Open Directory Project

URL	dmoz.org
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Web directory
Registration	Optional
Content license	Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
Owner	Netscape (AOL)
Created by	Netscape
Launched	June 5, 1998
Alexa rank	743 (June 2012[update])[1]

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.

ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic are grouped into categories which can then include smaller categories.

Project information[link]

ODP was founded in the United States as Gnuhoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel in 1998 while they were both working as engineers for Sun Microsystems. Chris Tolles, who worked at Sun Microsystems as the head of marketing for network security products, also signed on in 1998 as a co-founder of Gnuhoo along with co-founders Bryn Dole and Jeremy Wenokur. Skrenta had developed TASS, an ancestor of tin, the popular threaded Usenet newsreader for Unix systems. Coincidentally, the original category structure of the Gnuhoo directory was based loosely on the structure of Usenet newsgroups then in existence.

The Gnuhoo directory went live on June 5, 1998. After a Slashdot article suggested that Gnuhoo had nothing in common with the spirit of free software,^[2] for which the GNU project was known, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation objected to the use of Gnu. So Gnuhoo was changed to NewHoo. Yahoo! then objected to the use of "Hoo" in the name, prompting them to switch the name again. ZURL was the likely choice.^[3] However, before the switch to ZURL, NewHoo was acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation in October 1998 and became the Open Directory Project. Netscape released the ODP data under the Open Directory License. Netscape was acquired by AOL shortly thereafter and ODP was one of the assets included in the acquisition. AOL later merged with Time-Warner.

ODP size by date.

By the time Netscape assumed stewardship, the Open Directory Project had about 100,000 URLs indexed with contributions from about 4500 editors. On October 5, 1999, the number of URLs indexed by ODP reached one million. According to an unofficial estimate, the URLs in the Open Directory numbered 1.6 million in April 2000, surpassing those in the Yahoo! Directory.^[4] ODP achieved the milestones of indexing two million URLs on August 14, 2000, three million listings on November 18, 2001 and four million on December 3, 2003.

From January 2006 the Open Directory published online reports to inform the public about the development of the project. The first report covered the year 2005. Monthly reports were issued subsequently until September 2006.^[5] These reports gave greater insight into the functioning of the directory than the simplified statistics given on the front page of the directory. The number of listings and categories cited on the front page include "Test" and "Bookmarks" categories but these are not included in the RDF dump offered to users. The total number of editors who have contributed to the directory as of March 31, 2007 was 75,151.^[6] There were about 7330 active editors during August 2006.^[5]

System failure and editing outage, October to December 2006[link]

On October 20, 2006, the ODP's main server suffered a catastrophic failure of the system^[7] that prevented editors from working on the directory until December 18, 2006. During that period, an older build of the directory was visible to the public. On January 13, 2007, the Site Suggestion and Update Listings forms were again made available.^[8] On January 26, 2007, weekly publication of RDF dumps resumed. To avoid future outages, the system now resides on a redundant configuration of two Intel-based servers.^[9]

Competing and spinoff projects[link]

As the ODP became more widely known, two other major web directories edited by volunteers and sponsored by Go.com and Zeal emerged, both now defunct. These directories did not license their content for open content distribution.^[10][11]

The concept of using a large-scale community of editors to compile online content has been successfully applied to other types of projects. ODP's editing model directly inspired three other open content volunteer projects: an open content restaurant directory known as ChefMoz,^[12] an open content music directory known as MusicMoz,^[13] and an encyclopedia known as Open Site.^[14]

Content[link]

Gnuhoo borrowed the basic outline for its initial ontology from Usenet. In 1998, Rich Skrenta said, "I took a long list of groups and hand-edited them into a hierarchy."^[15] For example, the topic covered by the comp.ai.alife newsgroup was represented by the category Computers/AI/Artificial_Life. The original divisions were for Adult, Arts, Business, Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Shopping, Society and Sports. While these fifteen top-level categories have remained intact, the ontology of second- and lower-level categories has undergone a gradual evolution; significant changes are initiated by discussion among editors and then implemented when consensus has been reached.

