Business Daily meets: Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales

Summary

Business Daily Meets: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales

BBC World Service • Host: Chris Valance • Aired: November 28, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Business Daily Meets, host Chris Valance interviews Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, exploring the site’s origin, current challenges in a polarized online world, and Wales’ personal philosophy. The episode examines Wikipedia’s resilience against government pressure, the risks posed by AI and misinformation, accusations of political bias, and Wales' response to critics like Larry Sanger and Elon Musk.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Jimmy Wales? Reflections on Identity and Public Expectations

• Expectations and Pressure

  • Jimmy describes himself as “just a geek” who enjoys making things, emphasizing authenticity over ambition for tech stardom.

    “I’m just me. I’ve always just been me, and I’ve always just been a geek. And I just like making things.” — Jimmy Wales [01:28]

  • Discusses the burden (and humor) of being the “Wikipedia guy” at quizzes:

    “If I do well, everybody’s, ‘Well, of course he did well. He’s the Wikipedia guy.’ And if I do poorly, everybody’s like, ‘I beat the Wikipedia guy in a quiz!’” — Jimmy Wales [02:22]

• Background

  • Grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, influenced by the space program and a household World Book Encyclopedia.
  • Early fascination with information and updatable encyclopedias—a precursor to Wikipedia’s model.

    “They would send out these annual updates along with some stickers… I remember moon in particular, they changed one year, the article about the moon, because there had been the moon landing in 1969.” — Jimmy Wales [04:14]

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2. The Birth and Evolution of Wikipedia

• From Finance to the Dot-Com Boom

  • Moved into tech from a finance background, co-founding Bomis (a web directory) which funded the encyclopedia project. [05:12]

• Nupedia and the Pivot to Wiki

  • Nupedia was too top-down and academic, leading to slow progress and little fun for contributors.
  • Discovery of the “wiki” concept—open editing—unlocked rapid, collaborative article creation.

    “We harnessed that idea to make an encyclopedia.” — Jimmy Wales [05:30]

• Wikipedia Stats & Structure

  • 65 million articles, 300 languages, hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors.
  • Open contribution with a core of administrators for governance; funding from the public, not governments.

    “I do think we are part of the infrastructure of the world…That is the grounding for AI, which is obviously a huge new development.” — Jimmy Wales [06:52]

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3. Wikipedia’s Role in an Age of Misinformation and Polarization

• Changing Perceptions
  • Wikipedia’s reputation has improved; it’s seen as a bastion against misinformation, though flaws remain.

    “We were never as bad as they thought we were, and we’re not as good as they think we are. That perception has moved further than reality.” — Jimmy Wales [07:50]

• Social Media, Algorithms, and the Internet’s Problems
  • Criticism of engagement-driven algorithms that reward outrage and division.

    “Algorithms of social media…prioritize content that is upsetting or…causes controversy and so on just to get attention. And this rewards people for bad behavior.” — Jimmy Wales [08:27]

  • Remains a “pathological optimist” about the Internet’s potential.

    “It’s really a remarkable place where…people connect with friends and share information…All of that stuff is still very much true and really important.” — Jimmy Wales [08:27]

• On Responsibility of Tech Leaders
  • Blames social platforms somewhat, but recognizes deeper political and societal forces.

    “It’s a very hard problem when you’ve got…politicians who are leveraging dissatisfaction to generate further divisiveness…in order to win elections.” — Jimmy Wales [09:33]

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4. Legal and Regulatory Threats

• The UK Online Safety Law (12:11–13:55)
  • UK law could force Wikipedia to implement user identification and blocking, potentially crippling collaboration.

    “What a great tool for trolls, right? Just go around and block everybody you disagree with and stop them from editing like it’s nonsense. And we’re not going to do it under any circumstances.” — Jimmy Wales [12:11]

  • Categorical refusal to introduce age verification, even if it means being blocked.

