Jimmy Wales expect from the Wikipedia initiative. Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the free culture movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement. Wales has said that he was initially so worried about the concept of open editing, where the encyclopedia, that he would awaken during the night and monitor what was being added. Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project. In a talk at SXSW in 2016, he recalled that he wrote the
Jimmy Wales how to make taxpayer-funded academic research available on the internet at no cost. His role reportedly involved working as "an unpaid advisor on crowdsourcing and opening up policymaking", and advising the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the UK research councils on distributing research. In January 2014, it was announced that Wales had joined The People's Operator as co-chair of the mobile phone network. On March 21, 2014, Wales spoke on a panel at a Clinton Global Initiative University conference held at Arizona State University, along with John McCain, Saudi Arabian women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif and Harvard University