Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
So we've Godwinned a thread that talks about Jimmy Wales "evil plot" to take 3 people out to an expensive dinner and edit his date's user page.
Really? That's what we're going to accuse him of? And with hitler references, no less?
Sad.
What's really sad is that when we talk about the head of SCO or Microsoft, we require much more evil before we start throwing rocks than we do for Google or Wikipedia, both of which have contributed more to Open Source than the vast majority of their peers and frankly made the world just a little bit more useful in their wake.