Jimmy Wales as an author of a scientific paper

You may have read in Ars Technica about Jimmy Wales named in the author list of a scientific paper. The paper has now been published on Genome Biology. The paper is of interest and I recommend you reading Community annotations with WikiProteins.

The author of Ars Technica expressed his amazement of Jimmy being part of this paper. Jimmy has played an important role in the conception of Wikiprofessionals. Jimmy and Barend Mons met in Brazil at a conference and they discussed all kinds of everything but of particular relevance was that they discusssed what makes the difference in projects when you need the collaboration of many people.

Jimmy did a great convincing job selling the notion of Wikis. He told Barend to get into contact with me and as a consequence a fruitful collaboration started with several people heavily into wikis got involved. I want to mention Erik Moeller and Sabine Cretella here as well. The collaboration was a big boost to OmegaWiki and it resulted in the first Wikiprofessional.

It is a great practice to honour people who have been important in the developement of a new concept. Jimmy deserves to be mentioned in this way and I am glad that he is. In a way, all of us who are involved in wikis can be proud.
Thanks,
GerardM