In July 1998, the directory became multilingual with the addition of the World top-level category. The remainder of the directory lists only English language sites. By May 2005, seventy-five languages were represented. The growth rate of the non-English components of the directory has been greater than the English component since 2002. While the English component of the directory held almost 75% of the sites in 2003, the World level grew to over 1.5 million sites as of May 2005, forming roughly one-third of the directory. The ontology in non-English categories generally mirrors that of the English directory, although exceptions which reflect language differences are quite common.

Several of the top-level categories have unique characteristics. The Adult category is not present on the directory homepage but it is fully available in the RDF dump that ODP provides. While the bulk of the directory is categorized primarily by topic, the Regional category is categorized primarily by region. This has led many to view ODP as two parallel directories: Regional and Topical.

On November 14, 2000, a special directory within the Open Directory was created for people under 18 years of age.^[16] Key factors distinguishing this "Kids and Teens" area from the main directory are:

• stricter guidelines which limit the listing of sites to those which are targeted or "appropriate" for people under 18 years of age;^[17]
• category names as well as site descriptions use vocabulary which is "age appropriate";
• age tags on each listing distinguish content appropriate for kids (age 12 and under), teens (13 to 15 years old) and mature teens (16 to 18 years old);
• Kids and Teens content is available as a separate RDF dump;
• editing permissions are such that the community is parallel to that of the Open Directory.

By May 2005, this portion of the Open Directory included over 32,000 site listings.

Since early 2004, the whole site has been in UTF-8 encoding. Prior to this, the encoding used to be ISO 8859-1 for English language categories and a language-dependent character set for other languages. The RDF dumps have been encoded in UTF-8 since early 2000.

Maintenance[link]

Directory listings are maintained by editors. While some editors focus on the addition of new listings, others focus on maintaining the existing listings. This includes tasks such as the editing of individual listings to correct spelling and/or grammatical errors, as well as monitoring the status of linked sites. Still others go through site submissions to remove spam and duplicate submissions.

Robozilla is a Web crawler written to check the status of all sites listed in ODP. Periodically, Robozilla will flag sites which appear to have moved or disappeared and editors follow up to check the sites and take action. This process is critical for the directory in striving to achieve one of its founding goals: to reduce the link rot in web directories. Shortly after each run, the sites marked with errors are automatically moved to the unreviewed queue where editors may investigate them when time permits.

Due to the popularity of the Open Directory and its resulting impact on search engine rankings (See PageRank), domains with lapsed registration that are listed on ODP have attracted domain hijacking, an issue that has been addressed by regularly removing expired domains from the directory.

While corporate funding and staff for the ODP have diminished in recent years, volunteers have created editing tools such as linkcheckers to supplement Robozilla, category crawlers, spellcheckers, search tools that directly sift a recent RDF dump, bookmarklets to help automate some editing functions, mozilla based add-ons,^[18] and tools to help work through unreviewed queues.

License and requirements[link]

This section is outdated. Please update this section to reflect recent events or newly available information. Please see the talk page for more information. (August 2011)

ODP data is made available for open content distribution under the terms of the Open Directory License, which requires a specific ODP attribution table on every Web page that uses the data.

The Open Directory License also includes a requirement that users of the data continually check the ODP site for updates and discontinue use and distribution of the data or works derived from the data once an update occurs. This restriction prompted the Free Software Foundation to refer to the Open Directory License as a non-free documentation license, citing the right to redistribute a given version not being permanent and the requirement to check for changes to the license.^[19]

RDF dumps[link]

ODP data is made available through an RDF-like dump that is published on a dedicated download server, where an archive of previous versions is also available.^[20] New versions are usually generated weekly. An ODP editor has catalogued a number of bugs that are/were encountered when implementing the ODP RDF dump, including UTF-8 encoding errors (fixed since August 2004) and an RDF format that does not comply with the final RDF specification because ODP RDF generation was implemented before the RDF specification was finalized.^[21] So while today the so-called RDF dump is valid XML, it is not strictly RDF but an ODP-specific format and as such, software to process the ODP RDF dump needs to take account of this.

