Jimmy Wales Faces Allegations of Corruption 289
eldavojohn writes "The SFGate site has up an article noting that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is facing allegations from multiple quarters accusing him of abusing his power. Several people apparently claim he used the foundation to pay for personal expenses, including reimbursement for a $1,300 dinner for four at a Florida steakhouse. Accusations have also been made indicating that he edited the Wikipedia entry of political commentator Rachel Marsden, a woman he was seeing, at her request. In the case of that allegation, Wales replied that 'I acted completely consistently with Wikipedia policy. I did the right thing: I passed along my work to date for other editors to deal with, and I recused myself from the case.'"
Not a peach (Score:5, Informative)
Dates and dinners are not the issue (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the post above properly, you'll see that it does not say Wales == Hitler or use a Hitler reference to slur Wales, it just uses Hitler as an extreme case to say don't equate the product with the person.
Re:Not a peach (Score:5, Informative)
Not just accused, but found guilty [provincialcourt.bc.ca] of harassment.
Re:Like Volkswagen (Score:4, Informative)
Damn, $1300 for four people? And I thought my girlfriends were fat! Poor Jimmy!
Re:More to the story? (Score:5, Informative)
I hadn't realized she'd become something of a minor celebrity since then. I'd had her pegged as ending up a bitter cat-person writing angry columns. I guess she managed to make a career out of that. Wikipedia mentions she ended up with Bill O'Reilly on Fox for a number of years... Figures. Crazy attracts crazy. And even THEY fired her.
If Jimmy Wales was keeping company with her... well... no wonder the breakup was bizarre enough to become newsworthy. As to charges of corruption... well.. you can learn something about a person by the company they keep. My assessment of Wales credibility is pretty low right now.
Re:Not a peach (Score:-1, Informative)
Knowing Rachel Marsden's track record, Wales should feel lucky he got out of the relationship with only some of his clothes being auctioned off.
Wikipedia is not a democracy. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Key word: Allegations (Score:2, Informative)
"In an interview with the Associated Press, Florence Devouard, who chairs 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."
Wales has (allegedly) abused his power before (Score:-1, Informative)
http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Jimbo's_birthday [wikitruth.info]
Spontaneously, Jimbo Wales' edit from above, where he said his mother told him differently, was deleted, just like that, using the Oversight function. In other words, Wales disappeared his own statements and edited so that he would win the argument.
Please let this sink in. Please realize the consequences.
After doing so, Wales went on the offensive, attacking people discussing his birthday as being August 7th: [6]
And it didn't take long for people to notice [8] that yes, the entire evidence of that edit had been deleted from Wikipedia:
Re:Like Volkswagen (Score:3, Informative)
Reductio at Hitlerum (Score:2, Informative)
It's still wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
It's not ethical. No part of Wikipedia's mission is providing expensive dinners to donors and administrators. The donor is essentially getting a kickback and the administrator is misappropriating funds.
I run a non-profit. When I'm eating on the non-profit tab, it's when I'm traveling on non-profit business and done in an economical manner - no cocktails for sure! If a potential donor/sponsor wants to talk about it over dinner, they pay for the dinner. They don't expect a non-profit to be paying for their dinner, and frankly, I think our donors/sponsors would find it a little bit odd were the non-profit they were supporting spending money on such things.
But I guess I must just deal with ethical people, not a bunch of white-collar cronies setting up ways to write off expensive dinners on their taxes.