Wikipedia turns 25 in January. Jimmy Wales’s daughter will also be 25, just three weeks older. This is no coincidence: on Boxing Day 2000, Wales’s then-wife, Christine, gave birth to a baby girl. However, it soon became clear that something was wrong. The newborn had inhaled contaminated amniotic fluid, leading to a life-threatening condition known as meconium aspiration syndrome. An experimental treatment was available at a hospital near their home in San Diego. Would they agree to try it?
At the time, Wales was in his mid-30s, a former trader and internet entrepreneur. He had co-founded a “guy-oriented search engine” called Bomis, but his true passion was encyclopedias. Bomis provided the funds to launch Nupedia, a free online encyclopedia written by experts—but progress was slow. The painstaking peer-review process resulted in only 21 articles in its first year, including entries on the “Donegal fiddle tradition” and “polymerase chain reaction.”
Suddenly, Wales needed information—fast. Searching for “meconium” online, desperate to make a better-informed decision about his daughter’s health, he found only a mix of unverifiable personal stories from strangers and dense scientific papers he couldn’t decipher. “It was like sifting through the debris of a bombed-out library,” he recalls. In the end, he and his wife decided to trust the doctors and proceed with the experimental treatment. Their daughter, Kira, survived. But that frantic search convinced him: Nupedia wasn’t working. It was time for a new approach.
We know what happened next: his new project, Wikipedia, founded on the principle that anyone could edit it, grew quickly. By 2002, the English version had around 25,000 entries; by 2006, it reached one million. Today, it boasts over seven million articles—compared to Encyclopedia Britannica’s digital version with 100,000. There are also 18 foreign-language Wikipedias, each with more than a million articles, from Arabic to Vietnamese. Wikipedia has become part of the internet’s infrastructure—perhaps even more essential. As Diane von Fürstenberg once told Wales, “We all use Wikipedia more often than we pee.”
In an online world often defined by negativity and division, Wikipedia stands out: a massive, collective effort built on volunteerism and cooperation, driven by an unapologetically utopian vision—to give “every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” It has overcome early challenges, such as a “joke” edit falsely linking a Robert F. Kennedy aide to his and his brother’s assassinations, to become a place where civility and neutrality guide interactions, and accuracy rivals that of academic textbooks.
Wales’s new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, aims to capture the secrets of its success. Key principles include having a strong, clear, positive purpose (the slogan “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia” powerfully reminds editors to stay honest), assuming good faith, being courteous, staying neutral, and embracing radical transparency. It’s a straightforward “lessons learned” guide that might sit alongside titles like Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO—but given Wikipedia’s ubiquity and its defiance of online toxicity, its insights could be far more significant.
“I just like doing interesting things,” Wales says. “So I get up and do the most interesting thing I can think of. And Wikipedia is super interesting…” I met Wales at his publisher’s offices near the British Museum in London. It was a clear autumn morning, and we sat in the Duncan Grant-inspired “author’s room.”Amid brightly colored cushions and murals, he wears a creased pink linen shirt and sips coffee while we wait for pastries. This is our second meeting—the first was at a dinner in July where journalists got a preview of his book, and he confidently addressed a room full of literary editors and reporters in a press conference style. Here, he seems more hesitant, chuckling nervously and giving answers with so many tangents that we both lose track of the original question.
“I’m a bit too shy for interviews, even though I do them,” he tells me about discussing his book, Seven Rules. His native Alabama accent has mostly faded after years in London, and he even slips in the occasional English glottal stop. He moved here in 2012 to be with Kate Garvey, a former aide to Tony Blair, whom he met at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They are now married with two daughters. “It’s funny when I tell people I’m shy because they say, ‘But you do a lot of public speaking.’ But that’s not the same thing.” He isn’t exactly socially awkward, but he doesn’t come across as completely polished for a TED Talk either. Instead, he seems ordinary and approachable, without the grandiosity of some of his internet mogul peers.
Wales turns 60 next year. His direct contemporaries include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. All have profoundly influenced our lives, but only one of them hasn’t become a billionaire.
