Jimmy Wales

"I have no plans at all to be running an asylum. This is a serious encyclopedia project. We *do* have to make our changes conservatively and slowly, so as to make sure that we preserve our open spirit to the maximal degree possible. But some people are just not suitable for editing here, and thats just a simple brute fact."

"When someone just writes f**k, f**k, f**k, we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases — people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck."

"Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal."

"We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?"

"Ideally, our rules should be formed in such a fashion that an ordinary helpful kind thoughtful person doesnt really even need to know the rules. You just get to work, do something fun, and nobody hassles you as long as you are being thoughtful and kind."

"The primary issue is how seriously we take our chosen obligations to people in the developing world who do not have Internet connections. … Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for us. Its for them. Its for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if shes empowered with the knowledge to do so.."

"Wiki editing thrives on local knowledge, but local in an epistemological sense, not necessarily in a geographical sense. For example, I personally know a lot more about world news on topics that interest me and could synthesize much better in those areas, than I know about local politicians where I live"

"I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it."

"I think MySpace is doomed, I give them about two more years.... I think Facebook is the next Microsoft in both the bad and the good senses. Thats an amazing company that is going to do a lot of good and bad things."

"I dont see any particular problem with that."

"We are Wikipedians. This means that we should be: kind, thoughtful, passionate about getting it right, open, tolerant of different viewpoints, open to criticism, bold about changing our policies and also cautious about changing our policies. We are not vindictive, childish, and we dont stoop to the level of our worst critics, no matter how much we may find them to be annoying."

"I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think."