Content users[link]

ODP data powers the core directory services for many of the Web's largest search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, and Alexa. Google Directory used ODP information, until being shuttered in July 2011.^[22]

Other uses are also made of ODP data. For example, in the spring of 2004 Overture announced a search service for third parties combining Yahoo! Directory search results with ODP titles, descriptions and category metadata. The search engine Gigablast announced on May 12, 2005 its searchable copy of the Open Directory. The technology permits search of websites listed in specific categories, "in effect, instantly creating over 500,000 vertical search engines".^[23]

As of 8 September 2006 (2006 -09-08)^[update], the ODP listed 313 English-language Web sites that use ODP data as well as 238 sites in other languages.^[24] However, these figures do not reflect the full picture of use, as those sites that use ODP data without following the terms of the ODP license are not listed.

Policies and procedures[link]

There are restrictions imposed on who can become an ODP editor. The primary gatekeeping mechanism is an editor application process wherein editor candidates demonstrate their editing abilities, disclose affiliations that might pose a conflict of interest and otherwise give a sense of how the applicant would likely mesh with the ODP culture and mission.^[25] A majority of applications are rejected but reapplying is allowed and sometimes encouraged. The same standards apply to editors of all categories and subcategories.

ODP's editing model is a hierarchical one. Upon becoming editors, individuals will generally have editing permissions in only a small category. Once they have demonstrated basic editing skills in compliance with the Editing Guidelines, they are welcome to apply for additional editing privileges in either a broader category or in a category elsewhere in the directory. Mentorship relationships between editors are encouraged and internal forums provide a vehicle for new editors to ask questions.

ODP has its own internal forums, the contents of which are intended only for editors to communicate with each other primarily about editing topics. Access to the forums requires an editor account and editors are expected to keep the contents of these forums private.^[26]

Over time, senior editors may be granted additional privileges which reflect their editing experience and leadership within the editing community. The most straightforward are editall privileges which allow an editor to access all categories in the directory. Meta privileges additionally allow editors to perform tasks such as reviewing editor applications, setting category features and handling external and internal abuse reports. Cateditall privileges are similar to editall but only for a single directory category. Similarly, catmod privileges are similar to meta but only for a single directory category. Catmv privileges allow editors to make changes to directory ontology by moving or renaming categories. All of these privileges are granted by admins and staff, usually after discussion with meta editors.

In August 2004, a new level of privileges called admin was introduced. Administrator status was granted to a number of long serving metas by staff. Administrators have the ability to grant editall+ privileges to other editors and to approve new directory-wide policies, powers which had previously only been available to root (staff) editors.^[27] A full list of senior editors is available to the public,^[28] as is a listing of all current editors.^[29]

All ODP editors are expected to abide by ODP's Editing Guidelines. These guidelines describe editing basics: which types of sites may be listed and which may not; how site listings should be titled and described in a loosely consistent manner; conventions for the naming and building of categories; conflict of interest limitations on the editing of sites which the editor may own or otherwise be affiliated with; and a code of conduct within the community.^[30] Editors who are found to have violated these guidelines may be contacted by staff or senior editors, have their editing permissions cut back or lose their editing privileges entirely. ODP Guidelines are periodically revised after discussion in editor forums.

Site submissions[link]

One of the original motivations for forming Gnuhoo/Newhoo/ODP was the frustration that many people experienced in getting their sites listed on Yahoo! Directory. However Yahoo! has since implemented a paid service for timely consideration of site submissions. That lead has been followed by many other directories. Some accept no free submissions at all. By contrast the ODP has maintained its policy of free site submissions for all types of site—the only one of the major general directories to do so.

One result has been a gradual divergence between the ODP and other directories in the balance of content. The pay-for-inclusion model favours those able and willing to pay, so commercial sites tend to predominate in directories using it.^[31] Conversely, a directory manned by volunteers will reflect the aims and interests of those volunteers. The ODP lists a high proportion of informational and non-profit sites.

