ANY deep-pocketed new media mogul looking to add online encyclopaedia Wikipedia to its trophy belt can forget it - founder Jimmy Wales is not selling.

Not that he controls the hugely popular site these days - the board of the Wikimedia Foundation does that - but Mr Wales, who is in town this week, retains much influence given his kick-start role.

Wikipedia's numbers tell the story: It boasts 263 million users, or roughly 31 per cent of the Internet population; has 253 different language versions; and is one of the most trafficked websites online.

It is hard to put a price on all that but bear in mind that online search engine Yahoo! tried to buy social networking site Facebook for US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) last year.

'It just doesn't make any sense to [sell],' Mr Wales told The Straits Times at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia Hotel yesterday.

'We think of ourselves as a charity, with a big-picture vision of a free encyclopaedia for every single person on the planet that is in their own language.'

That vision has brought him here to speak about maverick approaches to brand building at the fifth Global Brand Forum.

You may not pick him out of a crowd given his unassuming, all-black ensemble, but the bearded American is anything but conventional.

Calling himself an 'uncompromising defender' of free speech, he learnt the importance of a liberal education early.

Alabama-born Mr Wales, who turned 42 last week, went to elementary school in 'a one-room schoolhouse that was run by my mother and grandmother'.

The curriculum was freewheeling and the pupils grouped haphazardly - leaving plenty of room for self-starters like the Wikepedia founder.

'I spent a lot of time randomly learning stuff from encyclopaedias,' he said.

'It was really a sort of 'follow your interests no matter what they might be' type of education which I really loved. And this principle is now reflected in Wikipedia.'

He went on to earn two finance degrees before joining a Chicago futures and options trading firm as research director. It did not take him long to earn a small fortune by speculating on interest rate and foreign currency fluctuations.

His speculative instincts led him to start a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopaedia called Nupedia in 2000.

'I'm a geek. It's embarrassing,' he said, when asked how a finance guy knew so much about technology.

Along with Nupedia's editor-in-chief Larry Sanger, Mr Wales launched Wikipedia in 2001, based on the use of wikis. These are webpages designed to enable anyone to contribute or modify content, and in so helping, create the product.

Wikipedia took off; Nupedia did not.

'The truth is, we're a product of the dot.com crash. We had no choice but to innovate,' he said.

His philosophy since day one has been: 'Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.'

It may sound profound, but he insists it is a 'clear, simple idea that I repeat 10 times a day, every day', because when it comes to branding, 'a clear, simple idea is still going to be very powerful'.

Success has brought controversy, with claims - on his own Wikipedia entry, no less - that he allegedly edited, or 'airbrushed', his biographical details.

The fact that the allegations remain on the site does say something about his commitment to the Wiki ideal.

'In reality, I think it's best to have an open, democratic process,' he said.

In 2004, he started a for-profit company called Wikia, a community and search engine for wikis. He said that company is valued at US$70 million.

But its 'poor father' Wikipedia still relies on donations - largely from its users around the world - to survive, and the Sloane Foundation recently made a US$3 million injection.

In the coming months, he will be working on paper versions of some Wikipedia editions, starting with the German one.

'It's going to be many, many years before every single person can access Wikipedia by computer or mobile phone. Paper still plays a very important role in getting information out,' he said.

Ultimately, his vision is to have 250,000 articles in every language that has at least one million native speakers - although he admits being very far from that goal.

As for making Wikipedia a trusted source of authority one day, he said: 'I've always said I want it to be Britannica or better quality.'

He may concede that 'doing good quality reference work is really, really hard', but he is close to his ideal.

The British scientific journal Nature found that each Britannica article has an average of three errors while each Wikipedia article averages four.

Mr Wales said: 'People think of Britannica as the gold standard. But it's an 18-karat gold standard, not a 24-karat gold standard.

'Wikipedia is something that's here for everyone. We'd lose some of that special magic if we did it differently.'

michtay@sph.com.sg

'People think of Britannica as the gold standard. But it's an 18-karat gold standard, not a 24-karat gold standard.'

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales who wants Wikipedia to overtake the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a benchmark for reference sources. Scientific journal Nature found that each Britannica article has an average of three errors, while each Wikipedia article has four.