It's a charity. Nobody is making any money from the organization. Nobody has made any money, and nobody will ever get rich from it because we're never going to sell it. We're not open for business; we're not looking for investment.

Gardner goes on to note the many ways in which the foundation has cleaned up its act under her rule — though some of her claims seem exaggerated. As with so many ex-journalists, Gardner makes an excellent spin doctor. Behind the little fibs and fudges, here's the big truth she's hiding: Wales has attempted, several times, to profit from Wikipedia. And in one way, he's succeeded.

In a 2006 meeting in Mexico City, Wales openly discussed the prospect of commercializing Wikipedia with Bono, the rock star, and Marc Bodnick, a Silicon Valley investor and Bono's colleague at private-equity firm Elevation Partners. Roger McNamee, another Elevation Partners money manager, orchestrated the Wikimedia Foundation's relocation to San Francisco and the hiring of Gardner as its executive director.

Those moneymaking efforts have, to date, gone nowhere. But that doesn't mean Wales didn't try. Wikia, his for-profit wiki startup, was another effort to make money off the Wikipedia brand, though that has mostly floundered; the market share of Wikia Search, the effort Wales has worked most closely on, is infinitesimal.

Where Wales has been successful in making money: His speaking gigs. He's said to be traveling 250 days out of the year, and often gives paid speeches while on tour, garnering $30,000 to $90,000 per event. People aware of Wales's dealings with the Wikimedia Foundation say he pockets those fees rather than give them to the nonprofit — even though his status as cofounder of the online encyclopedia is the only reason anyone's interested in hearing Wales talk.

That's where Gardner is, at long last, hitting Wales where it hurts — his pocketbook. How so? By competing with him.

Buried in a lengthy update for the foundation's board, Gardner included this note:

Sue is now represented by The Lavin Agency for speaking engagements. Her fees will be paid to the Wikimedia Foundation.

That Gardner's fees would be paid to her employer only makes sense, since she's speaking in her capacity as the foundation's executive director. It would hardly be worth nothing — except to draw a contrast to Wales's venal abuse of his role as the site's cofounder. It's a big shift from March, when Gardner was defending Wales as "modest" and "frugal."

Wales has long tried to portray himself as Wikipedia's "hereditary monarch," a role the foundation's board nodded to when they created a permanent board seat for him. That Gardner is gunning for Wales's speaking gigs suggests that she's realized he's more of a liability than an asset for Wikipedia. She's ready and willing to displace him as the community's leader. When Wales and Gardner met up in Amsterdam for a friendly chat about her taking the top job at Wikipedia, who was taking advantage of whom?

Wales's deep thought, which ends the piece:

I like to think about how there are about a billion people online now, and in the next five to 10 years there is going to be the next billion coming online. Interesting things are going to happen.

Those who have attended Wales's speeches know this is par for the course; Wales says things that seem like they ought to be interesting, but are, on inspection, not. Only the ranks of cultishly fervid listeners hanging on his every word manage to create the illusion of importance.

Indeed, the illusion of importance is what unites Wales and Wikipedia. W managed to find Wales's first wife, Pam, who recounts how Wales in his 20s dreamed of owning a castle and being a millionaire before he was 40.

Instead, he ended up as an options trader. He often couches his biographies to suggest that the money he made trading options let him fund Bomis, the porn portal from which Wikipedia sprang. The truth, people close to Wales say: He was an utter failure as a trader, and the money behind Bomis came from somewhere else. Wikipedia, as a nonprofit, has not paid off for Wales; nor has, to date, Wikia, his for-profit wiki startup, which he has mostly neglected.

Wales has been a failure at love, too. After Pam came his second wife, Christine, from whom he is separated. His entanglement with Canadian political pundit Rachel Marsden was brief, torrid, and ill-fated. He has estranged some of his oldest friends, substituting celebrities like Bono and Desmond Tutu for them.

With neither money nor love, what's left? Fame, but of an empty sort; the kind of fame that leads to strangers Twittering about him in airports. Not a fame that profits Wales, except for the speaking fees; and not a fame that makes his life better. His quest for money has veered strangely off course. Middle-aged, muddle-brained, and middle-income, Wales has realized none of his original ambitions. And the worst part? Everyone knows it.

(Photo by Anthony Blasko/W Magazine)

Instead, Lih got a 408-word lecture from Möller, who runs Wikipedia's technology and volunteer-editing operations (when he's not defending child pornography, that is), about how Lih should have read the manual. In the time he took to write that comment, couldn't he have called Lih and offered assistance?

