When I opened Wikipedia, it had three articles, yet it was called an encyclopedia. Jimmy Wales More Quotes by Jimmy Wales More Quotes From Jimmy Wales We have to come together, worldwide, and "think". We have a tool - the internet - to let us do that. Let's use it wisely. Jimmy Wales tools together thinking I still believe there is a need to open up search and it will come eventually. It is very important to challenge the current models. Jimmy Wales important challenges believe We've seen how grassroots journalism by blogs has had an impact at various points politically, as ordinary people have amplified stories that were being ignored by the traditional press. Jimmy Wales being-ignored impact people I have no regular schedule. I get up whenever I can. Jimmy Wales get-up schedules i-can Massive numbers of people are going to come online from cultures we don't normally interact with. Jimmy Wales numbers culture people Wikipedia is the #5 site on the Web and serves 450 million different people every month - with billions of page views. Jimmy Wales wikipedia views people Most people are good. They may not be saints, but they are good. Jimmy Wales good-people saint people Our growth rate continues to be staggering. Jimmy Wales staggering rate growth The goal is to give people a free encyclopedia to every person in the world, in their own language. Not just in a 'free beer' kind of way, but also in the free speech kind of way. Jimmy Wales beer giving people Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing. Jimmy Wales writing people thinking Given enough time humans will screw up Wikipedia just as they have screwed up everything else, but so far it's not too bad. Jimmy Wales wikipedia enough-time screw-ups I don't really agree that most academics frown when they hear Wikipedia. Most academics I find quite passionate about the concept of Wikipedia and like it quite a bit. The number of academics who really really don't like Wikipedia is really quite small and we find that they get reported on in the media far out of proportion to the amount they actually exist. Jimmy Wales wikipedia media numbers I have my team focused on the front end, working on the user experience, and making sure we have all the wiki-like tools people need to work on the site. We're just cranking away. Jimmy Wales team people needs Freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education. Jimmy Wales next textbooks bigs I'm on it pretty much all the time. I edit Wikipedia every day, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm reading the news. During one of the US elections, I actually went through my computer and I blocked myself from looking at the major newspaper sites and Google News because I wasn't getting any work done. Jimmy Wales wikipedia google reading The more time I spent on the site the more I came to think of Wales as some kind of Queen Ant, letting the vast colony go about its work, at the centre of a system where the knowledge of the community is infinitely larger than the sum of experience of all its individuals. Jimmy Wales community queens thinking Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks. Jimmy Wales politics fighting people The core community is passionate about quality and getting it right. If you want to read some good criticisms of Wikipedia, probably the best place to go is to the Wikipedia article called 'criticisms of Wikipedia'... It was either the dumbest thing or the smartest thing I ever did. The dumbest thing for the obvious reasons, but the smartest thing because I don't think it could have had nearly as much impact as it has. One of the key things that inspired people to put a lot into it (was the charity aspect). Jimmy Wales wikipedia abuse community I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think. Jimmy Wales drinking war mean Myspace hurts my eyes. Jimmy Wales eye hurt