Another consequence of the free submission policy is that the ODP has enormous numbers of submissions still waiting for review. In large parts those consist of spam and incorrectly submitted sites.^[32] So the average processing time for a site submission has grown longer with each passing year. However the time taken cannot be predicted, since the variation is so great: a submission might be processed within hours or take several years.^[33] However, site suggestions are just one of many sources of new listings. Editors are under no obligation to check them for new listings and are actually encouraged to use other sources.^[33][34]

Controversy and criticism[link]

There have long been allegations that volunteer ODP editors give favorable treatment to their own websites while concomitantly thwarting the good faith efforts of their competition.^[35] Such allegations are fielded by ODP's staff and meta editors, who have the authority to take disciplinary action against volunteer editors who are suspected of engaging in abusive editing practices.^[36] In 2003, ODP introduced a new Public Abuse Report System that allows members of the general public to report and track allegations of abusive editor conduct using an online form.^[37] Uninhibited discussion of ODP's purported shortcomings has become more common on mainstream Webmaster discussion forums. Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category,^[38] as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by ODP founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings.^[39]

Early in the history of the ODP, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites.^[40] Links to individual CNN articles have been added until 2004 and have been entirely removed from the directory in January 2008^[41] due to being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain. Such experiments have not been repeated later.

Ownership and management[link]

Underlying some controversy surrounding ODP is its ownership and management. Some of the original GnuHoo volunteers felt that they had been deceived into joining a commercial enterprise.^[2] To varying degrees, those complaints have continued up until the present.

At ODP's inception, there was little thought given to the idea of how ODP should be managed and there were no official forums, guidelines or FAQs. In essence, ODP began as a free for all.^[42]

As time went on, the ODP Editor Forums became the de facto ODP parliament and when one of ODP's staff members would post an opinion in the forums, it would be considered an official ruling.^[26] Even so, ODP staff began to give trusted senior editors additional editing privileges, including the ability to approve new editor applications, which eventually led to a stratified hierarchy of duties and privileges among ODP editors, with ODP's paid staff having the final say regarding ODP's policies and procedures.^[27][43]

Robert Keating, a principal of Touchstone Consulting Group in Washington, D.C. since 2006, has worked as AOL's Program Manager for ODP since 2004. He started working for AOL in 1999 as Senior Editor for AOL Search, then as Managing Editor, AOL Search, ODP, and then as Media Ecosystem Manager, AOL Product Marketing.^[44][45]

Editor removal procedures[link]

ODP's editor removal procedures are overseen by ODP's staff and meta editors. According to ODP's official editorial guidelines, editors are removed for abusive editing practices or uncivil behaviour. Discussions that may result in disciplinary action against volunteer editors take place in a private forum which can only be accessed by ODP's staff and meta editors. Volunteer editors who are being discussed are not given notice that such proceedings are taking place.^[43] Some people find this arrangement distasteful, wanting instead a discussion modelled more like a trial held in the U.S. judicial system.^[46]

In the article Editor Removal Explained, ODP meta editor Arlarson states that "a great deal of confusion about the removal of editors from ODP results from false or misleading statements by former editors".^[47]

The ODP's confidentiality guidelines prohibit any current ODP editors in a position to know anything from discussing the reasons for specific editor removals.^[43] However, a generic list of reasons is for example given in the guidelines.^[48] In the past, this has led to removed ODP editors wondering why they cannot login at ODP to perform their editing work.^[49][50]

Allegations that editors are removed for criticizing policies[link]

David F. Prenatt, Jr. (former ODP editor netesq) and the former editor known by the alias The Cunctator claim to have been removed for disagreeing with staff about changes to the policies, with special regard to the ODP's copyright policies. According to their claims, staff used the excuse that their behaviour was uncivil to remove bothersome editors.^[46][51][52]

Blacklisting allegations[link]

Senior ODP editors have the ability to attach "warning" or "do not list" notes to individual domains but no editor has the unilateral ability to block certain sites from being listed. Sites with these notes might still be listed and at times notes are removed after some discussion.^[53]

Hierarchical structure[link]

