--- title: 10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales | TIME description: The Wikipedia founder celebrates his website's 10th anniversary Jan. 15. Jimmy Wales will now take your questions. canonical: https://time.com/video/SWcOGNEa/ og:title: 10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales og:description: The Wikipedia founder celebrates his website's 10th anniversary Jan. 15. Jimmy Wales will now take your questions. og:url: https://time.com/video/SWcOGNEa/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SWcOGNEa/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales twitter:description: The Wikipedia founder celebrates his website's 10th anniversary Jan. 15. Jimmy Wales will now take your questions. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SWcOGNEa/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SWcOGNEa.m3u8) (6:15)  _Published 2011-01-13. The Wikipedia founder celebrates his website's 10th anniversary Jan. 15. Jimmy Wales will now take your questions._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:08 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [China Bans Wikipedia In All Languages](/video/uAmbJ0m8/) ### China Bans Wikipedia In All Languages [Turkish Court Formally Blocks Access to Wikipedia](/video/t4p33Oyf/) ### Turkish Court Formally Blocks Access to Wikipedia [Happy Birthday, Wikipedia\!](/video/5FZVa5gY/) ### Happy Birthday, Wikipedia! --- ## Transcript >> I'm William Lee Adams, a reporter at TIME's London Bureau and I'm here with Jimmy Wales, the co- founder of Wikipedia. On January 15th, the online encyclopedia celebrated its 10th anniversary. So to mark the occasion, Jimmy is here to take readers' questions. Jimmy, welcome. >> Thanks for having me. >> And our first reader questions comes from Anushka Gold in Mumbai, India. She wants to know, how did Wikipedia come about? >> Well, Wikipedia was the second attempt that I made creating a free encyclopedia for everyone. The first attempt was called Newpedia, which was a failure and it was a failure because the model that we use to try to create Newpedia was very top- down, very structured, very academic and not very much fun for the people, for the volunteers. And then, I launched the Wiki in 2001 and it just grew and grew and grew. >> And Peter Heidener in Aarhus, Denmark wants to know. Has the creation of Wikipedia meant that the traditional encyclopedia is dead? >> Well, I'm not sure if it's dead but it certainly is ailing. Although, it was ailing long before we came along. If you look in English language for example, the situation with Britannica over the years-- Britannica took a very severe hit from Microsoft Encarta, which dramatically reduced the cost of encyclopedia and now that we've been on the scene now for 10 years, that's had another obviously a huge impact. And in different places around the world, different encyclopedias have fared better or worse depending on their business model and things like that. >> Carlos Castellar in Miami asks-- when the censorship in entry is acceptable? >> Well, I think we need to make a very careful distinction between censorship and editorial judgment. Censorship is by definition, something that's done by governments by force. It's forbidding the publication of certain knowledge. It's a very different from editorial judgment in which case, there's a whole universe of editorial judgment that has been made all the time. Are these facts relevant? Are they very defiable? Is this some trivial fluff or is it something really important? Is it-- was it reported on a blog no one's ever heard of or was it recorded in Time Magazine or the New York Time, there's somewhere that we can count on as being reliable. So it's always the case that every entry has to be subject to thoughtful editorial judgment to decide what belongs in the entry or what doesn't belong in the entry. But it's never the case that we should accept censorship. >> If the need to rely on a corporate sponsor due to the lack of fundraising occurs, would you rely on the corporation or would you shut down Wikipedia? >> What we've always said is that we're opposed to having advertising in Wikipedia, but we've never said absolutely not, absolutely never because we will do what it takes to keep Wikipedia alive. So, yeah, we wouldn't shut down Wikipedia. But in the event that we did have some kind of serious problem where the public was no longer willing to support us to the figure that we need, we will first look a cost- cutting measures, we would eventually have to look at putting some ads and some obscure part of the site to keep bring a little bit of money or something like that. It's not on the table at all. It's not something that we really considering or even think is likely to happen. But, no, we're not gonna shut down Wikipedia. Wikipedia is important. >> What has been the most difficult problem you've encountered with Wikipedia? >> I would say, one of the things that we've spent a lot of time focusing on is policy relating to biographies of living people. That's one of the most critical pieces of Wikipedia because in area where it's really, really important that we be responsible, ethical, thoughtful, at the same time we need to report on the facts of realities such as they are. And so that's an area that's always thorny. But there's no magic solution too either. It's something that requires every single day, people to revisit and consider and ponder and think about what's the best thing to do. I mean, given particular situation. >> Certainly in recent weeks, the WikeLeaks website has dominated news headlines. So Dennis Pope in Riverside, California asks, do you worry that Julian Assange is giving the term Wiki a bad name? >> Well, the thing that we are trying to communicate to people is that we have absolutely nothing to do with WikiLeaks-- whatsoever. So whether people are fans of WikiLeaks or they hate WikiLeaks, well, you know, we don't-- we shouldn't get credit for it. We shouldn't get criticized for. It has nothing to do with us. So I think that's pretty important. Unfortunately, we've been very pleased that in the media, generally, everyone understands this. I've had a couple of cringing moment where I see some head of state or something makes the error and I'm like, " Come on ." You know, but-- in general, people have got me right and I think most people do understand it has nothing to do with us. >> Now this question probably has a bit wishful thinking in it, but Dennis Cross in Dixon, Missouri asks, " Could I earn a college degree just from studying Wikipedia ?" >> It's a really interesting question. You know, one of the things that it raises is this idea that formal education and the total amount of formal education is society is more or less stable, maybe it's increasing or decreasing in different ways and so on. We're seeing no really radical change. But we are saying is that, it's incredibly radical change and the amount of informal learning and people are doing all over the world. People spend many, many endless hours studying, random topic that takes their fancy in a way that would have been really hard to do 30 years ago. You won't get a college degree from it though but you make it a lot of knowledge. >> On January 15th, Wikipedia celebrates its 10th Anniversary. How were you gonna celebrate? >> Well, we're having celebrations all around the world. On the 15th, we're gonna do individual community groups all around the world are gonna be doing partyings, mini conferences, meet- ups-- but then also on January 13th, I'm having a party here in London to celebrate it. So I'm really looking forward to that. >> And we look forward to our invitation. Jimmy Wales, thank so much. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales","description":"The Wikipedia founder celebrates his website's 10th anniversary Jan. 15. 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