Founder of online encyclopedia called IU home

Crushing by elephant: a form of execution used in India for more than 4,000 years.\nThat's the most random entry Wikipedia founder Jim Wales said he has ever found on his own Web site. \nFor many IU students, www.wikipedia.org has all the answers, even to the most obscure questions like "What is crushing by elephant?" Some students visit the online encyclopedia every day, some have cited its entries for research papers and others -- and not just a few -- surf it for hours at a time.\nBut there's one thing students might not know about Wikipedia: Wales, who is revolutionizing the information industry on the Internet, went to IU.\nIn the mid-1990s, Wales spent three years in Bloomington as a doctoral candidate in finance at the Kelley School of Business. He didn't graduate, however, choosing instead to become a successful stock trader in Chicago. \n"Jimmy will now be our Bill Gates story for Harvard," said Bob Jennings, chairman of the finance department at the Kelley School. "(He was) the student who chose to drop out to become famous."\nWales, now 39 and living in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he kept busy as a student at IU, but remembers Bloomington as a "fun town" -- perhaps because he lived next door to Jake's Bar (which is now Axis Nightclub). Though Wales hadn't thought of the idea for Wikipedia until after he left IU, he knew from being a student that a greater information source was lacking for college students. \n"I can't even imagine how much something like Wikipedia could have helped me in college," he said.\nBesides the fact that it's a quick and easily accessible resource, college students love Wikipedia for perhaps the same reason they should be weary of it: anyone can update the site.\nWales calls these contributors "volunteers," or "Wikipedians," and said they typically tend to be geeky, smart people in their 20s or 30s.\nThis community and collaborative creation is exactly what makes Wikipedia so intriguing to college students because it is a chance for them to be involved in generating information, not just consuming it, said Associate Professor of Information Science Howard Rosenbaum.\nRosenbaum is even using the concept of wikis -- Hawaiian for "quick" -- for his class. Students use software that functions similarly to Wikipedia's and update each others' entries. Rosenbaum said it's a great group project and his students enjoy the collaborative effort.\nThe fact that anyone can contribute or edit an entry is the founding principle of Wikipedia, which is part of a non-profit organization with only two official employees. Of course, the online encyclopedia has some regulations, including a strong neutral point of view policy and other guidelines that don't allow certain entries, such as ones that feature "you or your bicycle," as Wales puts it. But there's more to "Wiki" than just the "pedia." Wikipedia, which has grown to 200 language editions since debuting in 2001, is part of something even bigger: the Wikimedia Foundation. The foundation also runs Wikibooks (for e-notes), Wiktionary (an online dictionary), Wikiquote (an online quotations database), Wikinews (a news source), Wikispecies (a directory of species) and Wikijunior (e-notes for children and teenagers), to name a few.\nSome say Wikipedia is beginning to compete with Web giant Google. Although Google is not showing signs of suffering (it posted a 96-percent revenue increase for the fourth quarter), some students find Wikipedia is a better source for background and general information than Google.\n"I've always been a big fan of Google, and I'm still a big fan," said sophomore Allison Walker. "But in terms of searching for stuff for school, Wikipedia is a great resource to find out anything I want to know."\nJust days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the online encyclopedia already had an entry about the storm, its context in American history and a projected death toll. \nNot everyone is optimistic about the site and its up-to-date content. Rosenbaum warns students to be cautious of some content on Wikipedia.org, especially when using it as a primary source for academic work. Rosenbaum said he never cites the site in his research and always double-checks the facts.\n"When you are thinking about using this source, it almost makes you have to cite the exact time that you accessed the source because it can change in a minute," he said. \nWales frequently travels overseas to meet distant volunteers. Currently, Bloomington is not yet one of his named "tour" cities. But he's definitely not opposed to the idea.\n"I want to come back," he said. "I just need an invitation"