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_ The Jimbo Phenomenon _ Jimbo's evolving history of Wikipedia
Posted by: thekohser
Jimbo talks (in London, it appears, judging by the double-decker bus that goes by the window) about how he was instrumental to Wikipedia's development, in spite of Larry Sanger's bumbling:
Posted by: Somey
Well, at least he saves the biggest fib for the end, when he says that the fact that the WMF board rarely (if ever) discusses the possibility of placing ads on Wikipedia is their "deepest, darkest secret," when in fact it's something they want as many people to know as possible. Nor does he suggest that the real reason they don't want ads is because of the potentially devastating effect it would have on their user base, as opposed to their wanting to maintain some sort of vague sense of "purity."
I also noticed his eyes tend to dart around (and look upwards, rather than at the audience) considerably more when he discusses the early days of WP, as opposed to his own personal background as an options trader, etc.
Posted by: thekohser
I also noticed his eyes tend to dart around (and look upwards, rather than at the audience) considerably more when he discusses the early days of WP, as opposed to his own personal background as an options trader, etc.
Good catch!
He mentions his hope for academic studies to examine the meta-data of Wikipedia. Perhaps some research university could quantify the correlation between Jimbo's ocular focal point and his telling of lies?
Posted by: Zoloft
http://www.channelship.ie/blog/post-4794-a-chat-with-jimmy-wales-founder-of-wikipedia.php
Posted by: chrisoff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis !! Is this wikipedia article is about Jimbo's first porno business? Or his first umbrella company? How come none of the source links work? Even the one to the Internet Archive doesn't work.
The article is neglected.
Posted by: Zoloft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis !! Is this wikipedia article is about Jimbo's first porno business? Or his first umbrella company? How come none of the source links work? Even the one to the Internet Archive doesn't work.
The article is neglected.
Jimbo apparently wanders around in the rainy English weather without a brolly or rubbers, so I suspect it's not an umbrella company.
Posted by: EricBarbour
The article is neglected.
That's because neither Jimbo nor Tim Shell really want to talk about Bomis.
It was long billed as the web's first "babe search engine".
I saw it in those early days.
It started out as a general sales website/webring system, but evolved.........
after a couple years, most of the content, and most of the traffic,
was aimed at soft-core adult material, including the endless thousands of
Geocities and Tripod personal websites containing scans of girly pics
(all copyright violations, and all now gone). Plus, it was full of lame fratboy
wisecracks. "We're like AltaVista, but with more nipple." And worse.
THAT was how Jimbo made his first million. He got out from under it just
as the first dotcom boom was tanking.
Imagine if Larry Flynt suddenly announced that he was starting an online encyclopedia.
That's how ludicrous Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia really are.....
(If you don't believe me, there are http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.bomis.com on archive.org going back to 1997.)
Posted by: Kelly Martin
Bomis was originally an "empty-shirt" company: it was created with no specific business plan other than to hype itself up so that they could get VC money (known at the time as "candy") so they could spend it. If you've ever seen the South Park episode about underpant gnomes, it's Bomis that they're talking about. Bomis was, of course, one of thousands such ventures engaged in this sort of parasitic leeching on the irrational exuberance of the late 90s. Jimbo is quite the expert at parasitic leeching, it seems.
Posted by: thekohser
Bomis was a lot http://replay.web.archive.org/19990508191507/http://www.bomis.com/tree/babe/adultmodel/.