KEY POINTS:
He's a one-time futures trader and the force behind one of the internet's most successful sites - and unlike many of his peers he hasn't sold out to big business for billions. It's all done in the name of free knowledge for all, he says.
Non-profit Wikipedia -
the online encyclopedia that anyone can access and edit - is the work of Jimmy Wales, a man who states on his personal website that his goal is "free knowledge for free minds".
This month, Wales will speak at the Digital Summit in Auckland - in keeping with his cyber status, he'll appear by video link.
When questioned about what drove him to ditch the big dollars of commodities trading for a donation-funded online encyclopedia, Wales says he always tries to do the most fun thing that is going.
It took a couple of "fun" internet projects before he struck the formula for success.
During the dotcom era, while he was still a trader, Wales set up a site called Bomis which he describes as a search engine and directory with user-generated pop culture content.
Unsurprisingly, the most regularly viewed and updated material on Bomis featured erotic material.
Income from Bomis funded Wales into his next venture - an online, peer-reviewed encyclopedia called Nupedia. This was a failure, he said, struggling to gain the critical mass because of the hoops contributors needed to jump through.
Discovering the freely available "wiki" editing software was a revelation and Wikipedia was born in 2001.
For a while the two encyclopedias ran concurrently, but when the Nupedia server crashed and no one cared, the pin was pulled.
Unlike its predecessor, Wikipedia grows at a staggering rate. Between September and November, 75,000 additions were made to the English language version.
Many more are added - anyone is free to anonymously add or edit an article - but removed by more than 1000 specially appointed administrators for not reaching the site's editorial standards.
The policies require content to be neutral, verifiable, preferably include a citable source and not contain any original research.
Wales said there was no single tipping point in the growth of Wikipedia.
"It steadily grew through grassroots over a long period of time."
Wikipedia attracts now around 75,000 active contributors, or Wikipedians, who have written close to nine million articles in more than 250 languages. There is even a documentary in the pipeline and yes, anyone can edit it.
New information is added to Wikipedia as events unfold, referencing news and official information websites. "A couple of times I've seen some breaking news on television and rushed to Wikipedia to see if I could be the first person to put it in and failed," said Wales.
He said September 11 really opened his eyes to the possibilities of the site, even though it was still relatively small. On that day they didn't have an article about the World Trade Centre, for example, so someone started one, he said.
"Then articles were written very quickly about the architect who designed the World Trade Centre and all of the different airlines that were involved that day and things like that and different articles about different possible terrorist groups.
"People were really interested in all that kind of background information and it's the kind of stuff you wouldn't normally get from the television."
But the invitation to "edit this page" can also mean the information contains bias and inaccuracies.
Several years ago US journalist John Seigenthaler snr discovered that for a couple of months his Wikipedia biography linked him to the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy - an edit later revealed to be a "practical joke".
And many corporates and well-known faces have been unable to resist the temptation to add a little extra shine to their own articles.
Wales himself was accused of deleting Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger out of his own biography after the two parted ways.
Wales admits Wikipedia has its strengths and weaknesses but says in general the availability of up-to-date information outweighs the inaccuracies. "Yes, there are errors and we are always looking at the social model of Wikipedia and the tools that are in the hands of the community to think about how can we maintain the openness and increase quality in various ways."
He said within the core community, Wikipedians hold true to the values of verifying sources and scrupulously avoiding bias.
"Those old traditional values are really important to the project and that's something about us as a community that is sometimes lost in all the noise," said Wales.
"A big part of it is realising although we welcome anyone to start participating we don't always value everyone's contributions equally. Some people really shouldn't be writing an encyclopedia - they're just not very well suited to the work and those people tend to find the community quite uncomfortable.
"Some people should be bloggers because they really want a platform to editorialise and say their own piece."
Wales said he spends a lot of his time travelling the globe meeting the people addicted to "Wikicrack".
Typically a contributor will be in their late 20s or 30s, university educated, geeky, interested in knowledge, ideas and all things online and really interested in the freedom of speech, free software and free knowledge.
"It's kind of a consistent culture all over the world around those things."
Despite his involvement in America's eighth most popular website - it's ranked ninth in New Zealand, according to alexa.com - 41-year-old Wales hasn't adopted a luxury-filled lifestyle of super yachts and sprawling estates.
Reportedly a self-confessed cheapskate, Wales lives with his wife Christine and school-aged daughter Kira in a modest, single-storied house in Florida, drives a Hyundai and flies economy rather than by personal jet. He supports himself with the proceeds of his previous career as a trader.
Wales said he has had no approaches to sell Wikipedia and has never considered changing the model to introduce commercial elements.
But he has been investigating partnerships to bring in more revenue but wouldn't reveal what shape these would take.
"We're mindful of the money to keep the site running and to also fulfil our vision which is a free encyclopedia for everyone, not just people who are online."
Wales is also working on a new project, this time with a commercial model. In late 2004 he created a company called Wikia with fellow Wikipedia board member Angela Beesley.
Wikia allows online communities to create their own Wiki sites. The most popular Wikia site is dedicated to the Yu-Gi-Oh which, says Wikipedia, is "a popular game, Japanese anime, and manga franchise created by Kazuki Takahashi that mainly involves the card game called Duel Monsters".
"We're building the rest of the library - everything that doesn't belong in the education or reference shelf," said Wales.
Wikia uses freely available software and the community management knowledge gained over the years running Wikipedia.
Online bookseller Amazon.com contributed US$10 million of start-up funding for the company and the site attracts online advertisers.
Some of Wikia's 38 full-time staff are also working on a search engine due for launch next month.
Wales has publicly stated he wants to give Google and Yahoo! a run for their money. Again, it would use freely available software and rely on tech-savvy types to create and modify the search algorithms.
But the huge success of Wikipedia means Wales will no longer be able to quietly launch Search Wikia and says the site will be plastered with notices saying "it's experimental and we know it sucks".
"When I opened Wikipedia and it only had three articles on it, nobody was complaining that this wasn't much of an encyclopedia because no one really knew about it."
Jimmy Wales
* Born August 7, 1966, Alabama, United States.
* Bachelor of finance degree, began a PhD in finance.
* Worked for a futures and options trader in Chicago from 1994 until 2000.
* Started a peer-reviewed online encyclopedia, Nupedia, in 2000 which developed into Wikipedia in 2001.
* Married to Christine, a former steel trader, with one daughter.