Recently criticism of ODP's hierarchical structure emerged. Many believe hierarchical directories are too complicated. As the recent emergence of Web 2.0, folksonomies began to appear. These people thought folksonomies, networks and directed graph are more "natural" and easier to manage than hierarchies.^[54][55][56]

Software[link]

Search[link]

The ODPSearch software is a derivative version of Isearch which is open source, licensed under the Mozilla Public License.^[57]

Editor forums[link]

The ODP Editor Forums were originally run on software that was based on the proprietary Ultimate Bulletin Board system. In June 2003, they switched to the open source phpBB system. As of 2007, these forums are powered by a modified version of phpBB.

Bug tracking[link]

The bug tracking software used by the ODP is Bugzilla and the web server Apache. Squid web proxy server was also used but it was removed in August 2007 when the storage servers were reorganized. All these applications are open source.

Interface[link]

The ODP database/editing software is closed source (although Richard Skrenta of ODP did say in June 1998 that he was considering licensing it under the GNU General Public License). This has led to criticism from the aforementioned GNU project, many of whom also criticise the ODP content license.^[58]

As such, there have been some efforts to provide alternatives to ODP. These alternatives would allow communities of like-minded editors to set up and maintain their own open source/open content Web directories. However, no significant open source/open content alternative to ODP has emerged.

See also[link]

Internet portal

• List of web directories

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Open Directory Project

• The Open Directory Project
• Open Directory Project Blog
• Open Directory Project at the Open Directory Project

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Jimmy Wales
Wales in December 2008
Born	Jimmy Donal Wales (1966-08-07) August 7, 1966 (age 45) Huntsville, Alabama, United States
Residence	London, United Kingdom[1]
Other names	Jimbo
Alma mater	Auburn University University of Alabama Indiana University Bloomington
Occupation	Internet entrepreneur, formerly a Financial trader
Title	President of Wikia, Inc. (2004–present) Chairman of Wikimedia Foundation (June 2003 – October 2006) Chairman Emeritus, Wikimedia Foundation (October 2006–present)
Successor	Florence Devouard
Board member of	Wikimedia Foundation Creative Commons Socialtext Sunlight Foundation (advisory board) MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (advisory board) CiviliNation[2]
Awards	see below
Signature
Website
www.jimmywales.com

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales ( /ˈdoʊnəl ˈweɪlz/; born August 7, 1966^[3]) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company.^[4][5] Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, United States, where he attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance. While in graduate school, he taught at two universities, but left before completing a PhD in order 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 male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. The company would provide the initial funding for the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003) 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, and as Wikipedia’s public profile grew, he became the project’s promoter and spokesman. He is historically cited as a co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder.^[6][7] Wales serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Wikia, a for-profit wiki-hosting service. His role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world’s largest encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world’s most influential people.

Early life and education[link]

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on August 7, 1966.^[3][8] His father, Jimmy,^[9] worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning,^[10] a small private school in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education.^[10][11] As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity^[5] and, in what he credits to the influence of the Montessori method on the school’s philosophy of education, "spent lots of hours pouring [sic] over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias." There were only four other children in Wales’ grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students. 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.^[12]

After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,^[13] a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at sixteen.^[14] Wales said that the school was expensive for his family, but that "education was always a passion in my household... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."^[12] He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from Auburn University. Wales then entered the PhD finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a master's degree to enter the PhD finance program at Indiana University.^[11][12][14] He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a PhD, something he ascribed to boredom.^[11][12]

Career[link]

Chicago Options Associates and Bomis[link]

The staff of Wales’ internet company Bomis photographed in Summer 2000. Wales is third from the left in the back row, with his then-wife Christine.

In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago, Illinois.^[12][15][16] Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and he wrote computer codes during his leisure time. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects.^[14][17] Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, and having accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations",^[10] he decided to leave the realm of financial trading and became an Internet entrepreneur.^[14] In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis,^[10][18] a web portal featuring user-generated webrings and, for a time, erotic photographs.^[19] Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine;^[11][12][20] The Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful, however.^[10][11][21]

Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia[link]

Philosopher Larry Sanger, whom Wales hired as editor-in-chief of Nupedia.

