12/11/2007

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” So Jimmy Wales ’83, founder of the free, online, open source encyclopedia Wikipedia, has repeatedly said in recent years.

Yet in the site’s early days, shortly after its January 2001 launch, Wales admits to worrying so much about what people might be posting to “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” he would wake up in the middle of the night to check. No such worries afflict him now, despite the explosive international Internet phenomenon Wikipedia has become. Did he expect it to get so big? Newsweek’s Arlene Getz asked Wales earlier this year. “I knew it was a big idea,” he replied, “but I didn’t think it would get so big so fast.”