Jimmy Wales:

I did not clearly have in mind, “it should be a charity,” "it should be a for-profit” – that was really secondary. It should be whatever it needed to be in order to be successful, in order for it to be what I wanted it to be, and at the time I- I didn't know, really, "What does that mean, how am I gonna get there?"

My name is Jimmy Wales, and we had a very strong vision of a good, high-quality encyclopedia, thinking about, "Well, how do we sustain this, how do we", you know, "make this work?" Putting it into a non-profit and asking for donations seemed like the reasonable way to go. When people ask why don't we have advertising in Wikipedia, so there's a lot of sort of very practical reasons, but one of the reasons is when you're at Wikipedia, I want your experience to be, it's a place of quiet reflection, of learning, of thinking.

From the Wikimedia Foundation I don't take a salary and I also don't even take expenses; I think it's very important that I'm able to say quite clearly, "Look, when I'm asking you for money, I'm not asking you for money for myself: I'm asking you for money for the Foundation, which is the team who supports this amazing community that I'm a part of."

Jimmy Wales:

I did not clearly have in mind, “it should be a charity,” "it should be a for-profit” – that was really secondary. It should be whatever it needed to be in order to be successful, in order for it to be what I wanted it to be, and at the time I- I didn't know, really, "What does that mean, how am I gonna get there?"

My name is Jimmy Wales, and we had a very strong vision of a good, high-quality encyclopedia, thinking about, "Well, how do we sustain this, how do we", you know, "make this work?" Putting it into a non-profit and asking for donations seemed like the reasonable way to go. When people ask why don't we have advertising in Wikipedia, so there's a lot of sort of very practical reasons, but one of the reasons is when you're at Wikipedia, I want your experience to be, it's a place of quiet reflection, of learning, of thinking.

From the Wikimedia Foundation I don't take a salary and I also don't even take expenses; I think it's very important that I'm able to say quite clearly, "Look, when I'm asking you for money, I'm not asking you for money for myself: I'm asking you for money for the Foundation, which is the team who supports this amazing community that I'm a part of."