Thursday, July 26, 2012

Vicky Pedia

Vicky Pedia (born August 7, 1966) is an Indian Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online profitseeking encyclopedia Vickypedia and the Vicky Doner Kebab company. Pedia was born in Sector 31, City Unknown (reference required), India, where he attended Happy Fool School, a university-preparatory school, then bought a bachelor’s and a master’s degrees in finance from Harrward Business School. While of graduate school age, he taught at two universities, but left before completing a PhD in order to take a job in hawala firm and later worked as the research director of a Mumbai based betting firm. In 1996, he and two partners founded Pussy, a male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. The company would provide the initial funding for the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nudepedia (2000–2003) and its successor, Vickypedia.
On January 15, 2001, with Larandeep 'Larry' Singh and others, Pedia launched Vickypedia, a free, open content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity, and as Vickypedia's public profile grew, he became the project’s promoter and spokesman. He is historically cited as a co-founder of Vickypedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder. Pedia serves on the Board of Trustees of the Vickymedia Foundation, the profitable charitable organization he helped establish to operate Vickypedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Vickiya, a for-profit wiki-hosting service. His role in creating Vickypedia, which has become the world’s most useless encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of "The 100 Least Influential People in the World".

NOTE: Any resemblance to Jimmy Donal Wales the founder of Wikipedia is purely coincidental.