Jimmy Wales

Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentives.

Interview with Reason magazine (June 2007), 2007

I think MySpace is doomed, I give them about two more years.... I think Facebook is the next Microsoft in both the bad and the good senses. That's an amazing company that is going to do a lot of good and bad things.

Jimmy Wales on tech's future, Orlando Sentinel (03 November 2007), 2007

I have said this many times in the past and will say it many times in the future I am sure: some people need to find a different hobby, because whatever they are here for, it is not to help build an encyclopedia.

Comment about "drama mongers" on the Wikipedia Administrator's noticeboard, (23 November 2007), 2007

pedophilic sexualization of a community mascot? No. - email me if you have questions

deleted page File:LoliWikipetan.jpg (8 June 2007 ), 2007

Quite frankly, several of the people who contributed to the article should be banned from coming near a keyboard until they have learned to engage in proper encyclopedia writing.

In a discussion about Wikipedia article (07 September 2006), 2006

We've always had a love/hate relationship with numbers.

Wales to Computerworld, "Wikipedia founder gazes into site's future" (18 August 2006), based on an earlier interview at Wikimania, 2006

It turns out a lot of people don’t get it. Wikipedia is like rock’n’roll; it’s a cultural shift.

Wales to Computerworld, "Wikipedia founder gazes into site's future" (18 August 2006), based on an earlier interview at Wikimania, 2006

Freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education.

While talking about Wikibooks project; TED - Jimmy Wales: How a ragtag band created Wikipedia, July 2005, 2005

Ideally, our rules should be formed in such a fashion that an ordinary helpful kind thoughtful person doesn't really even need to know the rules.You just get to work, do something fun, and nobody hassles you as long as you are being thoughtful and kind.

User talk statement (7 April 2005), 2005

It is pretty weird. A few years ago, I was just some guy sitting in front of the internet. Now I send an e-mail or edit an article and it makes headlines around the world … I used to be just a guy — now I'm Jimmy Wales.

"Identity question for world's encyclopaedia", The Times (30 December 2005), 2005

We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?

As quoted in ExpressIndia (7 September 2005), 2005

We come from geek culture, we come from the free software movement, we have a lot of technologists involved. If we had done the same sort of comparison on poets or artists, I think that we would not have fared nearly as well.

Wales to the Miami Herald, "Will Wikipedia change history?", 2005

When someone just writes 'f**k, f**k, f**k', we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases — people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck.

As quoted in "Who knows?", The Guardian (26 October 2004), 2004

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.

As quoted in "Wikimedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds," by Robin "Roblimo" Miller, Slashdot (28 July 2004), 2004

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.

As quoted in "Wikimedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds," by Robin "Roblimo" Miller, Slashdot (28 July 2004), 2004