He could have, but he wouldn't. Möller, a longtime Wikipedia editor before he became a staffer at the foundation, shows the Wikipedia culture Lih chronicles at its very worst: Insisting on process rather than solving problems, lecturing and hectoring online rather than reaching out. Möller isn't some aberration; he's entirely typical of the breed he now oversees. Wikipedia's readers may deserve better, but its editors surely don't.

With 600 conferencegoers, attendance is down, but not dramatically. It's not a boycott; it's a borecott. But 600 followers devoted enough to trek to Alexandria are more than enough to puff up Wales's ego. They think they're attending a conference; like the postadolescents ringing Wales at Foo Camp, they're really just playing his game.

Gardner did, however overspend by $60,000 in finance and administration — a sum which Wool believes mostly went to Mona Venkateswaran, whom he describes as a "crony" of Gardner's from the Canadian Broadcasting Company, where Gardner previously worked. One wonders if Venkateswaran's financial-accountant charter is good enough to let her verify this calculation: Instead of 61 percent of every donated dollar going to support Wikipedia's technology and programs to support its mission, only about 35 percent did.

Any news organization struggles with covering itself, all the more so when, as with Wikinews, the authors are unpaid volunteers who do not report to anyone. But that difficulty makes the hamhanded approach the Wikimedia Foundation has taken all the worse. Contributor Jason Safoutin recently told Valleywag that Wikimedia administrators, acting at the behest of foundation lawyer Mike Godwin, deleted two articles he wrote, one on a legal case involving literary agent Barbara Bauer, and another looking into Wikimedia Foundation deputy director Erik Möller, the outspoken defender of pedophilia.

But let's return to Wales's supposed interest in the Mormon copyright fracas. Likely he's just concerned with protecting Wikimedia's legal position against the church's claim, which seems specious; the document in question was linked to by Wikinews but not published on the site.

But the document itself is intriguing. A set of directions for church leaders, it was written in part by Lorenzo Snow, who is an ancestor of Michael Snow. Snow, a devout Mormon, serves with Wales on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. On his Wikipedia user page, Snow maintains that he is a devotee of Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" principle. But one wonders how he can stay neutral on this particular issue.

Or so says Wikimedia lawyer Mike Godwin, who recently posted this on a foundation mailing list:

I should add that there is a complicating factor with regard to Sec. 230, and that's that while simple removal is protected, it's unclear whether every court would agree that more subtle substantive editing is protected — by engaging in the development of the content of an article, the Foundation and its agents or employees may unintentionally negate Sec. 230 immunity, depending on the scope and substance of the editing. That's a legal question that I'm studiously avoiding investing the Foundation's donated funds in finding an answer to. I'd rather see a richer defendant sort that one out for us.

Marsden, who is seeking to have her biography removed from Wikipedia altogether, writes:

It would appear that the approach you describe directly contradicts the spirit of the CDA, which claims that Internet providers are merely providing a blank bulletin board, where people can post whatever they want. That is only true, however, insofar as the owners of the bulletin board do not interfere with what is posted there. It is my understanding, based on extensive legal consultation, that the moment they decide to take action regarding postings, they are liable for everything that is on it.

Jimmy Wales, my ex-boyfriend and Wikimedia Board member, admits publicly to having my article altered. In other words, he is admitting that he is essentially responsible for the content of the bulletin board—he can influence what it says, and the law says that since he can, he should. In other words, the safe harbour—I am not responsible for what people post on my bulletin board—goes right out the window.

But the question isn't so much Marsden's page, or her individual case. If she does not test the law, someone else will. The larger question is whether Wikipedia loses its legal protections if its board members or employees involve themselves in any way in the editing of the site. The answer may well lie in the courts, thanks to Wales's thoughtless actions. If that happens, Wikipedia will not be the better off for it. But why should Wales care? He got his fling.