There’s a simple narrative here: as “the good guy of the internet,” Wales used his entrepreneurial skills for a higher purpose. What does he think of that idea? “I don’t know. It’s embarrassing,” he laughs. But does he like the label? “Of course, it’s great. I’m very proud of Wikipedia.” However, the notion that he gave up vast wealth to make the world a better place is inaccurate. “I don’t see it that way. Early on, many journalists asked if I was some kind of communist because why else would I run a nonprofit? But I’m not. I actually support business and capitalism.” (He’s currently president of Fandom, an ad-supported entertainment site with user-edited pages, owned by private equity firm TPG Capital.) “I just enjoy doing interesting things. I wake up and pursue what fascinates me most. Wikipedia is super interesting… I travel to meet Wikipedians worldwide, visit schools, and even meet prime ministers.”
“On the money front,” he continues, “I live in London. How many bankers in the City earn far more than I ever will? Plenty. But how many of their lives are less interesting than mine? I’d say almost all.”
Back in 2006, comedian Stephen Colbert joked about Wikipedia, calling it a source of “Wikiality” where enough agreement makes something true, and he urged viewers to add fake elephant statistics. It nearly crashed the site. By 2025, Wikipedia may serve as an antidote to “alternative facts,” offering lessons for both the web and society at large.
Not everyone is convinced. On the day we met, Musk suggested to his 228 million followers on X that “Wikipedia should be called Wokipedia (or Dickipedia).”Elon Musk’s recent criticism of Wikipedia is part of his ongoing effort to undermine the nonprofit site and promote his own “Grokipedia” project—an AI-based encyclopedia he claims will be a major upgrade over Wikipedia and a step toward his xAI goal of understanding the universe.
Putting Musk’s hostility aside, does Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales see artificial intelligence as a threat? If people increasingly rely on AI summaries, could Wikipedia’s dominance prove to be just a temporary phase? “I don’t think so,” he says, “but that’s obviously on a lot of people’s minds these days.” It would be ironic, since Wikipedia’s free licensing allows anyone to use it for any purpose—including as training data for large language models. “There are definitely threats to the web, but they’re not necessarily coming from AI,” he notes. “I think the bigger threat is the rise of authoritarianism, governments, and regulations that make it harder to maintain a truly open global web where people can freely share ideas.” Indeed, Wikipedia is blocked in China and faces periodic censorship in Russia and other countries. Wales remains firm on this issue, stating, “We have a very firm policy, never breached, to never cooperate with government censorship anywhere in the world.”
Wales and Musk have been on friendly terms. “Elon and I have been friendly. Even now, he’s much nicer to me in private than you might think,” Wales says. What about other billionaires? Do they exert influence? For example, the morning after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Musk messaged Wales not to celebrate Donald Trump’s win, but to complain about a Wikipedia article labeling one of his friends as “far right.” When Wales checked, the description had already been revised, and he considered the change reasonable—though he won’t reveal whose page it was. “The circumstances were a little surprising, but it’s completely legitimate,” he explains. He adds that people often message him about inaccuracies on Wikipedia pages. Wales will review them, but he doesn’t grant special favors—all edits must follow the standard rules for fairness and reliable sourcing.
Does Wales still consider Musk, the world’s richest person, a friend? “Friends is probably a little strong,” he says, pausing to choose his words carefully. “I’ve met him maybe five or six times, so it would be overstating to say we’re friends. We’ve been friendly, and even now he’s much nicer to me in private than you might think. He has a big public persona, which is a bit different from the private Elon, who I find more thoughtful.” Is it a strange strategy for Musk to act so aggressively in public if that’s not his true nature? “I don’t know. It’s a good question. I have a general rule: I can’t speculate about what goes on in Elon Musk’s head. I have no idea—I’m as puzzled as anyone.”
Musk’s criticisms stem from his belief that Wikipedia has a built-in left-wing bias. In this, he aligns with figures like Tucker Carlson, who recently declared, “It’s an emergency, in my opinion, that Wikipedia is completely dishonest.” There’s a sense that the MAGA movement has Wikipedia in its crosshairs.
Wales finds this frustrating but refuses to engage in a war of words. “It’s annoying, but I’ve told him that if he really wants to help, the right way isn’t to misstate the facts,” he states firmly. “Claiming that Wikipedia has been taken over by ‘woke’ activists is simply false. But if you think Wikipedia has some bias—and of course, that’s something we always have to consider and address—”Spreading rumors that Wikipedia has been taken over by ‘crazed trans Hamas supporters’ or similar claims does two things. First, it signals to reasonable conservatives that Wikipedia isn’t for them, which is unfortunate. Second, it invites activists to treat it as their platform, creating challenges for us. We want to make it clear that Wikipedia is not a welcoming space for extremists. If you want to express strong biases or rant, start your own blog. We’re seeking thoughtful contributors who prioritize accuracy, calmness, and facts.
