Q: What is Wikipedia?

Jimmy Wales:

So the Wikimedia Foundation is the charity that I set up that owns and operates Wikipedia. So we're a 501(c)(3) charity organization. We exist from donations from the general public, and the foundation's tasked with keeping the servers running, communications, legal, all the, sort of, the infrastructure.

Well, you know, it's, uh, partly a product of history-where we came from in the early days. We're really a child of the dot-com crash, so there was no investment money. We're just a group of people on the Internet trying to do something cool. A lot of the volunteers wanted to put it into the non-profit--made sense to me. I'm really proud of it as a non-profit. I mean, I really feel like…. when people look back in 200, 500 years on this era, they'll say, "Oh, yeah, that Wikipedia was pretty remarkable."

We….because we're a charity, we don't run any advertising. We don't want to run advertising on the site. We mostly exist from donations from the general public. So every year We run a campaign and, well, this year they've slapped my face all over the site, so.. (laughs) I'm getting a lot of people saying, "Oh, stop staring at me, Jimmy Wales."

Q: What is Wikipedia?

Jimmy Wales:

So the Wikimedia Foundation is the charity that I set up that owns and operates Wikipedia. So we're a 501(c)(3) charity organization. We exist from donations from the general public, and the foundation's tasked with keeping the servers running, communications, legal, all the, sort of, the infrastructure.

Well, you know, it's, uh, partly a product of history-where we came from in the early days. We're really a child of the dot-com crash, so there was no investment money. We're just a group of people on the Internet trying to do something cool. A lot of the volunteers wanted to put it into the non-profit--made sense to me. I'm really proud of it as a non-profit. I mean, I really feel like…. when people look back in 200, 500 years on this era, they'll say, "Oh, yeah, that Wikipedia was pretty remarkable."

We….because we're a charity, we don't run any advertising. We don't want to run advertising on the site. We mostly exist from donations from the general public. So every year We run a campaign and, well, this year they've slapped my face all over the site, so.. (laughs) I'm getting a lot of people saying, "Oh, stop staring at me, Jimmy Wales."