[May 11 2008 00:18:32] <jwales> [00:15] <jwales> Well one piece of useful information is that as far as I am aware, there is absolutely no truth to there being an FBI investigation.
[May 11 2008 00:18:46] <jwales> [00:16] <jwales> I do not think images should be removed just because of a moral panic... but perhaps just as importantly, I do not think images should be kept just to defy a moral panic.
[May 11 2008 00:18:52] <jwales> that is not exactly a lecture
[May 11 2008 00:19:05] <jwales> I was talking about the story in worldnetdaily
[May 11 2008 00:35:33] <jwales> "I seem to recall a Wikipedian policy that says just because an image is schocking doesn't mean it should be excluded" - but just as importantly... just because it is shocking is certainly not an argument for *inclusion*
[May 11 2008 00:44:31] <jwales> so on this VK image
[May 11 2008 00:45:04] <jwales> I think it is a really difficult borderline case and I think people should be able to debate it with mutual respect.
[May 11 2008 00:45:55] <jwales> I wonder: was the album cover *legally* banned in the US?
[May 11 2008 00:45:59] <jwales> as in, a court case?
[May 11 2008 00:46:05] <jwales> that would have to be in federal court I suppose
[May 11 2008 00:46:10] <jwales> and there would have been an appeal, I suppose
[May 11 2008 00:46:11] <jwales> and so on
[May 11 2008 00:46:24] <jwales> as opposed to merely being "banned by the record company" for sales reasons or whatever

Gardner has a difficult choice. Keeping Möller as an employee seems untenable; no respectable donor will want their money handled by someone who has conducted such distasteful philosophical hair-splitting about pedophilia, a subject on which the civilized world has an unqualified negative opinion.

Yet she hired Möller for a reason: To buy him off. Möller has never made any secret of his plan to profit from his work on Wikipedia, and getting on the payroll has realized that dream. For Gardner, it accomplished the goal of keeping her friends close, but her enemies closer; Möller is in the United States on a work visa, which Gardner controls. And getting him to resign as a director helped her move towards her goal of controlling the board.

Gardner has a choice: She can either admit that she was sloppy, and failed to check Möller's background. Or she can admit that she was conniving, appointing him to his job and hoping no one would notice. Either way, she looks weak. And that's the one thing she can't stand.

(Photo by Gerard Meijssen)

So concerned that he monitors articles on child sexuality on Wikipedia personally. So concerned that he has started Wikiyouth, an organization unaffiliated with Wikipedia which attempts to "protect" children from "fearful adults." So concerned that he has, in the past, posted naked pictures of children in sexual poses to his website, The Humanist.

Before becoming the Wikimedia Foundation's deputy director, Möller was elected to the nonprofit's board of directors by Wikipedia's users. What this points to: The problem goes much deeper than Möller. Wikipedia's inner circles have been taken over by an extreme cadre of advocates of "free culture" whose beliefs boil down to not having a problem with children seeing porn.

They're entitled to their point of view, of course. But they can hardly pretend that, compared to mainstream thought on the subject that it is, in Wikipedia parlance, a "neutral" one. And Wikimedia Foundation can hardly expect to continue raising millions of dollars from mainstream organizations like the Sloan Foundation if it tolerates the likes of Möller in its top ranks.

One wonders if trustees of the Sloan Foundation, which recently donated millions to Wikipedia after Möller pitched them, share his views on pedophilia. BoyLinks finds his pro-pedophilia arguments agreeable, as does Martijn, a Dutch counterpart to the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

Möller himself appears to be growing aware of the need to whitewash his history. He recently removed a vile image of child pornography from his Humanist.de website. But evidence remains in Google's cache.

The notion of a person with such views shaping Wikipedia's articles on "child sexuality" is unsettling enough. What critics of Möller should find equally disturbing is what, exactly Möller hopes to accomplish in his official role at Wikipedia. He has long made no secret that, like founder Jimmy Wales, he, too, wants to profit from the work of Wikipedia's many volunteer editors. Since January, he's been drawing a paycheck from the Wikimedia Foundation. But I doubt his financial goals end there. If Wikipedia starts selling advertising, or otherwise profiting from its users' work, will Möller argue that the site's users were asking for it?

(Photo by Leonard Witt)

Not that she needs the help. The foundation's bylaws only require that a majority of its board members be "elected or appointed from the community." The spirit of the term "community" suggests those who actively edit Wikipedia; Wikipedia was originally conceived as a membership organization. But that plan was abandoned, the bylaws rewritten. The Wikimedia Foundation's board can define "community" as it sees fit.

By right, the board could declare that, say, Roger McNamee, the Elevation Partners cofounder who helped broker $1 million in donations recently, was a member of the community, by virtue of his financial support.

The current board, of which three out of seven members are elected, would likely oppose such a move. But three more Gardner-approved appointees could likely swing the vote the other way. And then the board could redefine "community," or just rewrite the bylaws altogether.