    “Absolutely no circumstances will we age verify. That is absolutely not something we’re going to do. We were blocked in China, we were blocked in Turkey. We’ve never caved in, we never will.” — Jimmy Wales [13:18]

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5. AI’s Impact, Bots, and the Future of Knowledge

• AI and Wikipedia Traffic (13:55–15:41)
  • Drop in human traffic partly due to bots scraping Wikipedia for AI datasets.
  • Careful optimism about using AI as a tool for the community, but very aware of problems with current language models (“hallucinations”).

    “You can’t trust the output from large language models because of the hallucination problem is quite bad.” — Jimmy Wales [14:12]

  • The community is already catching and blocking “AI slop”—low-quality, hallucinated content generated by AI.

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6. Wikipedia, Bias Accusations, and Media Rivalries

• Claims from Larry Sanger & the Political Right (15:41–17:26)

  • Sanger (Wikipedia co-founder) claims conservative sources are blacklisted, leading to accusations of left-wing bias.

    “There is now a blacklist called the Perennial Sources page…dozens of conservative sources…just not allowed.” — Larry Sanger [16:23]

  • Wales outright rejects these claims, pointing out that mainstream, non-left media are widely used; only unreliable sources are banned.

    “The only way to make that seem true is if you think the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph and the Economist are left wing rags…There are some sites that are frowned on as sources, but it has nothing to do with their political leanings.” — Jimmy Wales [16:51]

• Responding to Elon Musk and Grokipedia (17:26–18:02)

  • Musk accuses Wikipedia of being “Wokipedia” and launched a rival, Grokipedia.
  • Wales dismisses both the threat and Musk’s technical optimism.

    “He’s probably overestimating the ability of AI to write encyclopedia articles. I mean, we know that it’s not possible because…we have deep experience writing encyclopedia articles.” — Jimmy Wales [17:36]

  • Notes that "every time Elon rants about us, we see a surge in donations." [01:57, reiterated at 18:29]

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7. Wikipedia’s Resilience and Vision

• Independence & Community
  • Wikipedia is designed for intellectual independence; no government funding, no tech billionaire calling the shots, a diverse global volunteer community.

    “Every time Elon rants about us, we see a surge in donations. So, you know, whatever…We don’t have any funding from the US federal government. We don’t have funding from any governments.” — Jimmy Wales [01:57, 18:29]

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8. Could Jimmy Wales Have Been a “Tech Bro”?

• Repeatedly asked whether he could have taken a path like Elon Musk’s.
  • He answers emphatically that it was unlikely, emphasizing his reflective nature and different approach.

    “I’ve always just been me, and I’ve always just been a geek. And I just like making things…I’m very reflective and I sort of like to chew on things for a while and hear different perspectives and make sure I know what I’m talking about before I blurt something out. And, you know, Elon’s much more quick. Let’s just say.” — Jimmy Wales [19:22]

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Notable Moments & Quotes — With Timestamps

• Start — The Wikipedia guy at pub quizzes
  • “If I do well…‘He’s the Wikipedia guy.’ And if I do poorly…‘I beat the Wikipedia guy in a quiz!’” — Jimmy Wales [02:22]
• Fundraising fueled by controversy
  • “Every time Elon rants about us, we see a surge in donations. So, you know, whatever.” — Jimmy Wales [01:57], [18:29]
• On Wikipedia as infrastructure
  • “We are part of the infrastructure of the world…That is the grounding for AI.” — Jimmy Wales [06:52]
• Wikipedia’s self-critique
  • “We were never as bad as they thought we were, and we’re not as good as they think we are.” — Jimmy Wales [07:50]
• On UK law and online safety
  • “What a great tool for trolls…It’s nonsense. And we’re not going to do it under any circumstances.” — Jimmy Wales [12:11]
  • “Absolutely no circumstances will we age verify…We’ve never caved in, we never will.” — Jimmy Wales [13:18]
• On AI-generated content
  • “The community is already saying they see some AI slop coming in…The community would just block you very quickly.” — Jimmy Wales [15:14]
• Blunt rejection of claims of bias
  • “The only way to make that seem true is if you think the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph and the Economist are left wing rags…it’s complete bonkers.” — Jimmy Wales [16:51]

