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Jimmy Wales Faces Allegations of Corruption
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.'"
That, and the fact that the Wikipedia elite seem to be so inept in keeping secret their devious plots.
Hey, internet celebrities are just as scandalous and shocking as television celebrities. It's like beer for your computer screen.
Hey that's funny, it doesn't talk about any of that on Jimmy Wales' wikipedia page...hmmm
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
i'm more than confident that he has been doing this long before it went public
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
No need to throw out the product with the person.
Not that I'm equating Wales with Hitler, just using an extreme case to make my point.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's like beer for your computer screen. Oh God, I can't get that image out of my mind. You bastard!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Wow, he used his *special* privileges to edit someone's Wikipedia article? Oh noes! Now maybe I'll use *my* special privileges to send around unauthorized copies of Linux!!!!
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
This case with Jimmy shows how open initiatives win the day again. It doesn't matter if Jimmy Wales gets thrown into jail for murder, or if his character is undermined. It doesn't matter, because the only thing that matters is the positive contribution he made by founding Wikipedia and his later life or his personal details don't effect that.
It is like science, it doesn't matter who comes up with the evidence or the theory to explain it. The only thing that matters whether it's correct or not.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
from other nonprofits? Some CEOs of nonprofits get paid hundreds of thousands per year of donated money, and this guy can't treat three friends to a $325 meal? Not saying I approve of his conduct, but this isn't really that damning.
Now the real problem is that he, the creator of wikipedia, hasn't been able to convince some private company to give him lots of money. You think that'd do pretty well on a resume.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Besides being a (former) talking head on Fox's Red Eye, Rachel Mardsen has been accused of harassment in the past. You might also note from the same article that she has falsely accused a man of sexual harassment. Ms. Mardsen target in the sexual harassment case claimed she sent him sexual e-mails and photographs.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
1) In the sidebar on that page is "S.F. nonprofit fires CFO over missing $3.6 million", so a $1300 dinner tab and an angry ex-mistress seem relatively tame by comparison.
2) Even by blog standards, "All's Wool that Ends Wool" is a pretty awful name.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
is no less corrupt than the boss at its head.
After all the other scandals, all the numerous people abused by stuck-up/corrupt twits high on their "admin" powers, all the constant bias and nonsense in the articles, it took this long for Jimbo's embezzlement to come out? Anyone with a clue figured out he was doing this years ago.
Now you know where your "donations" to the "wikimedia foundation" went... while you were suckered into giving him free labor.
[Citation Needed]
According to a front page story in today's Tampa Bay Times [http://www.tampabay.com/tbt/], on Saturday, Jimmy posted a notice in his Wikipedia entry that the romance with Rachel Marsden was over -- this was allegedly done prior to his sending her an IM informing her of the split. She is said to have retaliated by offering a shirt and jacket of Jimmy's for sale on eBay.
Good god, if this is corruption then about 95% of the people in middle and upper management should be in jail. When I read the headline I thought he had been caught embezzling a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars. I don't think that there are too many people who are innocent of having their company pay for an expense that was not 100% appropriate.
/.
Get real, this is small time stuff that is not even worth making it to the news much less
Excuse me, but this is not news.
Gee - what good is having power if you can't abuse it every once in a while?
is that for the whole Kobe beef cow?
Wikipedia link! bonus!
More music, fewer hits
KJimmy Wales is a "Conservative", the extreme kind called a "libertarian" (though there are plenty of libertarians who aren't "Conservative", Wales is the kind of libertarian who call themselves "Objectivists" ). Objectivists subscribe to the ideology put together by Ayn Rand that selfishness is the primary, the only virtue, the only possible way to see the world as it truly is.
Objectivism makes for some great fictional novels, like the allegories Rand wrote to tell people about the Objectivism she made up. But selfishness in that extreme is a pretty good excuse for corruption. Ask a Conservative about it.
BTW, doesn't Fark have an entire category of corruption and other stupidity called "Florida"? Seems inevitable that the embezzlement would take place there.
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make install -not war
You can have someone else edit you?
*calls up the wife*
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
my bad. I added another bouncy zero in my excitement. Back to ogling now...
Wikipedia isn't immune from mistakes. Then again, neither is Encyclopedia Brittancia.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Maybe the summary is bad or something, but I'm pretty sure *I* could change a Wikipedia entry on me without screwing the guy who invented it... did Jimbo's "abuse of power" there amount to anything that anyone with a web browser couldn't replicate?
