugano, Switzerland) 2014: Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland 2015: Maastricht University awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa to Wales 2016: Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Université Catholique de Louvain