In a YouTube video, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales opines about foreign policy. We love how the video producer added in visuals for every "err." We wonder: Is Wales stumbling over his words because he doesn't really believe what he's saying?Wales has long been an Objectivist, a follower of the writings and political…
Money is a commodity. What venture capitalists really bank is their reputation. And Jeremy Levine of Bessemer Venture Partners has just signaled that he's willing to cash in his reputation to protect a piddling $4 million investment. Levine is not amused by our report of how Levine got Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales…
Why did Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, an online compendium which includes the world's most detailed article on flim-flams, step down as CEO of Wikia, the for-profit website host which recently laid off some of its employees? The way Wales likes to tell the story, years later, he realized he was a…
Cindy Adams, the endearingly batty New York Post gossipeuse, is mad at Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. Her beef: She complained about her Wikipedia entry to him two months ago, and he has done nothing. She's so mad, she has found words that rhyme with wiki, like "sticky" and "icky." She has also done…
Have you heard about a little site called Wikipedia? Aged gossip Cindy Adams has, and she doesn't like what she sees. It seems her Wikipedia page is filled with all sorts of "inaccuracies," which were placed there by "a ragtag assortment of contributors." So she did what most people do when they spot mistakes on…
Bid goodnight to Jimmy Wales's dream of cashing out on Wikipedia, the world's largest collection of infrequently asked questions. The vehicle for his scheme, a derivative for-profit startup called Wikia, is imploding. A tipster tells us that the 43-person company has laid off 30 percent of its staff. (Update: The…
On Friday, the cofounder of the world's most comprehensive directory of socialites, Jimmy Wales, was one of the recipients of the $138,000 Quadriga prize for philanthropy in Berlin. Wales is a committed follower of Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism and noted loather of altruism — but he got handsomely paid for his…
The Wikipedia entries of U.S. senators, after having false information or gibberish edited into them by users, typically remained uncorrected for a full 24 hours, according to a study. An assertion that Senator John McCain was born "in Florida in the then American-controlled Panama Canal Zone" was viewed by 93,000…
Jimmy Wales, cofounder of the world's most comprehensive history of C-Pop, recently sat for propaganda pictures with China's top censor Cai Mingzhao. The pair also spoke a little bit, but not about "the fact that a few politically sensitive pages are blocked," according to an interview Wales gave to Rebecca MacKinnon,…
Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales sat for an interview with ad agency exec Liz Ross in front of an Advertising Week audience here in New York yesterday. Which is odd, because Wales's very popular Wikipedia is a nonprofit which doesn't carry advertising, and Wales's for-profit venture, Wikia, isn't very popular. So who…
A recent appearance by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was bookended by quotes from Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism. And tech glitches: "You'd think that a threat to Google could easily menace a laptop into submission, but apparently Jimmy just doesn't do his own tech work." Much like his latest project, Wikia…
Thank you, Julia Allison! The Internet's best self-promoter has uncovered evidence that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is still girlfriended by Andrea Weckerle, a social-media PR rep he turned to after the messy breakup of his affair with maple-leaf-waving right-wing punditrix Rachel Marsden. We'd heard they'd call…
A green version of Wikia, Jimmy Wale's for-profit followup to Wikipedia? On this subject, our featured commenter of the day, dannyisme, explains how Jimmy is really helping:
People who know Jimmy Wales well can't stop snickering about the launch of Wikia Green, his new anyone-can-edit environmental site. In his private life, Wales is about as green as Dick Cheney, from what they say. He's been known to toss styrofoam coffee cups out the window as he drives — something we imagine might…
Eternal dilettante Jimmy Wales, the playboy founder of Wikipedia, has a new girlfriend-of-the-moment: Mother Nature. His for-profit offshoot wiki startup, Wikia, has launched Wikia Green, an edit-it-yourself guide to all things environmental. Like his past launched-and-abandoned efforts — anyone remember Campaigns…
Sue Gardner, the Canadian ex-journalist hired to run Wikipedia last year, has treated Jimmy Wales, the site's cofounder, with kid gloves. Until now. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Gardner vehemently defends the nonprofit status of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's owner:
From Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia entry, one learns that the online encyclopedia's founder grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and that his father, Jimmy, worked as a grocery-store manager, and his mother, Doris, ran a private school. From sources less public but more reliably accurate, I've heard that he's visiting his…
Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales is committed to bringing the sum of all human knowledge to everybody on the planet. Except, that is, his Twitter updates, which he has just made "protected," so that only his 2,862 "friends" on the microblogging service can read them. We're sure that among that crowd, there are some…
Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, has popularized the notion that "naked shorts" are ruining Wall Street. In the process, though, he also popularized the notion that he was a paranoid nutjob — a reputation that he's hardly shed since the SEC issued new regulations governing the shady stock-trading practice.…
The world's most respected business newspaper and an elite fashion industry magazine disagree on this most basic of facts: Is Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales pudgy or not? James Gleick, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that Wales is "a trim 42-year-old who favors black shirts and a slightly Mephistophelian…
