يعتبر جيمي ويلز من أشهر رجال الأعمال التجارية على شبكة الإنترنت، شارك في تأسيس موقع الويكيبيديا والذي يعد أكبر  online encyclopedia

غير ربحية على الشبكة الإلكترونية. 

ودخل قائمة مجلة التايم لأكثر 100 شخصية تأثيراً في العالم، كما اعتبرته مجلة فوربس من أكثر الأشخاص شهرةً في العالم.  

Jimmy Donal Wales was born on August 7, 1966, in Huntsville, Madison County, in central Alabama, United States, into a middle-class family.

He attended Randolph School, a college-preparatory school, and later earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from Auburn University

in Alabama. He then earned a master’s degree from the University of Alabama.. 

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In 1994, Wales worked for several years as research director at Chicago Options, a Chicago-based futures and speculative trading firm in Illinois. The company traded

futures, and he also traded a variety of commodities. Within a few years, he had made enormous profits. Wales has described himself as an internet addict

since childhood, so he decided to leave financial trading and become an internet entrepreneur.

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 وفي عام 1996، أسس بالتعاون مع اثنين من أصدقائه موقع بوميس الإلكتروني، والذي كان يقدم مواد مصورة موجهة للبالغين، وقد حقق ويلز وشركائه

substantial profits by selling visual content and running ads on their site. Wales later shut the site down and stopped working on websites that

تبث محتوى غير أخلاقي. 

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In 2000, he launched the Nupedia encyclopedia, but soon discovered that the information it provided was inaccurate. He therefore decided to shut it down in 2003.

Ultimately, the following year he decided to create a new online encyclopedia to address Nupedia’s shortcomings, make it more accurate, and offer a better service. He persuaded a number of businesspeople

to join his project, most notably Larry Sanger, who was enthusiastic about launching Wikipedia. The partners all chose Jimmy Wales to be responsible for

promoting the project and acting as its spokesperson. Within a few years, Wikipedia had grown, and its content was available in more than twenty languages, benefiting as many

As many people around the world as possible, and in record time, Wikipedia achieved global recognition and became the most important and best-known encyclopedia on the

شبكة الإنترنت.

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In 2017, Wales announced that he was preparing to launch a new website called Wikitribune, with the aim of combating fake news through a team of

professional journalists and volunteer contributors. Wales described it as a site that brings the people’s news to the people. Journalists and professionals will, together with citizens, write

stories, report and edit the news, and verify its accuracy.

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Jimmy Wales received many awards and honors in recognition of his efforts to promote culture and awareness. In 2010, he received the annual Nokia Foundation Award for Innovation.

2009. He also received the UNESCO Bor Medal in 2013 and honorary doctorates from Maastricht University in 2015 and the University of Leuven in

عام 2016.