Wikipedia world
Virtually anyone can edit an entry on Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. But its founder is finding it’s not so easy to cover his tracks after a messy breakup with a TV personality and a dustup over his expenses began playing out on the Web.
It’s not the first time that Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s de facto leader, has found his behavior questioned – especially since no subject appears too arcane for dissection by Wikipedia’s passionate community of users. The latest episodes, however, reverberated beyond the usual diehards.
A former lover — political pundit Rachel Marsden — let out steamy and embarrassing online chats with Wales, and dumped his clothes on eBay. Wales, 41, also became the subject of an eyebrow-raising blog entry by Danny Wool, who until last year worked for the nonprofit, donor-supported Wikimedia Foundation that runs the encyclopedia.
Wool wrote that Wales had asked the foundation to reimburse him for costly items such as a $1,300 dinner for four at a Florida steakhouse. Wool alleged that at one point Wales was short on receipts for $30,000 in expenses before settling the matter with the foundation’s lawyer and paying the organization $7,000. Wool added that Wales’ foundation credit card was taken away in 2006.
Wales denied that, saying in an interview over instant message that it was his own decision to stop seeking reimbursements even for business travel for the foundation, where he is “chairman emeritus” and one of seven board members.
Wales, a former options trader who started Wikipedia in 2001, would not comment on other specifics of Wool’s charges.
He pointed to a supportive statement from Sue Gardner, who recently joined Wikimedia as executive director: “Jimmy has never used Wikimedia money to subsidize his personal expenditures. Indeed, he has consistently put the foundation’s interests ahead of his own.”
Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation, defended Wales and said he had simply been “slow in submitting receipts.” She pointed out that the foundation rejected the steakhouse expense.
The foundation’s operations were also questioned recently when it emerged that a convicted felon on parole had become the group’s chief operating officer. Wales said at the time he was chagrined by the revelation.
But that feeling likely paled in comparison to last weekend’s ugly public breakup between Marsden and Wales, who is currently going through a divorce. Besides describing Marsden’s selling of some of his clothes on eBay, Valleywag.com published transcripts of messages between Marsden and Wales in which Wales explained how he urged a committee to fix her Wikipedia entry to her liking.
In Wikipedia’s devoted community of editors, this kind of conflict of interest is a huge no-no.