Q: How did Wikipedia get started?

Jimmy Wales:

Before I started Wikipedia I had a previous project, Nupedia, which was very top-down, very controlled. But since the beginning of Wikipedia, we've more or less stayed true to the basic vision. It's bigger than I ever imagined it would be. You know, for us the big thing is, uh, you mentioned we're opening an office in India.

It's the first time we've opened an office outside the U.S. And we're really focused now on the languages of the developing world. We're really, really big in English, German, French, basically all the European languages, big in Chinese, big in Japanese.

But we have – say, in a language like Hindi, for example, 280 million people are speaking Hindi, but we only have about 50,000 entries in Hindi. Long way to go.

Q: How did Wikipedia get started?

Jimmy Wales:

Before I started Wikipedia I had a previous project, Nupedia, which was very top-down, very controlled. But since the beginning of Wikipedia, we've more or less stayed true to the basic vision. It's bigger than I ever imagined it would be. You know, for us the big thing is, uh, you mentioned we're opening an office in India.

It's the first time we've opened an office outside the U.S. And we're really focused now on the languages of the developing world. We're really, really big in English, German, French, basically all the European languages, big in Chinese, big in Japanese.

But we have – say, in a language like Hindi, for example, 280 million people are speaking Hindi, but we only have about 50,000 entries in Hindi. Long way to go.