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Segment Timestamps

• [01:09] – Episode opens; Jimmy Wales introduced
• [03:00] – Wales’ early life, encyclopedia influence
• [05:12] – Bomis, dot-com era, and the start of Wikipedia
• [07:50] – Wikipedia’s reputation and self-assessment
• [08:27] – Discussion: algorithms, Internet pessimism & optimism
• [12:11] – UK Online Safety Law & user privacy
• [13:18] – Age verification: Wikipedia’s stance
• [13:55] – Bots, AI and impact on Wikipedia’s future
• [15:14] – Risks of AI-generated content on Wikipedia
• [16:23] – Larry Sanger’s accusations and Wales' response
• [17:26] – Musk’s Grokipedia and ongoing rivalry
• [18:29] – Wikipedia’s financial independence; Wales on noise and resilience
• [19:18] – Could Jimmy Wales be a 'tech bro’?

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Conclusion

This episode offers a candid look at Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia, spanning its origin story, ongoing battles with misinformation and legal threats, challenges from AI, and accusations of political bias. Wales stands firm on principles of openness, volunteerism, and resisting government and commercial pressures—combining self-deprecating humor with optimism and realism about Wikipedia’s role in the digital world.

Transcript

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[Chris Valance]

Hello, welcome to Business Daily Meets from the BBC World Service. I'm Chris Valance. Today we meet the pioneer of a website that gets billions of visits every month, but its co founder is by no means a billionaire himself. Could you have been a tech brother?

[Jimmy Wales]

I think that's very unlikely.

[Interviewer]

Why is it unlikely?

[Jimmy Wales]

Well, I am me. I'm just me. I've always just been me, and I've always just been a geek. And I just like making things.

[Chris Valance]

The American Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia in 2001. The free online encyclopedia features 65 million articles in 300 languages, all created by hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors. But as this collaborative success story is coming under increasing attacks in a polarized online world, can it survive?

[Jimmy Wales]

Funding is from the general public. And every time Elon rants about us, we see a surge in donations. So, you know, whatever. We don't have any funding from the US Federal government. We don't have funding from any government.

[Chris Valance]

That's all coming up in today's Business Daily.

[Interviewer]

What's it like being Jimmy Wales? I mean, do you get a lot of people who expect you to know everything?

[Jimmy Wales]

I always do joke that for a pub quiz or the family's Christmas quiz, there's no upside for me because if I. If I do well, everybody's well. Of course he did well. He's the Wikipedia guy. And if I do a porter Everybody's like, I beat the Wikipedia guy in a quiz. Yeah. So, yeah, people do at least jokingly think that.

[Interviewer]

Have you thought of turning your hand to pub quizzing as a. As a retirement option, perhaps?

[Jimmy Wales]

I am very good at it, I have to say, but not as good as. As a lot of Wikipedians. I would say definitely. If you, if you walk into a pub quiz with different teams around and you see there's a Wikipedia team run, they're very good.

[Interviewer]

Tell me a little bit about your.

[Chris Valance]

Sort of early life because you're.

[Interviewer]

You're a British citizen now, but you grew up in the US I grew.

[Jimmy Wales]

Up in Huntsville, Alabama, so in the deep South. And the thing to know about Huntsville is that it grew over a period of about 20 years from 20,000 people to 200,000 people because of the space program. And they brought in engineers, scientists. You know, it was a very intensive program to figure out how to get a rocket into space. And so that changed the town a lot. Obviously it was a growth town, but it also, you know, it's like the space program was kind of our hometown sports team. We were rooting for the astronauts and the scientists and all of that. So, yeah, I think that did have an impact because I did grow up really interested in science, space technology, all that kind of stuff.

