Jimmy Donal Wales born August 7, , also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo , is an American-British [3] Internet entrepreneur , webmaster , and former financial trader. Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama , where he attended Randolph School , a university-preparatory school. In , Wales and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal primarily known for featuring adult content. Bomis provided the initial funding for the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia β On January 15, , with Larry Sanger and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free open-content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity.
As its public profile grew, Wales became its promoter and spokesman. Though he is historically credited as co-founder, he has disputed this, declaring himself the sole founder. Wales serves on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the charity that he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat.
For his role in creating Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia, Time named him one of " The Most Influential People in the World " in Wales was born in Huntsville , Alabama , shortly before midnight on August 7, ; however, his birth certificate lists his date of birth as August 8.
As a child, Wales enjoyed reading. As he grew up and learned to read, it became an object of reverence, but Wales soon discovered that the World Book had shortcomings: No matter how much was in it, there were many more things that were not. World Book sent out stickers for owners to paste on the pages in order to update the encyclopedia, and Wales was careful to put the stickers to work, stating, "I joke that I started as a kid revising the encyclopedia by stickering the one my mother bought.
During an interview in with Brian Lamb , Wales described his childhood private school as a " Montessori -influenced philosophy of education", where he "spent lots of hours poring over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias ". As an adult, Wales was sharply critical of the government's treatment of the school, citing the "constant interference and bureaucracy and very sort of snobby inspectors from the state" as a formative influence on his political philosophy.