The Seven Rules emphasize neutrality, noting that trust in an institution fades if it’s perceived as biased—even if that bias aligns with your views. Jimmy Wales points to research by Cory Clark at the University of Pennsylvania, which found that people distrust organizations they see as politicized, regardless of whether the stance is for or against their own beliefs. For instance, Wales recalls reading a Washington Post article during Trump’s presidency that, despite his own dislike for Trump, felt like an unbalanced rant. He questioned whether he was getting the full story or just being fed opinions he already agreed with, which he finds problematic.
Wales distinguishes between personal and encyclopedic responsibilities. Using Hitler as an example, he explains that an encyclopedia entry shouldn’t be a rant but should objectively present the facts.He did, and that alone is a damning indictment. You don’t need to add, “PS, he’s a horrible person.” You simply state: “These are the facts, draw your own conclusions.” In his book “Seven Rules,” he cites a Ukrainian Wikipedia editor who sets aside personal feelings to uphold strict neutrality, saying, “The neutral facts still support Ukraine, right?”
This separation of fact from emotion seems rare today. The reason isn’t mysterious: Wales discusses “an entire class of ‘content creators’ trained by social media algorithms to amplify outrage, fear, and hate at every turn.” This trend partly stems from the absence of guiding principles among major Web 2.0 companies. “Unlike Wikipedia,” he writes, “social media platforms exist solely to sell user attention to advertisers, so nothing guided their norms toward civility and constructive dialogue.”
Is this inevitable due to the profit motive? Or, in other words, did money corrupt the web, giving rise to everything from democracy-undermining deepfakes to low-quality AI content? Wales disagrees. He believes the real issue is a lack of ethics, which stems from poor business judgment rather than commerce itself. “I’ve told people at Facebook: if the public believes you’re destroying Western civilization, you have a serious business problem. And I think that’s proving true as they decline.” Otherwise, he remains a “pathological optimist” and generally positive about the internet. “Google search, the internet as a whole—it’s amazing, right? We can become jaded and forget that, focusing only on how mean people are on Twitter. My advice is just to stop using Twitter.”
Wales had a modest but comfortable upbringing in Huntsville, Alabama, as the son of a grocery store manager and a schoolteacher. He spent countless hours reading The World Book Encyclopedia his mother bought from a door-to-door salesman, eagerly awaiting the annual updates by mail. As a trader in Chicago during the 90s, he “loved it” because “it was very mathematical.” He claims not to envy digital magnates whose wealth far surpasses his own. “I’m just a geek. I work daily in my basement office, and that’s my happy place with two computers and a treadmill. I’m not going to space on a rocket; I prefer Earth with its oxygen.”
Although Wikipedia isn’t a cash cow for Wales, it still needs funding. Regular users see banners (sometimes featuring his face) asking for donations. Where does the money go? “Our finances are very transparent; you can check them. It goes to programmers, bandwidth, hardware, tech support, accounting, finance, legal, PR, and grants.”
In late 2024, right-wing accounts, including Musk’s, used the slogan “Stop donating to Wokepedia” and shared graphs claiming the Wikipedia foundation spent “$50 million of its $177 million budget on diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Were they referring to grant funds? He responds with a weary “Yeahhh,” as if having explained this repeatedly, then outlines the broader context: “For many people and companies, DEI is just an add-on, something they do to avoid looking bad.”That’s unfortunate for us, but Wikipedia is a truly global platform. It’s a free encyclopedia for every person on Earth in their own language. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are fundamental to our mission. We genuinely want native Swahili speakers to be active on Wikipedia because our goal is to create an encyclopedia for everyone. This isn’t ‘woke nonsense’—it’s central to our purpose.
The grants were essentially outreach efforts to ask: Can we attract more women editors? Can we bring in more African American editors and people with diverse knowledge backgrounds? This was entirely about improving Wikipedia. He considers these criticisms completely unfounded and notes that the online right’s aggressive stance toward perceived opponents makes it harder to address genuine concerns.
He believes there’s a valid question to ask about every grant: Does it work? Should we fund more or less of this type of initiative? In his board role, he always encourages pilot projects and experimentation. He’s concerned that this culture of trial and error is now at risk. Across the NGO sector and corporate funding, there’s a chilling effect where companies avoid perfectly reasonable projects for fear of being labeled ‘go woke, go broke.’