[Interviewer]

And you get an encyclopedia early on in your life.

[Jimmy Wales]

My mom had bought the World Book Encyclopedia from a door to door salesperson. And it was always in the house when I was growing up. And I always loved, you know, digging into it for whatever random thing, you know, crossed my mind.

[Interviewer]

Was there an entry that sticks in your mind as being something that fascinated you, that kind of drew you into that?

[Jimmy Wales]

I'm not sure about that, but I do remember they would send out these annual updates along with some stickers, and you would stick the stickers into the book to show like. And I remember moon in particular. They changed one year, the article about the moon, because there had been the moon landing in 1969. And so when you went to the main encyclopedia and you looked up moon, there was a little sticker saying, oh, go look in the 1973 annual or whatever it was.

[Interviewer]

So maybe the gem of an idea about an updatable encyclopedia.

[Jimmy Wales]

Updatable encyclopedia, exactly.

[Chris Valance]

Jimmy Wales moved north to Chicago to work for a few years in finance. But the start of the dot com boom in the late 1990s drew him in. He co founded what he describes as a web directory called Bomis became popular, though a large part of that popularity was due to hosting Content, as Wikipedia puts it, geared to a male audience. And its success would finance other projects.

[Jimmy Wales]

We did very well during the dot com boom. The income from that meant we could start to explore other new ideas. And one of them was the encyclopedia project.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you start with Nupedia, which is a kind of.

[Chris Valance]

I guess it's a kind of more.

[Interviewer]

Of an encyclopedia in the traditional sense.

[Chris Valance]

You were trying to write a lot.

[Interviewer]

Of the articles, weren't you?

[Jimmy Wales]

Yeah, yeah. It was very top down, very traditional, very academic, and also very unsuccessful because it wasn't very fun for the contributors. So people were interested in the idea, but the actual progress on the work getting done was just extremely slow. Like almost nothing was ever happening. And so I realized that we had to change dramatically. And that was when we turned to the wiki. And the wiki software concept had been around for some years by then, I think six years. But we harnessed the idea of. And wiki just means a website anyone can edit, so open editing system. So we harnessed that idea to make an encyclopedia.

[Chris Valance]

Wikipedia's articles are all created collaboratively by an army of volunteers. Anyone can write the entries, and anyone can edit them. A small group of administrators have additional powers to keep this community functioning well. 342 edits are made every minute. Volunteers lead the project. There's no billionaire tech boss supervising its operations. And as you'll know, if you visit the site, Wikipedia asks for donations from the general public. This money goes to the Wikimedia Foundation. Jimmy Wales sits on the board of this nonprofit organization that provides the infrastructure and support that keeps it going.

[Jimmy Wales]

I mean, I do think we are part of the infrastructure of the world. And, you know, people all over the world are counting on us and looking at us all the time. And obviously these days, being part of the infrastructure is also part of the knowledge infrastructure. That is the grounding for AI, which is obviously a huge new development. So, you know, it's interesting. I think our impact is enormous. Yeah.

[Chris Valance]

Over the years, Wikipedia has had its detractors. It's been the target of serious criticism and a few jokes about the reliability of its articles. But in an era in which the innocent seeker after truth is beleaguered by misinformation, clickbait, rage, bait, sock puppetry, botter accounts, trolls, and a looming flood of AI generated slop, some commentators have seen Wikipedia as a bastion of reliable information. So does Jimmy Wales feel like the perception of the site has changed?

[Jimmy Wales]

Yeah, I think it has changed. You know, one of the things I say is we were Never as bad as they thought we were, and we're not as good as they think we are. That perception has moved further than reality. You know, the way we look at Wikipedia is, oh, wow, there's still so much work to do. You know, there's a. There's still a lot that's not right and things that we need to improve and so on and so forth, which I hope we never lose that sort of sense of curiosity about how to make things better.

[Chris Valance]

Why do you think we've got to.