Though Bomis had struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to pursue his greater passion, an online encyclopedia.^[11] While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of Objectivism in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger, a skeptic of the philosophy.^[5] The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends.^[5] Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it,^[17] Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University—to be its editor-in-chief, and in March 2000, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, was launched.^[11][12] The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics, and to sell advertising alongside the entries in order to make profit.^[5] The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.^[22]

The idea was to have thousands of volunteers writing articles for an online encyclopedia in all languages. Initially we found ourselves organizing the work in a very top-down, structured, academic, old-fashioned way. It was no fun for the volunteer writers because we had a lot of academic peer review committees who would criticize articles and give feedback. It was like handing in an essay at grad school, and basically intimidating to participate in.

—Jimmy Wales on the Nupedia project New Scientist, January 31, 2007^[23]

In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollects attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a paper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the subject matter. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.^[24]

In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki by extreme programming enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process.^[25] Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck.^[25] Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001.^[25] The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia’s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia’s information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia.^[26] Thus, the wiki project, dubbed "Wikipedia" by Sanger,^[6] went live at a separate domain five days after its creation.^[16][21]

Wikipedia[link]

While Sanger saw Wikipedia primarily as a tool to aid Nupedia development, Wales felt that Wikipedia might have the potential to become the truly collaborative, open effort of knowledge building he dreamed of.^[27][28][29] Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative.^[16][17] Wales feared that at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish".^[16] To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed.^[15][17] Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the free culture movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement.^[26] Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added.^[30][31] Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.^[11]

Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project.^[6][32] The broader idea he ascribes to Wales, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot that "the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on."^[33] Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002;^[34] Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1 of that year.^[35][36] In the early years, Wales had supplied the financial backing for the project,^{[clarification needed][32][37]} and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead.^[38]

Controversy[link]

Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia,^[7] and has publicly disputed Sanger’s designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002.^[39][40] In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia.^[41] Sanger assembled on his personal webpage an assortment of links that appear to confirm the status of Sanger and Wales as co-founders.^[6][42] For example, Sanger and Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and press releases as co-founders.^[6] Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe as calling Sanger’s claim "preposterous" in February 2006,^[43] and called "the whole debate silly" in an April 2009 interview.^[44]

In late 2005, Wales edited his own 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.^[45][46] Sanger commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out."^[20][47] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company’s products.^[16][20] Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content,^[20] he apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.^[20][47]

Role[link]

Wales delivering the keynote speech (“The State of the Wiki”) at Wikimania, the conference for Wikimedia projects, in Buenos Aires in 2009.

In a 2004 interview with Slashdot, Wales outlined his vision for Wikipedia: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we're doing."^[48] Although his formal designation is board member and chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales' social capital within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch and spiritual leader.^[49][50][51] He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years.^[5] The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an Internet celebrity^[52]. Although he had never traveled outside North America prior to the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project has seen him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face.^[5][53]

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."^[50] In May 2010, the BBC reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical privileges on Wikimedia Commons (a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content) after criticism by the project’s volunteer community over what they saw as Wales' hasty and undemocratic approach to deleting sexually explicit images he believed "appeal solely to prurient interests".^[54]

Wikimedia Foundation[link]

Wales appearing as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees at Wikimania 2007.

In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit organization founded in St. Petersburg, Florida and later headquartered on the West Coast of the United States, in San Francisco, California.^[55][56] All intellectual property rights and domain names pertaining to Wikipedia were moved to the new foundation,^[57] whose purpose is to establish general policy for the encyclopedia and its sister projects.^[17] Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006.^[58] Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus and holds the board-appointed "community founder" seat.^[59] His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid.^[19] Wales has often joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he had done. On one hand, he estimated that Wikipedia was worth US$3 billion; on the other, he weighed his belief that the donation made its success possible.^{[23][57][60][61]}

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. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.^[62] Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".^[63] Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".^[64][65]