In some ways, Wikipedia has been an early indicator of today’s contentious issues—debates over diversity, language use, anonymity, trolling, and misinformation. During the pandemic, when false cures and conspiracy theories spread, a group of editors took on the task of combating medical misinformation on the site. They worked to maintain trust by citing evidence and documenting every step of their discussions on permanent editor talk pages. At the time, Wales remarked that organizations could combat misinformation by being more transparent and open. Simply claiming authority, like a BBC reporter, isn’t enough anymore; you need to show your work and explain your conclusions. I wonder if British politics could learn from this approach.
Wales has political connections himself—he was in talks to advise Ed Miliband on digital strategy before the 2015 election, the Blairs attended his wedding where Alastair Campbell played bagpipes, and his book editor is married to former culture secretary James Purnell.
Speaking about Keir Starmer’s government, he says that for one with a large majority, they seem hesitant and lacking in big ideas. He’d prefer to see them take bold actions, even if he disagrees with them, rather than dithering and achieving little. They should be clearer about their goals and then follow through.
It might seem odd for someone who started in a basement to advise an elected government, but given his success in creating a cooperative information platform in such a divided era, his insights may be valuable. Is he now in ‘legacy mode,’ sharing his wisdom with the world?To some extent, yes, and to some extent, I hope not. I recall a Wired magazine article from about 15 years ago that claimed something along the lines of, “He doesn’t need to do anything else.” But wait—I’m still very much involved and active.
When asked if it’s frustrating to always be known as “the Wikipedia guy,” he laughs and says, “It’s not a bad label to have, so it’s fine. In a hundred years, when people reflect on this period, they’ll see the Wikipedia community and think, ‘That was actually a pretty wild time, with a small group of kind people creating something positive.'”
Then there’s his family—his daughters Ada and Jemima with Garvey, and of course, Kira. How is she doing now, 25 years later? “Kira is amazing. She’s grown up wonderfully and is passionate about airplanes. She visited recently, and I arranged a pilot lesson for her, just a trial for fun. She absolutely loved it.” And does she ever ask, “Dad, why didn’t you monetize your huge website?” He chuckles, “No, no, no. She’s like me—a total geek.”
“The Seven Rules of Trust: Why It Is Today’s Most Essential Superpower” is published by Bloomsbury on October 28th (£22). To support The Guardian, you can purchase a copy for £19.80 from guardianbookshop.com, though delivery fees may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the topic People saw me as a communist for running this as a nonprofit Is Wikipedias Jimmy Wales the tech worlds last ethical leader
Basic Understanding Definitions
1 What does running this as a nonprofit actually mean
It means the primary goal of the organization is not to make a profit for owners or shareholders Instead any surplus funds are reinvested into achieving its mission which is to provide free knowledge to everyone
2 Why would someone be called a communist for running a nonprofit
In some capitalist societies the idea of rejecting profit and prioritizing collective good over individual wealth can be mistakenly associated with communist ideology Critics might see it as a rejection of fundamental freemarket principles
3 Who is Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales is the cofounder of Wikipedia the free online encyclopedia He is a prominent advocate for free knowledge and opensource information
4 What is Wikipedias business model
Wikipedia operates on a donationbased model It is funded primarily by small donations from millions of users around the world and grants from philanthropic organizations not by selling ads or user data
Deeper Questions Implications
5 Whats the main ethical argument for the nonprofit model in tech
It aligns the organizations incentives directly with its users wellbeing Since it doesnt need to maximize profit it can focus on creating a quality unbiased product without exploiting user data or resorting to aggressive advertising
6 Arent there other ethical tech leaders
While Jimmy Wales is a prominent example there are others who prioritize ethics such as those in the opensource software movement digital rights advocates and founders of BCorporations The phrase last ethical leader is provocative and meant to highlight how rare this model is at the largest scales
7 What are the biggest challenges for a nonprofit tech platform like Wikipedia
Key challenges include sustainable fundraising to cover server and staff costs combating misinformation and vandalism with a volunteer community and maintaining neutrality on controversial topics without a topdown corporate structure
8 Could forprofit companies learn from this model
Absolutely They can adopt principles like transparency user privacy and focusing on longterm societal value over shortterm shareholder returns Some forprofits