Ok, here's the answer
"Some CEOs of nonprofits get paid hundreds of thousands per year of donated money,"
That's their salary. No one has a problem with CEO's paying for their friend's dinner out of their own pocket.
"and this guy can't treat three friends to a $325 meal?"
That IS NOT a salary, and as such, NOT out of Jimmy Wales' pocket.
I have no idea why you're finding it so hard to see such an obvious difference.
The difference is "Oh Crap, Sorry. How do I fix this?" verses "I did nothing wrong" Off-topic a bit but:
What if you really did nothing wrong and the person calling you a hypocrite is simply mistaken?
Example: Police officer races his personal car down a nearly-empty street at 3AM. You call him a hypocrite. Explanation: He is taking his kid to the emergency room and didn't want to wait for an ambulance, i.e. he's doing what any reasonable parent would do in the circumstance.
What if the definition of "wrong" in the situation is unclear? Saying "I did nothing wrong" may simply be stating your legitimate point of view.
Example: Police officer is driving his private car 5 MPH over the speed limit so he doesn't impede traffic on a crowded highway. Everyone else is going 5-7 MPH over the limit as well. By going only 5 over he is technically breaking the law without an emergency excuse but he is keeping himself and others safe while encouraging others to drive slightly slower.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's just common sense and in some states and countries it's required by law or custom.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Bye bye karma, it was nice knowin' ya!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
$325 for each steak dinner, what was it half a cow for each. I certainly hope they had lots of vintage wine with it or something like that. About the wiki entry, who cares its just a community website, its not like he edited a real encyclopedia...are they fishing for more visitors or something?
CEOs who collect a paycheck and even those who get reimbursed for meals have these expenses approved by someone other than themselves and/or given rules to follow for reimbursable expenses.
It's fine if he takes 3 friends out for an expensive meal if he follows the rules laid down by the foundation for reimbursed meal expenses. It's equally fine if he collects a $325/day paycheck instead, as long as it's done according to foundation rules and doesn't otherwise violate the law.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Godwin would have, too.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Ironically with all this news about him recently, his own page on wikipedia appears to be missing all of this info. Are the wiki-ites so dedicated that they can't post current news and criticism about him?
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
What percentage of the Slashdot populace has donated to Wikipedia?
What percentage of them would like to know that their donations went to unapproved steak dinners that we know of, and god know what else that we don't?
Sorry, if you make it your business to solicit money from me, then you make things like this my business.
And no, I don't consider the willingness to steal a small sum any different than the willingness to steal a large one.
[ALL CAPS]
"Rite us shinny burb on Wikipedia!!!" I can say I wuz goin wif their policy cuz teh editors shud ov caught mah writin?
[/ALL CAPS]
--Grammar Nazi of the stupid funny feline purrsuasion
[damn you Slashdot all-caps filter!!!]
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
At some point I picked up in slashdot comments about the whole antisocialmedia.net/Gary Weiss/Judd Bagley/Overstock.com mess and decided I was interested enough to spend the time (several hours) reading everything I could about it and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I haven't got the several hours more it would take to try to recreate and document my findings here in a slashdot post, but I came into this with no preconceived notions, and if I had any leanings, I really like wikipedia and wanted it to be in the right. But I mostly concluded otherwise. Yes, Judd Bagley took many inappropriate actions- but who cares, he's just some guy. It looks like Wikipedia took many more incorrect actions, and it's a foundation that is supposed to behave appropriately.
I found the documentation of rampant editorial abuse to pursue personal agendas, going all the way up the support of Jimbo, to be very convincing. Read anitsocialmedia.net, examine the documentation, look at attempts to counter Bagley's arguments on the web, and draw your own conclusions, but I came off extremely disappointed in Wikipedia, and will be even more suspicious of its content in the future. I already was prepared to take Wikipedia content with a grain of salt because it can be edited by anyone, but it's much worse to know that an editor can have their own petty dictatorial custodianship of an article where they deliberately delete well documented and referenced relevant facts, perpetuate falsehoods, don't let anyone else edit it or even discuss it on the discussion page, ban even extremely well-established editors with good reputations if they try to touch these articles, and even delete the history of the article and the history of their own edits and contributions. I still think wikipedia's valuable, because most articles aren't run this way, but I always have to keep in mind that some are, and I don't really know if I'm looking at something people were free to edit and debate on the talk page and try to work towards a consensus on, or the biased opinions of a single dictatorial editor.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Wales may be squandering Wikipedia funds, but that's not the same as "corruption" or embezzlement. As long as he officially requests the reimbursements from the foundation and the foundation pays and this is visible in its financial documents, it may be stupid on their part and his, but it's not wrongdoing.