Only one seat is up for election in the short term. Conveniently, it is that of board chair Florence Nibart-Devouard, who has consistently led the opposition to Gardner's moves. She is unlikely to stand for reelection in July, we hear. Wikipedians may elect a new board member in protest, but at the cost of losing the most effective resistance they have to Sue Gardner's quiet takeover. (Users have started a toothless online petition.)

The most curious seat is Wales's. It is reserved for a "community founder," and according to Wikimedia vice chair Jan-Bart de Vreede, if Wales does not occupy it, it will go empty. Here's an amusing thought: Why not have Larry Sanger, whom some say has a better claim to founding Wikipedia than Wales, bid for the spot in December, when Wales's term expires?

If the board rejects Sanger for the "community founder" spot, it will have to admit the truth: Jimmy Wales gets a board seat not because he was elected to it. Not because he has any distinct competence. Not because he is popular with the chapters. No, Wales gets a board seat because he's special. This isn't gerrymandering. It's Jimmymandering.

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)

The board, led by Florence Devouard, refused to sign. Among other things, the poorly written agreement made board members sound like employees who reported to Wikipedia staff, rather than the other way around. Gardner surely dodged a bullet when they refused to sign, though. Imagine if Jimmy Wales answered to Gardner. Wouldn't he have a sexual harassment case?

More on Gardner's qualifications, from her LinkedIn bio:

As a journalist, she specialized in pop culture, social issues and media analysis, covering stories such as manipulation of the news media during the first Gulf War, the rise of gated communities in California, the racial implications of the return of the death penalty to New York, changing feminist attitudes towards pornography, the dawn of interactive media, and the rise and fall of rave culture in the UK.

Marsden's extreme political views and amusingly checkered personal life tell us she's no saint. Her relationship with Wales grew out of her efforts to use Wikipedia to obscur her contrail of controversy. Now that they've broken up, and Wales's proxies have allowed all manner of edits they'd previously blocked at his behest, she's upset over the state of her Wikipedia entry.

But the Wikipedia scandal isn't about her; it's about Wales. If you think ill of Marsden, remember that Wales freely chose to associate with her. Wales has made a series of bad choices in terms of who he gets in bed with, in love and in business: Marsden; venture capitalist Roger McNamee; Sue Gardner, executive director of Wikipedia's parent, the WIkimedia Foundation; rock star Bono; and countless others. Someone really ought to list all his mistakes. Perhaps in an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit?

Marsden's Wikipedia missive to Wales:

As anyone who has ever cared about Jimbo here knows, the only way to have any sort of rational or caring discussion with him is in the Wikimatrix here. Alright, fine. Game on, sweetheart. Newsflash: Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia; it is a cult. I wouldn't even be included in a real encyclopedia. I want the Wikipedia entry about me deleted. I don't know why this is such a difficult concept to accept.

This is not a publishing company, nor is it some kind of altruistic venture for the greater good of humanity. Wikipedia is nothing more than the biggest and most prolific defamation machine that the world has ever known, run by people with varying degrees of personality disorders. You couldn't have cared less about my Wikipedia entry until we started sleeping together, Jimmy. At that point, it was nicely cleaned up and taken care of through your proxies here on the site, as per your instructions (and it's not the first time an article has been cleaned up through a proxy, as per your orders...this kind of stuff, contrary to popular belief, doesn't just happen "magically" here on Wikipedia). Now that we're not sleeping together and since you so publicly broke up with my here on this website, the page about me has turned into a complete free-for-all.

Are you aware, Jimmy, that "NPOV" (aka "Neutral Point Of View") is actually an oxymoron? By its very nature, a "point of view" cannot be "neutral". Communism has failed everywhere it has been tried, Jimmy, and Wikipedia is no exception. As for you trying to make it seem as though your invisible hand isn't involved in any of this, perhaps it's wise for people to remember that the greatest feat the devil ever pulled off was convincing people that he doesn't exist.

*Wikimedia Foundation Receives $500K Donation*

''Vinod and Neeru Khosla, innovators in educational outreach, provide financial support to the Wikimedia Foundation.''

San Francisco, CA - March 24, 2008 - The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, is delighted to announce it has received a $500,000 donation from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru Khosla.

"We are thrilled and very grateful," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Vinod and Neeru share the Wikimedia Foundation's vision: a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Today, they have moved us closer to making that vision a reality."

"Vinod and I are proud to help Wikipedia, a valuable global educational resource," said Neeru Khosla, co-founder and chair of CK12, a non-profit organization supporting the worldwide creation of "flexbooks," collaborative, open-source textbooks. "Wikipedia proves that mass collaboration works, and that small investments can reap extraordinary returns. We are happy to be a part of it."

