When I interviewed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales for
the Q&A that appeared in Friday's paper
, I asked him -- as journalists almost always do when interviewing people -- how old he is.
"I am 40," Wales replied, adding that the date cited for his birthday on his Wikipedia biography -- Aug. 7, 1966 -- is incorrect.
"They got it from (Encyclopedia) Britannica," Wales told me, "and Britannica got it wrong."
Wales declined to tell me what day he was actually born ("Nobody knows," he said mysteriously), but a public records search shows that his Florida driver's license lists his birthday as Aug. 8, 1966.
Since Wikipedia is often criticized for the perceived unreliability of its user-written entries, it's obviously ironic that the online encyclopedia would incorrectly report it's own founder's birthday. (Wales, who has been criticized for editing his own Wikipedia bio and has since sworn off that practice, may have felt uncomfortable correcting even that fact about himself.)
But Wales is right that Britannica, once the uncontested leader among encyclopedias, also lists Aug. 7 as his birthday -- albeit with a question mark after the date (and a "researcher's note"). And Wikipedia does cite Britannica as its source for Wales' birthday.
Since Wikipedia is fluid, it's worth noting that by the time you read this (I posted it on my blog Friday afternoon), someone who read this post may have corrected Wales' birthday online.