His Wikia Search Engine is a joke...
Other projects have crashed and burned...
His credibility even within his own site is shot to bits...

Just how influential is Jimbo Wales on a scale of 1-100 with 1 being the least influential?

Vote on the Times 100 list. At the moment he's more influential than Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and Gordon Brown apparently.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/art...1725176,00.html

Um, isn't that illegal?

Topping the list- Rain, "the king of Asian pop"- a list to be taken seriously obviously....

OK I totally misread the results there Panic over, Barack Obama is in fact no.4....

The rating system seems to be utterly confusing- 1 is for the LEAST influential- I wouldn't be surprised if this totally messes up the results (not that people wouldn't mess with it just for a laugh anyway)..

More ridiculous is that Rupert Murdoch is at 46 to Jimmy's 60, though it looks like Simon Cowell at 37 is struggling, which makes me think we shouldn't take the list too seriously.

That is ridiculous. The rating system is totally confusing- Murdoch is actually RANKED 67 but has an average percentage score of 46.

Wales is ranked 22. How could Wales be so influential if he doesn't influence content on wikipedia?

Calling Wales influential is like calling Mickey Mouse influential in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

The Time 100 List: the ironic "influence" assessment that anyone can influence.

Was looking for Donald Duck on the list, but couldn't find 'im. Who picks these characters to go on the list in the first place, it's all rigged I guess. See Brittany is more influential than Hillary. Maybe there's still time to run for "pres", Brittany!

Top 5 MOST influential:

1. Rain (average rating 81, Votes: 358,778)
2. Stephen Colbert (average rating 72, Votes: 172,740)
3. John Stewart (average rating 72, Votes: 20,471)
4. Barack Obama (average rating 71, Votes: 40,128)
5. Madonna (average rating 71, Votes: 24,912).


That's. Fucking. Scary.

I tried to fix it, cept I got it all backwards and put Wales at 100 which actually means no.1 ranking

I had to look up Rain in Wikipedia. Apparently he topped Time Magazine's online user poll in 2007, "although he was not in the magazine's actual list". Wikipedia has a use after all!

Well, I certainly voted for him. I mean, how can anyone not vote for him? He's Rain, people! I mean, seriously!

One problem though - I didn't see Pär Wiksten, lead singer of Swedish pop sensations The_Wannadies, on the list.


Anyway, judging by the numbers, it looks like a relatively small number of people (~3,850) went in and gave Jimbo a very high (probably 100) ranking, while the people near him ranking-wise had far more votes (e.g., ~9,500 for the next-highest ranked, Tina Fey). Not unusual for cult leaders... There's probably also some "canvassing" going on, of course.

With only a few thousand people voting, I guess nearly anyone could canvass the world and become popular...literally, overnight. The idea that this has any credibility to anyone anywhere is as much of a joke as Wikia and Wikipedia having any credibility anywhere...at all.

The average person on the street does not care who started Wikipedia, nor does anyone really believe Jimmy Wales did anything on his own. I think Larry was more of the brains and the Foundation still is scraping the bottom of the food chain when it comes to having any meaningful resources.

Bill Gates or Warren Buffett? Now they have some influence. They will never require a presence in a poll such as this one. See you in Omaha next week, Warren.

TIME has been engaging in this sort of blithering stupidity for "yonks" (as the cousins say). Check out this 1981 cover from "The International Magazine of Events":



Why anyone still takes them seriously, I have no idea.

Jimmy Wales drops off the Time 100 list again

http://valleywag.com/386191/jimmy-wales-dr...-100-list-again

Sigh. TIME doesn't have the luxury of only needing to appeal to nerds, like the Economist or Scientific American. It is (and was, especially in the 1980's) supposed to be a popular news magazine, which means it needed/needs some Women's Section articles. Oh, excuse me, I'm alluding to that faroff time when newspapers actually had things called Women's Sections. I meant Arts and Style articles. Ahem, Home Living stuff. Oh, hell... a piece about cats. TIME, just as the NY Times, imagines itself aimed at sophisticated people living in big city apartments. They know Texans mostly aren't going to buy it. You think they're going to have an article on Rhodesian Ridgebacks? It's not a matter of being taken "seriously," so much as attempting to have females pick it up instead of Cosmo (or at least, along with Cosmo), at the grocery checkout magazine rack, in Buffalo or Yonkers or Rochester.

Nice cat pic you have yourself, there.

Speaking of nerds and cats, here is an excellent instructional video...

Thanks. I did not get it from TIME, though.

To be fair (and I'm always fair to Jimbo Wales) he is very influential.

He manages to offend thousands upon thousands of people.

Oh, and then there's that social networking site he started on his home computer.

Your photo of Jimbo there reminds me of this:

I know. It's way creepy.