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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'
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.
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...
[Citation Needed]
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.
I couldn't care less if they go all high-school on each others personal accounts, or whether political biases are enforced through some "admin" abuses - those pages are not those which I find useful.
You can have someone else edit you?
*calls up the wife*
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
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.
All this proves, even if true, is that the Wikipedians are human, just like the rest of us, and like to swing the lead or get something nice on expenses when possible.
Shock Story! Wikipedia moderators also human!
News at 11...
Godwin would have, too.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
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?
Speeding, by itself, isn't right or wrong. The law "don't speed" is for saftey of all, under most circumstances. However, there are exceptions to the "law" due to the fact of extenuating circumstances. In this case the siren and lights on emergency vehicles are indications of the exception in progress. So, your analogy is wrong on many levels.
A Hypocrite says "don't steal", which is wrong, and then gets caught taking something that is someone else's. The Hypocrite says "I did nothing wrong" and makes excuses as why what he did isn't wrong. A person with a momentary lapse of judgment will say "Oh shit, Sorry. How do I fix this". Generally speaking Hypocrites don't believe the rule(s) apply to them. Hypocrisy usually becomes clearer over time, and not always apparent at first glance.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And, ummm, why do we care? Are we all suddenly soap opera fans because it involves a 'geek'?
Citation
Simon's Rock College
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."
That's a bit mean. Wikipedia has obvious problems, but the fact that it is probably the world's largest book and is more or less accurate is an astonishing achievement. What it loses in accuracy or polish it makes up for in sheer breadth.
The problems it has occur largely because the management, and Wales in particular, are incompetent. Many of the obvious problems with Wikipedia could be solved by having professional administrators (at least at the top of the tree) who are barred from creating content, but merely enforce the rules. When those who create the content may also enforce the rules, it is obvious that there is the potential for conflict of interest. It is even worse when not only are those who create the content able to enforce the rules, but are able to themselves make the rules.
As it stands, Wikipedia's open structure encourages obsessives with major personality disorders. It's no surprise that the most influential admins tend to be obsessive, manipulative, vindictive scum, because the structure of the organization is such that obsessive, manipulative, vindictive scum will rise to the top. If you aren't an obsessive, you simply won't be able to match the work rate of people who are, and if you aren't Machiavellian, you will be beaten out by people who are. Communities need separation between those who make the rules, those who interpret them, and those who enforce them. Wikipedia doesn't have that, so the rules are simply interpreted according to the interests of the ruling clique.
It's all turned out rather like "Animal Farm" (with Wales as the swine in chief). Secret email lists, administrators who are seemingly able to break the rules, yet never be punished, while good faith editors whose agenda conflicts with those of the ruling clique are blocked based on the most trivial evidence. Mindless groupthink among the cabal. Rules continue to multiply like rabbits, many of them based on the weird personal agendas of admins. The Israel/Palestine articles are a shameful mess, etc.
Jimbo Wales has to go. Wikipedia is now one of the most important and influential sites on the net. It needs, competent and professional management.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
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