Because W is a print magazine — the kind of source Wikipedia's fussy editors favor — Pam's characterization of Wales has made it into his Wikipedia entry. "His whole ‘Mr. Save the World’ is so contrary to what he said every day for seven years," Pam told W. She also said that Wales, a follower of Ayn Rand, discouraged her from pursuing a nursing career; his Objectivist beliefs, she suggested, made him look down on anyone pursuing work that smacked of altruism. The opinions Wales expressed to Pam then are not fashionable among his recently acquired limousine-liberal friends.

Pam, who has since remarried, had stayed close to Wales for some time after their divorce. (Shades of Sweet Home Alabama: We've learned that Wales didn't bother to finalize their divorce until shortly after Pam told him she was planning to marry someone else.) A friend says Pam only fell out with her ex-husband over his treatment of Christine, his current wife, from whom he is separated.

Most disturbingly, he has called her three times since the W article came out, announcing his plans to visit her, uninvited, while he's in Alabama. Wales even had his sister email Pam to let her know he wanted to speak to her. Obviously, there are some things in Wales's life that can't be resolved with an old-fashioned edit war.

(Photoillustration by Jackson West)

She is none other than Christine Wales, Jimmy's wife, who is divorcing him. A cruel jibe? Certainly. And predictable. "Obviously lots of people are going to put a link to something horrible into search results just to see what happens," Wales tells Forbes. But it's informative all the same. What the picture's inclusion by some online vandal shows is that Wikia Search, Wales's promised "Google killer," is nothing more than a playground for juvenile twerps. That in turn confirms the maxim that every online community is shaped by the personality of its founder.

Not that Wikia is likely to get much more of Wales's time. He told the company's board that he would spend 10 percent of his time on Wikipedia, and 90 percent on Wikia, a promise he swiftly broke. There's no reason to expect that a change in scenery would change Wales's ways.

His domestic life is in no better a state. His wife, Christine, whom he is divorcing, has banned him from staying at their St. Petersburg, Fla. house on his infrequent visits to see his young daughter, we hear. A wise move on her part, since Wales conducted some of his obscene sex chats with Marsden from the guest bedroom.

"Everything with Jimbo is the creating of an illusion," says a source who knows Wales. "The illusion of being a good husband, the illusion of working everyday, the illusion of having ideas."

Which makes New York the perfect venue for Wales. From the theatricality of Broadway to the fanciful financial vehicles of Wall Street, New York is a manufactory of make-believe. The island of Manhattan increasingly resembles one large stage set — an artifice of a city. This is a man who's made his career on pretense, on cajoling others to labor for him. Jimmy Wales has come home. San Francisco will not miss him.

(Photo by Mary S. Butler, on a previous Wales visit to New York)