Jan 27, 2020 · 42m · how-i-built-this
Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales (2018)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to explore how an experimental side project evolved into one of the world's most vital non-profit knowledge repositories. Wales details Wikipedia's journey from the stagnation of academic peer review to a globally crowdsourced, community-governed institution that prioritizes public access over commercial profit.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 35.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 2.7 Guest disagreement 1.0 Guy pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 27:06 Wales asserts NPR should not use Wikipedia as a source
When Raz brings up newsrooms banning Wikipedia as an unreliable source, Wales immediately validates the ban and insists Wikipedia should only provide questions and lead users to original citations.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 21:47 Raz challenges the non-profit model against ad monetizationRaz presses Wales on why Wikipedia couldn't have achieved its noble goal of free knowledge while still monetizing through standard web banner ads.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 22:07 Wales explains organizational DNA and ad incentivesWales breaks down how accepting advertising structurally forces an encyclopedia to prioritize commercial search topics like cars and vacations over critical educational articles.
Guy holds their own ▶ 21:42 Raz quotes Wales' Slashdot interview against his modelRaz demonstrates strong research preparation by quoting Wales' exact words from a past Slashdot interview to question the necessity of eschewing revenue.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparing the Modest Wealth and Massive Legacy of Jimmy Wales | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz sets up Jimmy Wales' story by comparing his modest personal wealth to internet billionaires and explores his early background. Wales cooperatively describes his childhood interest in encyclopedias, math, and early web development. | |
| Founding Bomis and the Stagnation of Nupedia's Academic Model | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz cites specific data points about Nupedia's sluggish output of only 21 articles in a year. Wales educates the host on the flaws of academic peer-review bottlenecks and explains how the open-source philosophy inspired the shift toward broader collaboration. | |
| Discovering the Wiki Concept and the Explosive Launch of Wikipedia | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Raz tracks the timeline of adopting wiki software and launching Wikipedia as an experiment. Wales details Ward Cunningham's original wiki concept and the immediate, explosive contrast in user contribution compared to Nupedia. | |
| Surviving the Dot-Com Crash and Establishing the Non-Profit Model | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Raz challenges Wales by citing his Slashdot interview and questioning why Wikipedia couldn't have achieved its educational mission while still placing banner ads. Wales counters by explaining how ad revenue fundamentally warps an organization's incentives toward click-driven topics. | |
| Early Crowdfunding Success and the John Siegenthaler Scandal | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Raz mentions how NPR strictly barred journalists from citing Wikipedia as a reliable source following the John Siegenthaler defamation controversy. Wales agrees with NPR's policy and schools the host on Wikipedia's intended function as a starting point for questions rather than a primary source. | |
| Community Moderation, Anti-Vandalism, and Fighting Misinformation | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Raz asks how Wikipedia manages modern misinformation and widespread disagreements over basic facts. Wales distinguishes clickbait fake news from Wikipedia's robust source-evaluation culture and outlines the broader societal danger of truth erosion. | |
| Volunteer Demographics, Core Motivations, and Financial Reserves | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Raz inquires about Wikipedia's operational scale, contributor numbers, and donation revenues. Wales provides detailed statistics regarding monthly active editors and details the foundation's conservative financial reserve strategy. | |
| Reflections on Luck, Fame, and the Wikipedia Birthday Controversy | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Raz prompts Wales to weigh luck versus brilliance and introduces comparisons between Wikipedia and the Gutenberg printing press. Wales modestly downplays personal genius and deflects grandiose historical comparisons before Raz wraps up with an anecdote about Wales' birth date dispute. | |
| How You Built That: Leigh and Casey D'Angelo's Dog Dating App 'Dig' | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | A produced 'How You Built That' segment where Raz narrates and interviews Leigh D'Angelo about creating the dog-centric dating app 'Dig'. The conversation is entirely collaborative and focused on startup development steps. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Raz: Wales is likely the least wealthy major internet founder
“Well, he's not listed by Forbes, but judging from media reports, Jimmy's net worth is nowhere near the billions. In fact, it's likely in the low millions. In other words, Jimmy Wales is quite possibly the least rich internet titan in the world.”
Wales built his own web browser while trading options in Chicago
“I just traded in the day, and then I would go home at night, and I was working on my own web browser.”
Wales: Nupedia had no direct competitors for two years after launch
“So when I started Newpedia I really thought that other competitors were gonna be out there, but after two years, there was still no one really competing with us, because it maybe wasn't as obvious as I thought.”
Wales: Wide public review exposes errors that formal processes miss
“There's an old saying in the open source software world that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
And what that means is, oftentimes when you're programming, there's some kind of bug in your code, and you just cannot find it.
And if you get another s…”
Wales: Wikipedia got a separate domain to avoid offending academics
“And I made the decision to put it up at the domain name wikipedia.com rather than keep it on Newpedia, because we weren't really sure, like, we had a lot of academics and a lot of very serious people on the mailing list, and this seemed a bit of a crazy idea, …”
Jimmy Wales: The first words on Wikipedia were 'hello world'
“I know the first words in Wikipedia. They were hello world, and I know because I typed them.”
Wales: VC funding would have killed Wikipedia's community governance model
“And in fact, one of the reasons that Wikipedia became a huge success, I would say, ironically, is the lack of funding. Because if I had had the money, if I'd gone to Silicon Valley and convinced somebody to give me millions of dollars to start this, then your …”
Wales: Organizations inevitably follow money, distorting missions if ad-supported
“If you think about the DNA of any organization, it's very difficult to stop an organization from following the money. So Wikipedia is a nonprofit, and as a nonprofit, we could run ads. No legal prohibition on a nonprofit running ads as a means of support.”
Wales: Siegenthaler scandal led to Wikipedia's living persons policy
“This is when we came up with the biography of living persons policy, and really started to say, look, if it's a biography of a person, then anything negative in the article really needs to have a good quality source, because that's just not acceptable to have …”
Wales: Wikipedia is the place to get questions, not answers
“Wikipedia is quite good. It is definitely not perfect, and what I always say is Wikipedia is the place to go to get the questions, not the answers. It's the way to get yourself oriented in a context, and I actually always say go on the talk page of any article…”
Wales: Fake news sites have had almost zero impact on Wikipedia
“Those kinds of sites have had almost zero impact at Wikipedia because while, you know, they might do well to share on Facebook something that comes from a publication called the Denver Guardian because, well, it looks like a news site, and Denver, everybody kn…”
Wales: Authoritarians succeed by convincing people truth does not exist
“The best way to prepare people for Authoritarian rule is not to indoctrinate them into an authoritarian philosophy, but to make them believe that there's no such thing as truth.”