[Interviewer]

Where we are with this, with the Internet? I mean, there's so much hope where, you know, with the World Wide Web, with social media, you know, there's the.

[Jimmy Wales]

Algorithms of social media that have tended to prioritize engagement have proven to be quite problematic in many cases as they prioritize content that is upsetting or, you know, causes controversy and so on just to get attention. And this rewards people for bad behavior. And, you know, it's just kind of a bunch of nonsense, really. At the same time, I am a pathological optimist, so I would say it's important to remember all the fantastic things that are great about the Internet. You know, it's really a remarkable place where, you know, people connect with friends and share information and have entertainment and, you know, cultures meet from all around the world. I mean, all of that stuff is still very much true and really important.

[Interviewer]

How much of the blame for, you know, the polarization in society and some of the negative things that people worry about. Do you lay at the door of the leaders of the social network companies?

[Jimmy Wales]

Yes and no. I mean, yes, I think they could be doing a better job of working out better ways to not promote content that causes these kinds of terrible social divisions and promote much more participatory dialogue and things like that. But, you know, I also say, actually it's a very hard problem when you've got, you know, politicians who are leveraging dissatisfaction to generate further divisiveness in society in order to win elections. I mean, that's fundamental, that's really, really important.

[Chris Valance]

You're listening to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

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[Chris Valance]

I'm Chris Valance and today I'm talking to the co founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. The challenges facing the Wikipedia movement come from many directions. Recently the Wikimedia foundation has taken and lost legal action against elements of the UK's online safety law, which it worries could list it as a Category 1 service subject to the toughest obligations.

[Jimmy Wales]

The number one thing that, that we're focused on is our user safety and user privacy. Then we would in theory be obligated to identify users. The way the act contemplates user blocking, where users can block each other, isn't the thing that we have in Wikipedia and we will have to implement it. And then if I block you, you can't see my content anymore. But we were working together on an article and now I've blocked you, so now you can't work on that article anymore. What a great tool for trolls, right? Just go around and block everybody you disagree with and stop them from editing like it's nonsense. And we're not going to do it under any circumstances. And we've made that very clear to the relevant ministers and people at ofcom, which kind of puts them in a bind that I, you know, it's unfortunate, but it's sort of like, I don't think you're going to block Wikipedia and we're not going to do this. So we need to find A solution.

[Chris Valance]

And the big topic in Internet safety, age verification. Would Wikipedia ever consider stopping children from accessing articles if regulators required it?

[Jimmy Wales]

Absolutely no circumstances will we age verify. That is absolutely not something we're going to do. We were blocked in China, we were blocked in Turkey. We've never caved in, we never will. So if the UK were to tell us to age verify, we're just going to say, sorry, we're not going to do it. And what, you're going to block us? You're going to. I mean, it's nonsense. I think most people realize, like, teenagers are using Wikipedia to do their homework. Like, it's. If we've gotten ourselves into such a bind that we think for safety online, we have to make sure teenagers can't do their homework, like, it's completely insane. And we don't think, by the way, we don't think it's going to come to that.

[Chris Valance]

Wikipedia recently uncovered a fall in the number of human readers it has after discovering traffic it thought was people reading. The site was actually caused by bots, programs AI firms use to harvest data. How could artificial intelligence impact Wikipedia's future?

[Jimmy Wales]

It's really hard to say right now. Certainly to date, we haven't seen a huge impact, like the 8% decline that was reported recently. We've seen this before. It had nothing to do with AI. You know, traffic does fluctuate and so we're not really sure about that. But clearly that's one of the things that's going on that probably is having some impact. The way I'm looking at it is really thinking about in a more sort of optimistic way. There is this fantastic new technology. It's deeply flawed. You can't trust the output from large language models because of the hallucination problem is quite bad. When I look at it, I'm like, this is actually interesting, and how could we use this? Or what are some things we could do to support the work of our community? Like we're a bunch of geeks trying to write an encyclopedia. Here's a new tool that can analyze text in new ways.

