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.'"

Comments

Not a peach

[DrWho520]

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.

Re:Not a peach

[cperciva]

Rachel Mardsen has been accused of harassment in the past.

Not just accused, but found guilty of harassment.

Dates and dinners are not the issue

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Clinton didn't get into trouble for getting a blowjob and vandalising a cigar. No he got into trouble for lying. Jimmy Wales is getting scorched because he made a bunch of rules and flagrantly ignores them when it suits his needs. The real bad thing here is that it undermines the whole supposed democratic nature of wikipedia. Jimmy Wales might have started Wikipedia (arguably by editing Sanger out of the Wikipedia history himself), but Wikipedia is now bigger than Jimmy.

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:Like Volkswagen

[spun]

So we've Godwinned a thread that talks about Jimmy Wales "evil plot" to take 3 people out to an expensive dinner
Damn, $1300 for four people? And I thought my girlfriends were fat! Poor Jimmy! That's not food, that's booze. The food came to no more than $400, most likely. The rest was $200/bottle champagne & top shelf cocktails. Oh, and the $200 tip. $1,300 on four people is high end, but not over the top. Most major cities have at least a half dozen restaurants where you can drop that kind of cash without doing anything weird.

Re:More to the story?

[vux984]

That Marsden chick is nuts. I went to high school with her, and I was attending university at SFU at the same time her 'sex harrassment scandal' and got to see that unfold up close. We weren't in the same circle, but . "Nuts" doesn't really begin to cover it. Vindictive, manipulative, self-centered, detached from reality, borderline sociopathic ... I could go on.

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.

Wikipedia is not a democracy.

[students]

Citation

Re:Key word: Allegations

[NeoSkink]

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."

Re:Like Volkswagen

[ajs]

$1,300 on four people is high end, but not over the top. Most major cities have at least a half dozen restaurants where you can drop that kind of cash without doing anything weird. And what's probably more interesting: they're the sorts of places that founders of non-profits tend to take prospective sources of large donations. I had a friend who worked for a medium-large non-profit, and he would not have batted an eye at this, had he been closing in on a $1m or larger donation. It's chump change compared to the potential benefit, and if it makes the person more comfortable donating, you just do it.

Reductio at Hitlerum

[elguillelmo]

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

It's still wrong.

[raehl]

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.