Gawker: valleywag, wikpedia

Jimmy Wales's bigger scandal: Elevation Partners

Owen Thomas — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:47:12 EDT

The New York Times has picked up Valleywag's extensive reporting on the ongoing Jimmy Wales scandal (How to decode the Times story: Whenever they say "a gossip Web site," they mean us.) While most of the story is a rehash, it does raise one interesting point: What's the relationship between Wikipedia and VC firm Elevation Partners? Roger McNamee of Elevation insists he's just acting as a donor and volunteer fundraiser in pulling in $1 million for Wales's Wikimedia Foundation nonprofit. But Wales admits in the article to proposing Wikipedia-branded business ventures like a trivia game or a TV documentary, with funding from Elevation Partners. Another plan we've heard: Changing the terms by which Wikipedia contributors add to the online encyclopedia to a more liberal Creative Commons license. That would make the site's content more readily reused in, say, printed works sold for profit. (Illustration by a newspaper)

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 chair misleads reporter to protect junket junkie Jimmy Wales

Owen Thomas — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:20:11 EST

Did Jimmy Wales misuse funds from the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit he set up in 2003 to oversee Wikipedia? Publicly, the foundation's leaders are saying no. Privately, foundation chair Florence Devouard has alternately bragged about how she's mislead reporters and upbraided Wales over the scandal.

In a message to an internal Wikipedia mailing list obtained by an AP reporter, she wrote: "I find (it) tiring to see how you are constantly trying to rewrite the past. Get a grip!" Devouard, you'll recall, is said to have asked Wales if he was buying his wife a "gold-plated washing machine" with the speaking fees he was earning. If only she were so forthright about Wales in public. (Photo by Wikinews Reports)