[Interviewer]

Do you worry about people generating articles essentially using artificial intelligence and that getting fed into Wikipedia?

[Jimmy Wales]

Yeah, I mean, the community is already saying they see some AI slop coming in where people edit an article and they look at it and they're like, yeah, this looks like AI and they investigate and it's got hallucinations in it. And, you know, if you tried to do it in some sort of massive wholesale way, where you're going to, you know, Upload a million articles a day. Well, the community would just block you very quickly. Like that level of activity would just be immediately like, hold on, that's like spamming us. It's complete nonsense.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it shapes America. Wikipedia shapes America. And because of its importance, it's an emergency. In my opinion that Wikipedia is completely dishonest. One of the things that's happened in recent months almost is that Wikipedia has become the focus of attacks from the political right in the US I think one of those leading the attacks is a co founder of Wikipedia. You might dispute that. I know you disagree with some aspects of it, but Larry Sanger, he was recently on Tucker Carlson laying out the case against you.

[Larry Sanger]

You look at only the sources that are permitted to be used in Wikipedia. So mostly secondary sources, and they are mostly left wing or center, generally speaking. There is now a blacklist called the Perennial Sources page that contains lists of dozens of conservative sources that are just not allowed.

[Jimmy Wales]

Well, that's just false. The only way to make that seem true is if you think the, the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph and the Economist are left wing rags. Like, it's completely bonkers to say that, right? There are some sites that are frowned on as sources, but it has nothing to do with their political leanings. It just has to do with that they're not very good. And if we have a potential source that contains misinformation and errors on a regular basis, you just have to say, yeah, actually I don't think I really want that to be the basis of an encyclopedia entry.

[Interviewer]

Elon Musk was accusing you of being Wokipedia. He wants to set up his own version. Grokipedia. I mean, does that, does that bother you?

[Jimmy Wales]

I'm not that worried about it. I mean, his approach doesn't look very promising to me. I think he probably is overestimating the ability of AI to write encyclopedia articles. I mean, we know that it's not possible because we're, you know, we have deep experience writing encyclopedia articles and we are testing and trying all these things. So, you know, we'll see what he comes up with.

[Chris Valance]

Since we spoke to Jimmy Wales, Grokipedia has launched to mixed reviews. Some critics have pointed out it seems to draw a fair bit of content from Wikipedia, the platform it's supposed to be competing with.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel under pressure from the right at the moment and from the U.S. administration? I mean, does that feel to you like something that is a threat to Wikipedia?

[Jimmy Wales]

No, not at all. We've designed everything to maximize our intellectual Independence. And so funding is from the general public. And every time Elon rants about us, we see a surge in donations. So, you know, whatever. You know, we don't have any funding from the US federal government. We don't have funding from any governments. And we're a very dispersed, diverse community who are just loving our hobby of making an encyclopedia. So it's a lot of noise, but Elon's not as powerful as he may think he is. He can say what he wants. I don't care.

[Interviewer]

Could you have turned out like Elon?

[Chris Valance]

I mean, let me.

[Interviewer]

Now, I look at your bio and I see somebody who worked in finance, somebody who was an innovator in all sorts of spaces, you know, could you.

[Chris Valance]

Have been a tech bro?

[Jimmy Wales]

I think that's very unlikely.

[Interviewer]

Why is it unlikely?

[Jimmy Wales]

Well, I am me. I'm just me. I've always just been me, and I've always just been a geek. And I just like making things. So, you know, to the extent we probably do share a bit of that, I think he's a geek and he likes making things. A part of my personality is I'm very reflective and I sort of like to chew on things for a while and hear different perspectives and make sure I know what I'm talking about before I blurt something out. And, you know, Elon's much more quick. Let's just say.

[Chris Valance]

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia thank you for listening to this episode of Business Daily from the BBC World Service, presented by me, Chris Valance. The producers were Hannah Bewley and Nev McDermott.

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