The gift comes at a critical time in the history of Wikimedia, which has just relocated to San Francisco to be closer to Bay Area technical talent, like-minded non-profit organizations, and educational and research institutions.

"Moving to San Francisco was an essential step in the maturing of the organization," said Gardner. "Now that we are here, and have built a great team of smart people, we're well-positioned to make significant progress."

Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia and one of the 10 most popular websites world-wide, is written, edited and maintained entirely by a global community of thousands of volunteers. It was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales. The Wikimedia Foundation, founded in 2003, has a staff of 15, and provides organizational support for Wikipedia and eight other collaboratively-created information projects.

In coming years, the Wikimedia Foundation plans to launch outreach projects designed to encourage contributions to Wikipedia from targeted groups such as academics, speakers of small languages, people in developing nations and older people. It also plans to increase the distribution of material from Wikipedia and its other projects in non-web-based formats such as DVDs and books, to provide information for people who are not online.

*Sloan Foundation to support Wikipedia's quality and growth initiatives*

''Institutional support of $3 million to Wikimedia Foundation over three years will support organizational growth and technical innovation''

March 25, 2008, New York/San Francisco - The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation today announced it is awarding $3 million of support to the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates the world's largest and most popular encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The money will support Wikimedia's organizational development and help to increase the quality of its content and the reach of its services.

"We are extremely grateful for this support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "Wikipedia and its sister projects have an enormous global impact, but the organization behind them has been operating on a shoestring: unable to pursue partnerships, execute projects, or even to effectively fundraise. This institutional support from Sloan will enable us to make progress on some key goals: increasing quality, broadening participation, and distributing free knowledge to people without Internet connectivity."

"We are delighted to support the Wikimedia Foundation and to help develop its organizational capacity and improve the quality of its flagship, Wikipedia," said Doron Weber, Sloan Program Director for Universal Access to Recorded Knowledge. "As the largest encyclopedia in human history and one of the top ten web sites in the world, Wikipedia represents a quantum leap in collecting human knowledge from diverse sources, organizing it without commercial or other bias, and making it freely available to people everywhere."

The funding will be received over three years, at 1 million dollars per year.

It comes at a critical time in the history of the Wikimedia Foundation, which has just relocated to San Francisco and upped its staff from 10 to 15. One of the projects which will be supported with the Sloan grant is a software feature called Flagged Revisions, which will allow experienced editors to publicly and visibly grade the quality status of articles — in effect, functioning as a kind of "nutrition labeling" for Wikipedia content. In coming years, Wikimedia also plans to significantly expand outreach events such as Wikipedia Academy, designed to increase Wikipedia's quality by teaching academics, older people, and other targeted groups how to contribute. Another goal is the distribution of educational content from Wikipedia and its sister projects in non-web-based formats such as DVDs and books, to reach people who are not online.

The Wikimedia projects are written, edited and maintained by a global community of thousands of volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation, founded in 2003, has a staff of 15, and provides organizational support for the projects. It plans to grow its staff to 25 by 2010.

Jimbo Wales, Prince of the United States is a well-known huckster, con-man and dictator of Wikiland, who has adopted a lifestyle of libertinage, debauchery, nudism, international travel, kitten huffing and Ferrari connoisseurship by standing on the shoulders of a million nerds.

If only the board had known what would become of that dinner. Bodnick and Bono's colleague Roger McNamee later gave $300,000 to the Wikipedia organization personally and helped arrange another $1 million in donations. Let's see: $1,300 for $1.3 million. Leaving aside what Elevation Partners hoped to get for that money, that seems like a pretty good return. Jimbo, have you thought about resubmitting the dinner tab?

(Image via Turn on, tune in, take off!)

A Florida business registration for the nonprofit filed last May shows Wales's title did change — but to "EC," short for "executive chairman," a worker in Florida's Department of State confirms. On paper, Wales still outranks Devouard. Could he have told her that "EC" stands for "emeritus chair," while secretly keeping legal authority over Wikipedia to himself? That would explain why Wales feels entitled to bypass Devoard and cut deals with venture capitalists on the side.

The legal filing:

(Click to expand.)

Gardner is no longer disputing the past improprieties raised by former Wikipedia administrator Danny Wool; now she's just arguing it's a distraction from Wikipedia's mission. And then she attempts to change the subject to this humble gossip blog: "I used to say Valleywag was read by 11-year-old boys, but now I think that would be a disservice to 11-year-old boys." Gardner said that in the course of denying claims by former employees that she made out with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in Amsterdam. We were starting to wonder why Gardner kept bringing up 11-year-old boys, until we realized they make up Wikipedia's core demographic.

