In 1996, he and two partners founded 

Bomis, a web portal featuring entertainment and adult

content. Bomis provided the initial funding for the free peer-reviewed
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. As Wikipedia's public profile
grew, he became its promoter and spokesman. Though he is historically credited as co-founder,
he has disputed this, declaring himself the sole founder. [11][12]
Wales serves on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the charity that he helped
establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. For his
role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia, Time named him
one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2006.[13]

Contents

 1Early life
 2Career
o 2.1Chicago Options Associates and Bomis
o 2.2Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia
o 2.3Wikipedia
 2.3.1Controversy regarding Wales's status as co-founder
 2.3.2Role
o 2.4Wikimedia Foundation
o 2.5Wikia and later pursuits
 3Political and economic views
o 3.1Personal philosophy
o 3.2Philosophy in practice
o 3.3Development and management of Wikipedia
o 3.4Testimony before Senate Homeland Security Committee
o 3.5European Court of Justice Google ruling
o 3.6Other issues
 4Personal life
 5Publications
 6Distinctions
 7See also
 8References
o 8.1Bibliography
 9External links
o 9.1Multimedia
o 9.2Articles re Wales's efforts and ideas

Early life
Jimmy Wales, in Delhi, 2006.

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, shortly before midnight on August 7, 1966; however, his
birth certificate lists his date of birth as August 8.[14][15] His father Jimmy Sr.,[16] worked as a grocery
store manager, while his mother, Doris Ann (née Dudley), and his grandmother, Erma, ran the
House of Learning,[17][9] a small private school in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where
Wales and his three siblings received their early education. [17][18]
As a child, Wales enjoyed reading.[7] When he was three, his mother bought a World Book
Encyclopedia from a door-to-door salesman. As he grew up and learned to read, it became an
object of reverence, but Wales soon discovered that the World Book had shortcomings: no
matter how much was in it, there were many more things that were not. World Book sent out
stickers for owners to paste on the pages in order to update the encyclopedia, and Wales was
careful to put the stickers to work, stating, "I joke that I started as a kid revising the encyclopedia
by stickering the one my mother bought." [19]
During an interview in 2005 with Brian Lamb, Wales described his childhood private school as a
"Montessori-influenced philosophy of education", where he "spent lots of hours poring over
the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias".[20] There were only four other children in
Wales's 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. [20]
After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,[21][22][23][24] a university-preparatory school in
Huntsville, graduating at sixteen.[25] 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." [20] He received his
bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University in 1986.[9] He began his Auburn education
when he was 16 years old.[9] 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.[18][20][25] At the University of Alabama, he played Internet fantasy games and developed
his interest in the web.[9] 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.[18][20]

Career
Chicago Options Associates and Bomis

The staff of Wales' Internet company Bomis photographed in summer 2000. Wales is third from the left in
the back row, with Christine Rohan.
In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm
in Chicago, Illinois.[20][26][27] Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet
from an early stage and he wrote computer code 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.[25][28]
Inspired by the remarkably successful initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, and having
accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations",
[17]
 Wales decided to leave the realm of financial trading and became an Internet entrepreneur.
[25]
 In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis,[17][29] a web portal featuring user-
generated webrings and, for a time, erotic photographs. [30] Wales described it as a "guy-oriented
search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine;[18][20][31] the Bomis venture did not
ultimately turn out to be successful. [17][18][32]

Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia

Main article: Nupedia

Nupedia's logo

Though Bomis had at the time struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to
pursue