Jimmy Wales

So it was a real boomtown.

When I got to high school, most of the kids didn't have a Southern accent, so I lost it then.

But my wife says I sound like Bill Clinton when I'm on the phone to my mom, so...

That's great.

I love that.

I mean, my mom bought it when I was three, as I understand.

I mean, I don't remember because I was three.

But as soon as I learned to read, probably, which was I was four when I started reading, but probably, you know, five, six, because the world book was actually very interesting.

The way they edited it was very clever, actually.

So the world book was an encyclopedia for children, but children is a wide range.

And so they would make sure like an article about Tiger would have a reading level that was much lower, like a first grade, second grade reading level, because they knew kids at that age are interested in tigers and they're going to look that up.

But they would also have an article on physics or quantum physics that would be more suited for a 13 year old.

I've always thought that's very clever.

Obviously, Wikipedia doesn't do that.

We can't do that.

But I always thought that was pretty cool.

You know, I only tied these two things together as an adult, right?

I didn't think, oh, I always loved encyclopedias when I was a kid.

It is true.

I would say the original inspiration for Wikipedia came from watching the growth of free software, open source software, and seeing programmers coming together to collaborate in new ways, and realizing that that kind of collaboration on the internet where people could work together and