Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, stormed out of a German podcast interview Friday after being questioned on a long-running dispute over his “founder” status, which he has invoked in editing disputes and when promoting for-profit ventures using the “wiki” name. Wales has long objected to co-founder and site critic Larry Sanger’s claim to having also been a founder of the online encyclopedia. The clip of the live interview, which lasted less than a minute, soon went viral on social media.
Wales appeared on the online interview show Jung & Naiv as part of a promotional tour for his newly-released book The Seven Rules of Trust, which presents Wikipedia as a model for the global information ecosystem. The podcast, hosted by Tilo Jung, is known for its long-form interviews with famous subjects where Jung asks seemingly obvious questions with the title itself being a play on his name meaning “young and naïve” in reference to the interview style.
At the start of the interview, Wales introduced himself as “founder of Wikipedia” to which Jung asked whether that was “founder or co-founder” in response. Wales replied that he “didn’t care” and proceeded to say it was “the dumbest question in the world.” After Jung noted there was a dispute about it, Wales denied this and repeated that he “didn’t care” then further declaring “say what you like. It doesn’t matter.” Jung highlighted with Wikipedia this was a problem and asked what the facts were, only for Wales to state this was opinion instead of fact and reiterating that it didn’t matter.
Seeking to clarify whether Wales considers himself the founder, rather than a co-founder, Wales again stated it didn’t matter and stated he had answered four times. He then declared he was done and began walking out of the room, stating repeatedly that it was a “stupid question” without explaining further. Jung noted it was just the first question and after Wales stormed off, he stated it was the shortest interview of the show’s history. The entire exchange occurred over the course of less than a minute.
Clips of the exchange and Wales angrily storming out of the interview soon began going viral on X with posts mocking Wales for being sensitive over the “co-founder” question despite repeatedly claiming it “didn’t matter” and that he “didn’t care” about the issue:
A common point raised was that the Wikipedia articles about the site and Wales refer to him as a co-founder alongside Sanger. Wales has been adamant in portraying himself as the founder of Wikipedia to the exclusion of Sanger to the point of having even edited his own page to “correct” claims of him not being the sole founder of the site. Press releases for Wikipedia in early years listed both Wales and Sanger as having founded the site among other early references to Sanger’s founding role.
Responding to one clip of the interview and Wales storming out, Sanger asked “Is it really such a sore point still?” and stated he was “ready to bury the hatchet” with Wales meaning to make peace:
The confrontation over his claims to “sole founder” status represents the latest misstep for Wales during his book tour. During an October interview for British news station Channel 4, Wales countered complaints from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk about Wikipedia being “woke” by pointing to the article on “women” referring to them as “adult human females” and only later discussing transgender issues. In fact, Wikipedia’s article on the term “adult human female” claims it is “hate speech” used as part of the “persecution of transgender people” under the Trump Administration.
Earlier this month, significant controversy erupted due to an interview by journalist Walter Isaacson for the PBS and CNN program Amanpour and Company. Wales was directly confronted during the interview about Wikipedia’s “Gaza genocide” article claiming as fact that Israel was committing genocide. Before the interview aired, Wales initiated a discussion attempting to address what he described as “one of the worst Wikipedia entries” he has seen “in a very long time.” In his opening comments, Wales cited his status as “founder of Wikipedia” when calling for editors to improve the neutrality of the article by properly attributing genocide claims as opposed to taking sides.
He was quickly attacked by numerous editors with some demanding sanctions against Wales. Suggestions included banning Wales from articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict or removing a “founder” flag he had on the site, despite it being largely symbolic. It was also suggested he be removed from a “neutrality working group” he chairs, which was set up by the Wikimedia Foundation that owns Wikipedia. Wales had also mentioned the working group during his call for changes to the “Gaza genocide” page. Editors were unable to agree to any significant action. Though Wales also received support from many editors, including Sanger, discussion largely rejected any changes to the article.
Despite his status as a co-founder of Wikipedia, Wales has no meaningful influence over the site. While retaining a “founder” seat on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees, he has no notable privileges on Wikipedia itself. Until two years ago, Wales did possess admin privileges on the site and also had the right to review appeals from editors banned by the Arbitration Committee often likened to a Supreme Court, but he lost these privileges following a scandal where he falsely accused a former member of the Committee of undisclosed paid editing. It was not the first time Wales surrendered privileges following community outcry.
For Wales, The Seven Rules of Trust represents his latest effort to profit off his “founder” connection to the non-profit site Wikipedia. He has previously established other sites utilizing the “wiki” name such as Wikia, now Fandom, which allows for people to create wiki sites dedicated to particular subjects. WikiTribune was an effort by Wales to adopt a Wikipedia-style model for news coverage, a project that was eventually shuttered with a social media site “WT.Social” being established and eventually rebranded as Trust Café, an alternative to X.
Central to his book’s premise and his promotion of Wikipedia along with similarly-named for-profit ventures, is the idea that Wikipedia is a reliable counter to “fake news” online. This campaign has been advanced since 2017, following strategy recommendations by a public relations firm run by the Clinton Foundation’s Head of Communications. Wales and others have favorably cited the purge of conservative media on Wikipedia as demonstrating its reliability, though Sanger has criticized this practice in his “nine theses” advocating reform on the site.
Ongoing concerns about ideological bias on Wikipedia in connection with the purging of conservative media and anti-Israeli editing has prompted multiple U.S. government inquiries. Editors have increasingly speculated about Israeli and U.S. government pressure affecting the actions of Wales and the Foundation, both in response to Wales criticizing the “Gaza genocide” page and the Foundation intervening in recent community elections for board representatives by rejecting two candidates, one of whom had made multiple anti-Israeli posts on social media. For Wikipedia, its owners, and its co-founder this has meant grappling with both significant internal and external pressure, including the AI-built alternative Grokipedia launched by Musk last month.
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.
