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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

Whatever else you may think of Jimmy Wales, the fact that he has resisted temptation to turn Wikipedia into a mega-profitable ad-powered site or sell to Google or someone else is pretty unprecedented in recent tech history. Could have easily joined the "tres commas club".

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Apparently it was a strike by Spanish contributors that stopped his original plan to use adverts, so props to them.

https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-spanish-fork/

I was always mildly suspicious of Jimmy Wales but he seems to have done well. Considering what a grifter his co-founder Larry Sager has become, he's a saint by comparison.

I didn't know about that, thanks for the link; major kudos to them. Still, Wales has had many opportunities to "sell out".

* Larry Sanger, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger

How is he a grifter? I don't see any mentions of bitcoin or ai in his wiki.

Jimmy wales has a masters in finance. Larry Sanger has a PhD in philosophy.

Who would you trust more a guy with a finance degree or a guy with a PD in philosophy with great interest in ethics?

He's always dabbled in right-wing culture war type stuff with his various Wikipedia alternatives but more recently he's been into QAnon and anti-vax stuff.

I'd got the impression he was doing it partly to get right-wing funding for his various projects but maybe he's a true believer and I'm doing him a great disservice by calling him a grifter and not a lunatic.

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