Many non-profits, including so-called aid organizations, that have achieved much less than Wikipedia, pay their officers lavish salaries.
"AC": "Anonymous Coward", "Another Conservative"
Who pretends the point is somehow hard to see, and that cursing at me in a Slashdot post does anything but prove how stupid fake "Conservatives" are, especially when Conservatives' corruption is being exposed yet again.
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make install -not war
Is that like when you don't have that not-so-fresh feeling, but you say you do?
In the example of speeding to a hospital because the ambulance would be too slow, there is a conflict with the higher moral law that says you must save a life when you can.
In the example of speeding 5mph over on the highway, there is an alternative that satisfied the law and the moral code: Don't drive on roads that are unsafe to drive on at or below the speed limit. Now, is the cop in this example a hypocrite? It depends on what his moral code tells him. Generally speaking Hypocrites don't believe the rule(s) apply to them Sometimes, the rules really don't apply to a particular person or to a particular situation. You see on TV where cops lie or break the law during drug busts because the law allows them to do so. That is, the "normal rules" that apply to everyone else don't apply to them. That is but one example of many.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And there is currently no mention of the Rachel Marsden or spending issues. Seems there was an edit war going on.
You may not know Rachael, but I do. She is, simply put, a stalker who knows how to work the system and play the victim card. She got her swim coach fired after he spurned her obsessive and aggressive pursuits, stalked one of the women who believed her stories of victimization at the hand of said coach, and was actually convicted in 2004 of stalking a radio personality in Vancouver.
Do you honestly think this whole 'abuse of power' accusation is a coincidence? I think not.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
How can it stay objective with their funding coming from big biz?
I have noticed all the 'Spam entries' like Chipotle's restaurant.
When I added a bit on their prices , it was quickly removed.
According to Wikipedia's conflict of interest (COI) rules, there is nothing to prevent COI edits as long as they maintain Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. Editors are strongly discouraged from making COI edits because it's really really hard to avoid bias. But, nonetheless, it can be possible for someone deeply involved in something to write a nearly unbiased article, or make unbiased edits.
Given this, I don't see why Jimmy could not edit Marsden's article, as long as it was an objective edit. The idea that he handled it through other editors suggests that he was trying to hide something.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
And although a $1300 meal sounds expensive, the article doesn't actually say it was a dinner with friends. Maybe he dined with some corporate donors that would be responsible for contributing many times that amount back to the foundation.
Just confirms what I've known for years. Wikipedia succeeds despite its staff, not because of it.
Enron!
Perfect example.
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make install -not war
I'm frankly shocked that the person responsible for bomis.com would stoop to this level! In all seriousness, I don't think Jimmy would be a demi-god if he hadn't surrounded himself by weak-willed yet highly creative staff at Nupedia. I of course base this opinion solely on reading done at my favorite site, http://www.wikipedia.com/
If the charges are true then burn him for stealing from wikimedia, but short of that, who cares? I think that the guy has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations like this. The SFGate should actually report news instead of the possibility of news.
I'm not shocked at all. I keep up on the business world pretty well, and Jummy wales, as a businessman, is scum [citation needed]
Unlike the Google and Yahoo guys, Wikipedia seems to be run by someone without the "don't be evil" mantra.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know much about Wikipedia's charter (and I'm not interested enough to go find out), but it's more an issue of what he's authorized to do within that organization.
If, for example, the charter says to the equivalent of "So & so is entitled to $X amount dining/entertaining allowance", then, by definition, all the contributors to the nonprofit agree it, and this item isn't even news.
If, on the other hand, the charter says "No funds will be used for entertaining, food, or beverage." then we have an abuse of power.
If there's ambiguity... then...that's the downside of ambiguity.
I won't hijack the thread onto acceptable compensation for nonprofit organizations.
You stereotypers are all the same...
You're using her as bait, Master!
Good point.
The big difference is the Encyclopedia Brittanica is put out by an organization which can be held to account for mistakes, and correct them next edition. There is accountability with Wikipedia, but it's limited - how do you hold an anonymous IP address from one of its thousands of editors accountable? Better ask the RIAA how they do it.
But anyone using Wikipedia - or the encyclopedia - for any kind of meaningful research, and for citation, deserves a smack upside the head with Brittanica's fattest volume. They're starting points, nothing more, not the sum of all human knowledge.
