User:Jimbo Wales
This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article (of course it is, its on the English WIKIpedia. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror website. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales. |
Welcome!
Hello! My name is Jimmy Wales, and this is my user page. I go by "Jimmy" in real life, but often by "Jimbo" online. People sometimes assume that "Jimmy" is only a nickname for "James", but it's actually my full first name.
I was born on August 7, 1966, in Huntsville, Alabama. I founded Wikipedia on January 15, 2001. Since 2006, I have been the Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, which Larry Sanger and I founded on June 20, 2003. In 2004, I co-founded Wikia with Angela Beesley, a completely separate organization unrelated to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. I am proud of founding Wikipedia, and I am grateful for what it has offered to millions of people worldwide.
You can edit this page!
Really, you can! If you would like to, please feel free to do so. Make an edit – or even several! After all, that's what Wikipedia is all about!
I like to keep it a certain way (simple and free from anything that requires a div tag, style, or template), but the thing is, I trust you. Yes, really, I do! I trust that you will add something here that makes me really smile or that informs me or many others. But please, do not vandalize because it won't make the world any better, and you know that too, so please don't. Thank you for keeping Wikipedia clean.
Over 3,400 Wikipedians monitor my user and user talk page via a watchlist, and I trust them to edit and remove errors or attacks. This is a wiki, so (apart from bad faith alterations and vandalism) anyone is welcome to edit! Wikipedia can always use more help; it is, after all, a permanent work in progress.
Comments or questions about how this page currently looks should be kept on my talk page, rather than on this page.
Contacting me
- Press inquiries: For inquiries strictly regarding Wikipedia or another Wikimedia project, you can e-mail me directly at jwaleswikia.com, or you can call the Foundation office and speak to our communications person, Katherine, at +1 (415) 839‑6885. For inquiries about my personal views on some general topic, contact my assistant, Samantha, at presswikia.com. She knows how to find me as quickly as possible. For inquiries about Wikia (a for-profit company completely separate from Wikimedia and Wikipedia, extending our social model to become "the rest of the library"), also contact Samantha at presswikia.com.
- General Wikipedia questions: You will probably be satisfied by contacting the help desk or the Teahouse.
- Learning about Wikipedia: If you want to learn more about Wikipedia, the best place to start is at Help:Contents. Some of the most helpful pages include Wikipedia:Tutorial and Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia. These pages are designed to help any beginner to get oriented quickly and to get started here. Once there, you will find numerous links which will point you towards other articles, resources, and help documents which you may find helpful.
- Complaints: If you have a complaint, it's best to start with the help desk. Ask a short, friendly question, and fellow Wikipedians will be happy to help. Contacting me directly with a complaint should be reserved for after you have exhausted all other possible remedies.
- If you have a complaint about article content, there are many avenues to pursue. The best and simplest way is to just fix it. You can also open a discussion on the article's talk page about the issues you wish to address. Be sure that you are adding well-written text using legitimate information from credible, reliable sources. If your change is reverted, continue the discussion on the talk page to get consensus. That is how Wikipedia works.
- Other inquiries of any kind can be e-mailed to jwaleswikia.com.
See also
- Contact Wikipedia – describes how to contact Wikipedia directly for specific reasons.
- Role of Jimmy Wales – describes the current status of Jimmy Wales on English Wikipedia and its administrative bodies, with some examples of how he has used his powers in the past.
- Jimmy Wales on Quora – Jimmy has answered hundreds of questions on Quora, many of which concern Wikipedia.
- Jimmy Wales – A Wikipedia article about Jimmy Wales.
- Jimbo Wales user-subpages – A list of all the pages that begin with User:Jimbo Wales.