Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said he is optimistic about the future of media in terms of freedom of speech.

Wales arrived in Moscow for a one-day visit on Wednesday to give a talk on the future of the internet.

"I am very optimistic," Wales said in answering a question on freedom of speech and how world leaders view the internet. "I do have some concerns, as we see, China is continuing to censor the internet. We also see sometimes moves even in G8 countries to impose new regulations that don't really make sense and are ineffective but may affect freedom of speech. So I think we should be vigilant but I'll be optimistic."

"I am a big believer in freedom of speech. Of course, I never realized how important Wikipedia might be to freedom of speech but, you know, we've taken over the years a very firm stand against censorship of Wikipedia and I am very proud of that."

Wikipedia has become linked to Wikileaks through the organizations' similar names.

"Wikileaks is not Wiki and has nothing to do with us whatsoever and really uses our name," Wales said. "I have mixed feelings about Wikileaks. Some things about it I like and some things I am not so sure about. I think I am like most people in this regard."

However, the concept of common people sharing knowledge developed a great deal by Wikipedia as a base platform for other sources.

"I think the interesting thing is that although the Wikileaks has been in the news a lot, the underlying phenomenon is that anyone with access to documents can publish them on the internet is much bigger than Wikileaks. If Wikileaks were to go away, the phenomenon would not go away," Wales said.