Wales needs to think about the special attributes he — and he alone — brings to the Wikipedia brand. Wales is becoming known as a stud to end all studs, having bedded women around the world on Wikipedia-promoting junkets. Three words: user-generated condoms. Imagine the sum of all human knowledge unrolling before her eyes. Pick the right article to put on your article, and she'll edit herself right into your history. And worry not — they're as reliable as the information in Wikipedia.

That's just the beginning. What (or whom) would you brand with the august Wikipedia logo? The 250th commenter gets a free copy of Jimmy Wales: Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture on DVD.

For once, a Valleywag commenter has held back. Writes mediawhoremeow, "I hear this chick had an interesting job interview with Jimbo in Amsterdam." That's one way of putting it. More precisely, Wikimedia Foundation employees say they witnessed Gardner and Wales making out last June in Amsterdam, shortly before she was hired as a consultant to the Wikipedia nonprofit. At least one had a cameraphone. We haven't gotten any pictures yet. Surely they must be circulating. Anyone care to send them in?

Merkey's extortion charge:

According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales agreed that in exchange for a substantial donation and other financial support of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wales would use his influence to make Merkey's article adhere to Wikipedia's stated policies with regard to internet libel "as a courtesty" and place Merkey under his "special protection" as an editor. Merkey later withdrew his financial support of the Wikipedia project after reviewing evidence of diversion and mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees and was immediately banned from the Wikipedia site by the Arbitration Committee for frivilous and unsubstanciated claims after he terminated the payments of $5,000.00 per year to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Marsden's lawsuit threat:

(Photo of Wales via Partial Immortalization)

Former Wikipedia insiders describe the affair as an "open secret" — one Wales's wife Christine, from whom he is now separating, reportedly discovered when he returned from Germany with an article of women's clothing in his suitcase. If the charges about Wikipedia-funded trips for Wales and his German mistress are true, then that's not the only baggage he acquired from the relationship. (Photo by Wikimedia Commons)

According to [former Novell chief scientist Jeff] Merkey, in 2006, Wales told him that in exchange for a substantial donation, Wales could use his influence to make Merkey's article more agreeable. Merkey made a $5,000 donation and hinted at the possibility of something much larger in the future.
Merkey claims, and the record confirms, that following his donation, Wales personally made several edits to the Merkey article, including a complete blanking of the article and destruction of its edit history.

In a message to an internal Wikipedia mailing list obtained by an AP reporter, she wrote: "I find (it) tiring to see how you are constantly trying to rewrite the past. Get a grip!" Devouard, you'll recall, is said to have asked Wales if he was buying his wife a "gold-plated washing machine" with the speaking fees he was earning. If only she were so forthright about Wales in public. (Photo by Wikinews Reports)

Forget the bimbo eruptions. Rachel Marsden wasn't Wales's first wild fling, and it won't be his last. Wales used to run Bomis, which he describes as a "Web portal" and the rest of the world calls a "porn site."

What Wikipedians need to ask is where their money is going. Ads have been appearing on Wikipedia for months soliciting donations, ostensibly to pay for bandwidth and other costs of running the site. How will those donors feel when they learn that they funded Wales's extravagant trips? (In his chats with Marsden, he brags about how he flies first class, though he only got first-class tickets when flying on a speaker's dime.)

And ultimately one can't really separate money and sex. Wool suggests Wales visited a massage parlor on a trip to Russia — and expensed the subway ticket he used to get there. To what extent has Wales mixed business and pleasure? Only Devouard and the other staff at Wikimedia Foundation, the charity which runs Wikipedia, know for sure. But the IRS, which must approve of Wikimedia's nonprofit status, may start asking questions.

Doran's criminal record actually spans four states — Florida, Virginia, Maryland and Texas — and includes theft, petty larceny, more DUIs, passing bad checks, and shooting her boyfriend in the chest. One of Doran's DUIs, a hit and run, resulted in a fatality.

At Wikimedia, Doran rose to COO after starting as a temp. As COO, she had control over much of Wikimedia's finances, an audit of which — due in September — is still pending. "We've never had any documentation of any criminal record on Carolyn Doran's part at all," foundation lawyer Mike Godwin told the Register. How soon until somebody creates a Wikipedia entry and uploads Doran's legal docs? That might help Godwin out.