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Wikipedia's creator: I'm not so influential

St. Petersburg's own Jimmy Wales was honored but humbled by inclusion in Time's ''Top 100 People Who Shape Our World'' list.

By ROBBYN MITCHELL
Published June 18, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - It's not every day that a person gets named to Time magazine's annual "Top 100 People Who Shape Our World" list.

St. Petersburg's Jimmy Wales, creator of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, seems to be taking it all in stride.

He took time out to talk to the St. Petersburg Times about the honoree ceremony, the Wiki-mission and being, well, influential.

Any notables in the crowd at the honoree party?

Lot's of people ... (Arizona) Sen. (John) McCain, Rachel Ray ... Martha Stewart was there. About 75 of this year's honorees made it to the party and former Top 100 people were there like Craig from Craig's List and Ann Coulter.

Did you make any connections with any of the honorees?

Yeah. I got people's e-mails and I've already e-mailed Arianna Huffington. (Laughs)

What was the best part of the experience for you?

The best part was that my mom is a huge fan of Rachel Ray from the Food Network and I was telling her that at the banquet and she was like, ''Call your mom.'' And she talked to my mom and she was so excited about that. I don't know if you've ever watched her on TV but she's just that nice in person and very approachable.

Who was at your table?

Rob Parton, who designed the game Warcraft and there was a ton of press.

How does it feel to be named influential by Time magazine?

It was kind of funny because I have this joke that there were about 10 really influential people there and 90 of us were just kind of interesting.

Speaking of influence, how do you think Wikipedia has changed the landscape of education?

Well, obviously it is used by students sometimes for good, sometimes for not so good, but I think it has made information that wasn't readily available before accessible to anyone.

So what's your advice to students who use the encyclopedia for not so good?

Read Wikipedia for the background and then go out and do your own research. I mean, it's right there on the Internet, so your professors can look it up just like you did.

Where is the next frontier for Wikipedia?

I think we are trying to provide information on a more worldwide front. Getting into the smaller languages like Arabic and Hindi will help us get information into countries that basically are lucky if they have computers. They're well launched now, I believe Arabic has 15,000 articles but we want to get more.

Do you feel truly influential?

I guess I am influential on that side because of Wikipedia but I relate to what Stephen Colbert said when he was speaking at that party, "There are only 100 people here and 6.6-billion people in the world. In essence I'm here to represent 66-million people and who is ever that influential?'

[Last modified June 18, 2006, 07:44:27]