who is the founder of wikipedia?
Answers
Short answer, TL;DR type:
Wikipedia ("the" English Wikipedia) is founded by Larry Sanger, a PhD philosophical graduate student and Jimmy Donal Wales (also called by his nick, or a online moniker: Jimbo Wales, User:Jimbo Wales), a online Internet entrepreneur who also founded "Wikia", a for-profit organisation and developed (also founded) a non-profit (not-for-profit, ie charitable, donated by readers) organisation Wikimedia Foundation, which now includes the Board of Trustees and the Legal counsel (include other groups).
Longer version, and some simple explanations:
Wikipedia is a open source free content encyclopedia, which claims to be an open door policy of letting anyone to edit its entries, such as articles, talk pages, engage in discussions etc. It is the website which runs on a open source GDFL free documentation software which could/can get imported to create "wikis" known as "MediaWiki". Wikipedia has its own database and a dedicated community termed "Wikipedians". Wikipedias' largest content based encyclopedia is its English version, there are other languages as follows: Hindi Wikipedia is hiWiki, Azerbaijani Wikipedia is azWiki, Arabic Wikipedia is arWiki etc. Here that prefix is subjugated into a suffix of "wiki".
Wikipedia is founded by Jimmy "Jimbo" Donal Wales who is a online Internet entrepreneur and a finance PhD student, who's vision is to see an open welcoming encyclopedia which encourages discussion and reaching a consequence of a general agreement for whom a group of people or reviewers or "Community members" can achieve upon, termed as "Consensus" (WP:CONSENSUS) by that way they increase their content while adhering to specific needs satisfying the "Policies and guidelines".
The second founder, Larry Sanger, that has spewed much debate between himself, the community and whole world, questions arise somewhat this way: "Is he really a founder?", "Does he deserve the role?". Yes he is a founder of Wikipedia and in general factual sense a co-founder or a co-founding member for the vast community handled encyclopedia. It was only "Jimbo Wales" (Jimbo is his online personality by which he is known in the community, ie a online moniker) who tried to "erase" the history of Larry. To albeit verbatim quote our dearest founder, PhD philosophical student who named that encyclopedia "Wiki"-"pedia" as a collaborative project:
"Second, a little bit of history will help to explain this as well. I was more or less offered the job of editing Nupedia when I was, as an ABD philosophy graduate student, soliciting Jimbo's (and other friends') advice on a website I was thinking of starting. It was the first I had heard of Jimbo's idea of an open content encyclopedia, and I was delighted to take the job. So I want this to be clear: I did not set out to be a leader and crusader and organizer. As a job, this has been the best I've ever had. But this project is not something I would have chosen as a hobby, frankly; with my spare time, even after having started it and having grown to care a lot about it, I must admit I'd rather be spending time with my wife, reading and writing philosophy, and playing fiddle. (I'm making a little money now teaching fiddle in Columbus and enjoying that immensely.)" --Larry Sanger, PhD, ex-editor in chief, co-founder of Wikipedia.
As he explicitly states he is never been a "leader, crusader and organiser", he only did his job, his portmanteau of a "Wiki" and naming it as a conventional terminology was seen in a positive way, he did a good impact. Though he isn't working with the now Wikipedia controlled non-profit organisation the Wikimedia Foundation, which stemmed out of a Global Wikimedia movement and since then things have changed greatly. Technology upgraded, community gone bollocking with stringent community-control policies and guidelines etc.