Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia

Independent Building Surveyors

We are Independent Building Surveyors meaning we are not attached to any banks, building societies or estate agents. We have many years of experience on all styles, types and eras of property. We carry out building surveys, independent valuations, engineer's reports and specific defects reports on such things as dampness, cracking and roof problems. Please free phone us on 0800 298 5424 for a friendly chat on any property issues.

We as Independent Surveyors have followed the development and popularity of websites such as Wikipedia and Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales.

We applaud Wikipedia in that it is still free and has replaced such giants as Britannia Encyclopaedias. We think it's great the way everyone works together to produce such a good resource. We hope you enjoy the read!

Who is Jimmy Wales?

Jimmy ‘Jimbo' Wales is the co- founder of Wikipedia, the world's largest free online encyclopaedia.

Jimmy Wales early years and education

Jimmy Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, America in August 1966 to Jimmy, a grocery store manager and Doris who ran a small private school with Jimmy's grandmother. It was at this school where Jimmy's education started.

Jimmy graduated at sixteen from Randolph University prep school. He then attended Auburn University from where he has a bachelor's degree in finance and the University of Alabama where he received a master's degree also in finance. During his post graduate studies he also taught at both universities.

Jimmy Wales Career

After working in Chicago as a research director from the mid 1990's he made the decision a year later to become an ‘Internet entrepreneur'. In 1996 along with a man called Tim Shell, ‘Bomis' (an acronym of Bitter Old Men in Suits) a dot com company was created. Bomis provided support for free encyclopaedia projects such as Nupedia and Wikipedia as well as hosting sports, adult sites and entertainment. In 2003 Wikipedia was transferred to a foundation as it became more popular than Nupedia. Bomis stopped operating in 2006.

How Wikipedia works

Volunteers (also known as Wikipedians) make contributions to Wikipedia. No identification is needed by the volunteer which means one person may influence an article by using various different accounts.

No adverts

Various comments have been made about advertising on Wikipedia such as it would;

1.  Cheapen the site

2.  Distract

3.  Annoy people

4.  Sometimes offend

5.  Could be inappropriate

Jimmy Wales believes for their mission and fundraising they are better off without advertising.

Wikipedia's layout, organization and content

The layout of the Wikipedia site is usually quite simple to understand with bulk information about your chosen subject showing first. There are also often pictures or images related to your chosen subject and links to other sites regarding your specific topic.

In our structural survey reports we include sketches and photographs to identify problem areas and to help to explain pictorially the issues which we as Independent Surveyors often find helps to highlight and explain property areas of concern.

Here is an example of a photo and sketch which we would use in our surveys. We use the red circles and also ovals in our reports to help to highlight the problem area.

An example of one of our sketches	An example of a photo used in a survey. The red circle highlights the problem area so you clearly understand

Depending on what the development status or the subject matter of the article is, is how Wikipedia articles are organized. A stub status is given to a very short page with links and definitions whereas a developed article is given FA status (featured article status). These FA status articles can be found on Wikipedia's main pages.

The chosen subject must have already been featured in an independent journal or it must have been covered by the media before it can feature on Wikipedia. It must not be something completely new. There needs to be a reliable source reference.

Interesting Information on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is available in approximately 285 different languages. Wikipedia has approximately 21 million articles.

The name Wikipedia derived from the word ‘wiki' which means ‘quick' in Hawaiian and the word encyclopaedia.

Wikipedia has sister sites such as the free dictionary Wiktionary, Wikiversity a learning support website, Wikinews, news written by Wikipedians and Wikiquote which makes quotes easy to understand.

The success of Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia

In 2006 Jimmy Wales was named by Time magazine as one of the world's most influential people alongside George W Bush the 43rd President of the United States, the American talk show host Oprah Winfrey, the actor George Clooney, the American fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Meryl Streep the American Actress and Al Gore the 45th Vice President of the United States to name but a few.

Have a look at our website at our other articles

Please have a good look around our website to see how much detail we go into regarding property and its associated problems in our articles. We go into this much depth and detail within our reports as well. Here are some other articles on our website we hope you will find interesting and useful;

Bill Gates and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Apple and Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Google,

Why have one of our surveys?

Do Surveyors value property?

We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have put is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

The contents of the web site are for general information only and are not intended to be relied upon for specific or general decisions. Appropriate independent professional advice should be paid for before making such a decision.

All rights are reserved the contents of the web site is not to be reproduced or transmitted in any form in whole or part without the express written permission of 1stAssociated.co.uk.

References:

biography.com

time.com

en.wikipedia.org

ask.com

jimmywales.com