Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's Founder/co-Founder – Jung and Naiv: Episode 792 [video]
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Biography
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, is interviewed on the Jung and Naiv podcast, sharing insights into his life and work.
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Nov 15, 2025 at 7:04 AM EST
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It’s clickbait in video form. I’ve never heard of this interviewer and by all accounts I would have preferred to keep it that way. But by being a jerk, he has forced his way into multiple feeds of mine.
I would’ve loved to have heard about the history and the day-to-day running, and I worry that people don’t understand how important Wikipedia and Wikimedia are to not only a large percentage of the world but to LLMs and the future of the world. Just because something isn’t new and cool doesn’t mean it isn’t crucial.
I admit that I used to donate about every year, and I stopped because I heard they had a ton of money already. I’m now second-guessing that, and will plan to give this year, because I use it indirectly most hours of each week now developing with LLMs, and I have fond memories of the old sets of World Book and Encyclopædia Brittanica our family had and the love and awe of learning they inspired. Wikipedia is that for today’s youth and will continue to be.
If he had made it a condition of the interview, as Susan Sarandon apparently did for decades about "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", NBD. But he left it on the table, and threw a fit when it was brought up.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45930998
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45936905
Also, I just learned Jimbo Wales only has net worth of 1M, which for someone his age is barely considered enough to retire comfortably, even if he worked until he was 65:
https://qz.com/98600/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-is-only-w...
The only public information we have, I believe, is his divorce proceedings in 2011, which put his net worth at around $1m. There's no reason to think his net worth hasn't grown considerably since then, given his position, paid speaking engagements, etc.
He's the only one who manages to reach the young people as well though the type of questions he usually asks, and is the one who makes the most uncomfortable questions at the federal press conferences.
1. Update the date of an inflammatory interview over-and-over again for repost to YT, then continually post to HN about it.
2. Then update the video that made second page HN while it was posted to remove the countdown portion of the video to ensure more people watched it fully.
Those seem to be techniques of a wannabe viral YT influencer, not those of a well-known interviewer.
Do we know these aren’t AI-generated?
The video has been posted to HN 4 times during the last 24 hours, but that's pretty common for something newsworthy. I don't know why HN's dupe detector isn't merging them, though.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung_%26_Naiv/Episodenliste
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...
If you’re relying on Wikipedia for more than discovery, be aware that you’re internalizing some amount low-quality or false information along with your layman’s view of the topic.
Where would you suggest getting up-to-date encyclopedic information?
My point is that “encyclopaedic information” is low-quality by necessity: there is no shortcut to truly expert information on a topic.
Too many have convinced themselves they can find expertise without joining an actual discourse of experts.
That’s why experts write articles for encyclopedias.
The issue that I have is that Wikipedia editors are terminally online political actors. All you have to do is browse the edits and talk sections for popular pages to become jaded with it. These are not serious editors.
I am old enough to have had childhood access to actual printed encyclopedias, and they were amazing. I don’t really care if the section I am reading about the renaissance is not up to date. Funny how you never hear that complaint about libraries filled with old books, where research has been done for centuries.
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