Bill Gates, on the other hand, uses his philanthropy to Microsoft's benefit. Even the big press meeting where Warren Buffett made his announcements was on a stage draped in Microsoft ad material. Clearly Microsoft was supposed to absorb some of the good karma.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I once managed to spend $90 per head in a steak house directly opposite the Opera House in Portland, OR. For that we got a very large steak, a poor quality baked potato (no texture) and broccoli! Won't go there again. I figure we paid $35 each for the meal and $55 for the nice white linen tablecloth and general ambience (of which it had lots because it was almost deserted even immediately after the Opera).
But that wasn't on expenses, thank god.
Squirrel!
Citation
Simon's Rock College
Do people know that Jimbo spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to get Wikipedia started? He's also on the board so $1300 is basically nothing compared to what he's given the foundation.
He has only himself to blame. Had he actually read the original article he was so busy screwing with in between "marathon sex" sessions, he would've known what he was up against!
From the article:
"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."
It's unfortunate that the central issue among commenters here isn't that Wales may or may not have abused his expense account (and really, he'd be far from the first to do so), it's that this puts the Rachel Marsden editing scuffle from a few months back into an a new light:
http://talkcontribs.blogspot.com/2007/06/whitewash-on-wikipedia.html
Now, there's a chicken-and-egg problem here (was work done on the articles in question done before or after work was done on Wales?) but this kind of bending of the facts to suit a Wales (or anyone with responsibility at Wikipedia) really gives Wikipedia a black eye. If a normal media executive distorted facts about someone he/she was personally involved with, there would be a call from directors for a resignation if for no other reason than to save the organization's reputation. Between this and the overstock.com fiasco, it might be time for some resignations to happen before their credibility is overly damaged.
--srj/mmv
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
That's it.
BY the way, the person that calls Godwin's law is the looser.
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/godwin.html
Now, the posted did not qualify as a candidate for Godwin's law
Saying:
"People who want gun control as as bad as Hitler." Does warrant an invocation of the law
"Hitler took gun's away from people." does not(In most contexts)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The facts seem to be this:
1) He thought a $1300 meal was okay and submitted it. Having worked in the Non-Profit sector, $1300 is a big deal. In particular for an organization that goes around to the general public with it's hat in it's hand on a regular basis. How he wants to run his for profit is one thing, this is another.
2) The board of directors thought it was a big enough deal that they cut his Amex card in half. Organization executives don't loose charging privileges over a simple misunderstandings and mistakes. It just doesn't happen and there's no way to spin it otherwise.
My Opinion is this:
He's stealing from all of us that have donated money to the cause. It's pretty crappy. I think Wikipedia is one of those organizations that succeeds despite the actions of it's organizer and editors.
a moderators religious view begin infecting the science pages. So, it may nit involve your use now, but it could.
That is why you should care.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I breathlessly browsed over to Wikipedia.org. Good news, it's still useful.
Sounds like you dated her yourself.
The truth is an offense, but not a sin.------R. N. Marley
Was reading about this earlier, and the $1300 dollar steak dinner is a bit of a red herring. The story is that Jimmy asked for it to be covered, and it was refused. So, he's not abusing the expense account, he's only trying to ... and there was at least one "check and balance" in place to keep it from happening.
As for the stuff about Marsden, I'd take it with some grains of salt attached. She's a nutbar, and has been well-covered in the Canadian media for potential false allegations of sexual misconduct against an athletic coach of hers, stalking (on her part), getting fired, etc.
Jimmy Wales is likely guilty of letting wealth and fame go to his head, but he's had a LOT of help getting there.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
Well it's good to know you learned something as a child, because apparently it wasn't social skills. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that people find it difficult to work for you or with you, likely because you're the same kind of douchebag who keeps the pencils under lock and key and raves about theft when someone uses more than 4-5 squares of toilet paper.
I've tried several times to add an 'h' to his last name but it keeps getting reverted.
Buying a server you don't need would be squandering funds. Using company funds for personal expenses is the definition of embezzlement. It is similar to putting company funds into a personal bank account for later use of personal expenses. I would shed no tears over Jimmy Wales going to jail. Maybe it is common, but that doesn't make it right, legal, or acceptable.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Issues with editors is a management issue for the foundation.
The similar problem where the more persistent individual will generally win an edit war is a wiki problem. I don't think it is that big a deal, but it moderates the energy I personally spend worrying about other control issues and policies, because it is more fundamental and nearly impossible to work around without abandoning 'wiki'.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How long before we see a headline "Outlaw Jimmy Wales"
Tell the WikiTruth.
I love the fact that there is exactly one Godwin in this article thread.