Wikia and later pursuits[link]

In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company Wikia.^[15] Wikia is a wiki farm—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including Memory Alpha (devoted to Star Trek) and Wookieepedia (Star Wars).^[66] Another service offered by Wikia was Wikia Search, an open source search engine intended to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine’s operations,^[67] but the project was abandoned in March 2009.^[68] Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor Gil Penchina, a former vice president and general manager at eBay, on June 5, 2006.^[69] Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitability in September 2009.^[70]In addition to his role at Wikia, Wales is a public speaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency.^[71][72] He has also participated in a celebrity endorsement campaign for the Swiss watch maker Maurice Lacroix.^[73]

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.^[74] 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.^[75]

Political and economic views[link]

Wales in June 2008

Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core",^[67] referring to the philosophy developed by writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century emphasizing reason, individualism, and capitalism. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead while an undergraduate,^[12] and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy".^[5][76] Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think",^[5] he has said "I think I do a better job—than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists—of not pushing my point of view on other people."^[77] When asked by Brian Lamb about Rand’s influence on him in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles.^[12] An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine Reason.^[11] In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".

The January/February 2006 issue of Maximum PC reported that Wales had refused to comply with a request from the People's Republic of China to censor "politically sensitive" articles in Wikipedia. Other big business Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales let it be known that he would rather see companies such as Google follow suit on Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information.^[78] In 2010, he criticized whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its editor in chief Julian Assange, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents "could be enough to get someone killed," and he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki":^[79] "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing...".^[80]

Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek's essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate,^[16] as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project".^[11] 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.^[11] Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement (which advocated that software be free and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, which "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration."^[16] 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, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia.^[81] He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "[t]hat participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".^[53]

Personal life[link]

Wales with his second wife Christine

Wales has been married and divorced twice.^[12][53] In the summer of 2012, he is planning to marry Kate Garvey,^[82] Tony Blair's former diary secretary, whom he met in Davos, Switzerland.^[83] He has two daughters.

At the age of 20, Wales married Pam, a co-worker at a grocery-store in Alabama.^[53] He met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she was working as a steel trader for Mitsubishi.^[12][14] The couple were married in Monroe County, Florida in March 1997,^[84] and had a daughter before separating.^[12][53] Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after being dissuaded by the housing market there, relocated in 2002 to St. Petersburg, Florida,^[37] where he lived as of 2007^[update].^[14][85]

Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography.^[86] After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and claimed that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia,^[87][88] a claim which was disputed by Marsden.^[89]

Wales is an atheist. In an interview with Big Think, he claimed his personal philosophy is firmly rooted in reason and he is a complete non-believer.^[90]

Honors, awards and positions[link]

Wales with the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize on January 26, 2011

Wales is a member of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School^[12] and the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence,^[91] the Board of Directors at Creative Commons,^[92] Socialtext,^[93] and Hunch.com,^[94] and former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008.^[95]

Wales was listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the Time 100 in 2006^[96] and number 12 in Forbes "The Web Celebs 25".^[97] Wales has also given a lecture in the Stuart Regen Visionary series at New Museum which "honors special individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture, and are actively imagining a better future"^[98] and by the World Economic Forum as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007.^[99] In April 2011, Wales served on the jury of the Tribeca Film Festival.^[100]

Wales has received a Pioneer Award,^[101] the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize in 2011,^[102][103] the Monaco Media Prize,^[104] the 2009 Nokia Foundation annual award,^[105] the Business Process Award at the 7th Annual Innovation Awards and Summit by The Economist,^[106] the 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award,^[107] and on behalf of the Wikimedia project the Quadriga award of Werkstatt Deutschland for A Mission of Enlightenment.^[108]Wales has also received honorary degrees from Knox College,^[109] Amherst College,^[110] Stevenson University,^[110][111] Argentina's Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21,^[112] and Russia's MIREA University.^[113]

See also[link]

Meta has related information at: List of Wikipedias

• The Wikipedia Revolution
• User:Jimbo Wales

Published work[link]

References[link]