Gawker: valleywag, jeff merkey

For once I believe Jimmy Wales

Paul Boutin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Slashdot and the BBC are reporting something we blogged a week ago: Former Novell chief scientist Jeff Merkey claims Wikipedia big-dog Jimmy Wales approached him for a $5,000 donation to the cause in exchange for cleaning up Merkey's Wikipedia entry. UPI tidily summarizes: "Wales did erase a previous entry, replacing it with an entry with limited editing access." True, here's Jimmy's note about it. So why don't I trust Merkey? Because I've read his post-donation Wikipedia entry. Even after filtering the freetard hysteria from his open-source enemies, the guy's record says "crank" to me.

Donor, ex-girlfriend accuse Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia extortion

Owen Thomas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:01:09 EDT

Jeff Merkey, a former Novell chief scientist, has issued a statement accusing Jimmy Wales of extortion. Merkey says that Wales offered him "special protection" for his Wikipedia entry in exchange for a "substantial" donation to Wales's Wikimedia Foundation. After Merkey withdrew his donation over concerns that the funds were being mismanaged, he was banned from the site for "frivolous and unsubstantiated claims." Merkey's not the only one: Rachel Marsden, Wales's ex-girlfriend, has privately threatened Wales with a lawsuit over what she claims are hostile revisions to her Wikipedia entry which began after they broke up. While they were together, Wales promised Marsden swift action on edits so he could "continue fucking [her] brains out." After the jump, Merkey's statement and Marsden's email.

Merkey's extortion charge:

According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales agreed that in exchange for a substantial donation and other financial support of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wales would use his influence to make Merkey's article adhere to Wikipedia's stated policies with regard to internet libel "as a courtesty" and place Merkey under his "special protection" as an editor. Merkey later withdrew his financial support of the Wikipedia project after reviewing evidence of diversion and mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees and was immediately banned from the Wikipedia site by the Arbitration Committee for frivilous and unsubstanciated claims after he terminated the payments of $5,000.00 per year to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Marsden's lawsuit threat:

(Photo of Wales via Partial Immortalization)

Wikipedia boss plays the Disgruntled Former Employee card

Paul Boutin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:00:01 EST

You're bored with the whole thing, but watch and learn, people. This is media training at its finest. "What's happening here is we have a disgruntled former employee. This guy has a blog, and he's used that blog as a platform to spread a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip. It's hard for us to even respond to — I don't know if you've read it, but it's not entirely even clear necessarily always what's being alleged." — Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner on CNET. She praises ex-chair Jimmy Wales's saintly, parsimonious behavior all the way back to last summer.

That's at least a year after the dates of the claims made by former employee Danny Wool, who was pretty clear on Monday that "This questionable use of Foundation funds stopped in 2006, largely because Jimbeau's credit card was taken away." CNET didn't ask Gardner to confirm or deny the claims made by non-former-employees, including the Slashdot-suing entrepreneur who allegedly got a page erased in exchange for a $5,000 donation.

Wikipedia scam made easy for reporters

Paul Boutin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:40:00 EST

Are you an investigative journalist? Here's a cheat sheet, with sources: The single worst charge against Wikipedia chair emeritus Jimmy Wales is that he erased a $5,000 donor's embarrassing page history, an act akin to shredding a dossier or spiking a feature story. This allegation allegedly (pardon my reporter-speak) comes from the donor himself, former Novell chief scientist Jeff V. Merkey. Wikipedia's own records show that Merkey donated, and that Wikipedia editors complained when Wales scrubbed Merkey's page completely. Why is this worse than Wales editing his girlfriend's page? If you're a gumshoe reporter, you get it already.

If true, Wales's act makes all donors suspect. It also implies there may be other off-the-record "donors" who've paid to whitewash their Wikipedia pages. $5,000 or even $500,000 is nothing to a multinational corporation or wealthy politician with a checkered past. For all we know, the millions of kids who use Wikipedia for their homework are cribbing from entries that aren't group editorial, but paid advertorial.

Need a source with an opposing view? I suggest Toronto Globe and Mail technology journalist Mathew Ingram. He wrote Wednesday that if Wales really did take $5,000 for Wikipedia in exchange for deleting Merkey's page, it "is of no interest to me, nor do I think it's particularly relevant to what matters about Wikipedia." Ask Ingram the newspaper journalist to explain how paying to have your public record erased from the world's biggest and most-read encyclopedia doesn't matter. That would be interesting to read.

Wales accused of trading edits for donations

Paul Boutin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:19:58 EST

A post at AntiSocialMedia.net that's best quoted verbatim:

According to [former Novell chief scientist Jeff] Merkey, in 2006, Wales told him that in exchange for a substantial donation, Wales could use his influence to make Merkey's article more agreeable. Merkey made a $5,000 donation and hinted at the possibility of something much larger in the future.
Merkey claims, and the record confirms, that following his donation, Wales personally made several edits to the Merkey article, including a complete blanking of the article and destruction of its edit history.