Check the facts - use Wikipedia!
LOL
He would not have had to lie if people had not started a witch hunt on his sexual escapade. In more "open" countries, it does not matter if the president has got a bastard child and show in public with her (France , Miteran).
QUOTE: Jimbo is like a 40 year old man, he should know better than to stick his dick into some crazy woman with a history of stalking.
Most men I know will not take the personality of the woman into account, if she is attractive , and if they get half a chance to stick their dick in her.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If she gives me so much as a quarter chance I'm going for it. Give me a whiff of a hint of a nuance of a chance and I'll stalk her...
Pussy trumps crazy every time. Besides it's pretty hard to be crazier then me.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I worked for some time as a consultant in the Electric Utility Industry.
During that time I learned a procedure commonly used to keep clients at MUDs, PUDs etc happy. As non-profits their senior staff's expenses were watched carefully. Hence no expensive meals for them. We as consultants would take the senior staff and their wives out to the best places in town. $1300 for four would have been a cheap night. We proceeded to add 12% as a 'billing fee' and bill the client.
Never a problem.
Everybody understood what was going on. Everybody. Except a few ratepayers. Suckers, thanks for the Kobe beef and all that wine.
The point is even if we skirted the rules, we knew very well where the boundary line was and didn't cross it. I once tried to expense titty bar costs, couldn't get receipts from the strippers though.
The BOFH would have loved us. One hand washes the other...keep those license fees coming and we'll keep buying the good stuff.
I blew it by telling a few clients more of less the truth about a software products quality level (it was right in front of them). After that they kept me off the road.
My point of this ramble. I'm sure there were plenty of ways to get his expensive meal paid for. He just didn't think he needed to go through the motion as it was 'good to be the king'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's right. The law is a cautionary argument to be used against association fallacies like "the Nazis supported X, so X must be evil" (Reductio ad Hitlerum). As the previous post on Volkswagen made the reversal comparison (in the common counter-fallacy way: "yeah, and Hitler was vegetarian, so it meat!"), is not to be Godwin'ed
Dawkins Revisited: A person is shit's way of making more shit -- Steve Barnett, anthropologist.
Whether it's common or not is irrelevant.
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.
paintball
Spending $100 to save $35 on taxes does not leave you with more money to do anything.
paintball
From what I have gathered Mr Wales is a bit of loony, doesn't he call himself the spirtual leader of Wiki or some such nonsense? Didn't Sanger leave Wikipedia because Wales was being such a nob-cheese about everything? I like Wiki, it's not that bad, but I only use it to look up trivial stuff like band info and the odd historical bit of info, silly stuff like dates of major events, but there is no way I would rely on it for a life saving thing or coursework for a qualification, too many people out there in user land, think the Wiki can be relied on for solid facts!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
Expensing business dinners is a pretty common business practice in technology companies -- even expensive dinners. I've expensed a $2000 dinner before (for 10 people, though).
Of course, it should have some kind of connection to business -- whether it's a celebratory dinner (usually paid for), or a sales dinner, or one to solicit doners, etc...
-Stu
One thing I don't understand about Americans (as a non-American).
Jimmy Wales is pretty liberal (seeing as he operated his own p0rn network).
Now this Rachel Marsden is described as a Canadian conservative columnist. How the heck can they be in a relationship? Is conservatism different? How can this work?
Yes, that was interesting. Basically, Matanmoreland has been abusing sockpuppet accounts to influence articles (general reckoning is that, if he's who people suspect he is, he also has a massive conflict of interest). He's been caught once before and had his sockpuppets taken away (though not without Wikipedia banning and ignoring the first few people who pointed the issue out).
Recently, someone put together strong evidence that another account - Samiharris - was a sockpuppet of him (this has been suspected for ages, but he was careful enough to make it hard to prove, and anyone claiming it was permanently banned, usually as a sockpuppet of WordBomb). The ArbCom decided the evidence wasn't enough. Never mind that Wikipedia has been permanently banning anyone who takes the other side to him on these areas as sockpuppets on flimsy (and often incorrect) grounds for some time.
There was also an interesting bit where Jimmy Wales himself intervened to stop a prolific editor inserting a relevant and cited statement from a New York Times article on the Gary Weiss page, because it embarassed Weiss. It also embarassed various other people, but since they were on the other side of the issue, using it on their articles was OK. Matanmoreland (suspected to be Gary Weiss himself, though don't say that on Wikipedia unless you want to be banned) then used this to keep said link off the article.
Sounds like some of the "peer reviewed" journals and articles.