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Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales
Wikipedia
Project:
Wikipedia
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Jimmy "Jimbo" Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), is an Internet entrepreneur and a wiki enthusiast.
In 1999, Wales had the concept of a freely distributable encyclopedia and founded Nupedia, by hiring philosopher Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief and assigning 2 programmers to write software for it. Nupedia failed primarily due to being a top-down cathedral model, as opposed to Wikipedia, which is the ultimate bazaar. After more than 2 years of struggle with the Nupedia concept, Wikipedia was opened to become an instant success.
Wales is currently the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, a Tampa-based non-profit organization that encompasses Wikipedia and its younger sister projects
He will be speaking on his research into the internal dynamics of the Wikipedia community, with an eye towards helping people to better understand how healthy online communities are formed and sustained.
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