History of Wikipedia Sanger was his subordinate employee. Sanger initially brought the wiki concept to Wales and suggested it be applied to Nupedia and then, after some initial skepticism, Wales agreed to try it. It was Jimmy Wales, along with other people, who came up with the broader idea of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia that would accept contributions from ordinary people and it was Wales who invested in it. Wales stated in October 2001 that "Larry had the idea to use Wiki software." Sanger coined the portmanteau "Wikipedia" as the project name. In review, Larry Sanger conceived of a wiki-based encyclopedia as a
Jimmy Wales his developmental work on the Wikipedia project. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating that the idea of "participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me". On December 11, 2007, Wales testified before to the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee entitled "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration and Access". Senator Joseph Lieberman introduced Wales by stating: Wales's testimony is