Imagine an online encyclopedia anyone can edit — and no one can run. With the calendar running out on 2008, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's sleaze-drenched cofounder, nearly lost his seat on the board. Who's in charge here?
The children of the world will be deprived of knowledge unless you shell out money soon, says Jimmy Wales, the sleaze-drenched cofounder of Wikipedia. Is this what Wikipedia has come to — an online telethon?
Wikipedia, to cofounder Jimmy Wales's eternal dismay, is a nonprofit project rather than a lucrative private enterprise. The online encyclopedia, home to volunteer-written disquisitions on subjects like the umlaut in names of heavy metal bands, hopes to raise $6 million this year in a fundraising drive now featured in …
Sue Gardner, the Canadian ex-journalist hired to run Wikipedia last year, has treated Jimmy Wales, the site's cofounder, with kid gloves. Until now. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Gardner vehemently defends the nonprofit status of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's owner:
There are lies, damn lies, and budgets. Wikipedia users donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation under the ruse that most of the cash goes to buy and run servers. Ha! As Danny Wool, a former administrator of the nonprofit, points out, that's hardly the case. In fact, out of a projected $4.6 million budget, nearly…
Mike Godwin does not practice what he preaches. The general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, once told the New York Times that "the best answer for bad speech is more speech." But in the face of a groundswell of criticism of Wikipedia — that its frontman, Jimmy Wales, is corrupt;…
Sue Gardner, the former pop-culture journalist now running Wikipedia, named Erik Möller as deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation for a simple reason: to get him off the nonprofit's board. As a board member, Möller was her boss; now she is his. But the hire is coming back to haunt her. After Wikimedia COO…
Sue Gardner, the power-hungry executive director of Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, has carried out the first phase of her master plan. She's orchestrated a reorganization of Wikipedia's board. The chief changes to the rulers of the world's most complete list of people affected by bipolar…
Last year, Wikipedia hired an executive-search firm to find someone to run its nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation. Thousands of dollars later, it concluded that Wikipedia was "too immature" as an organization to hire a boss. It nonetheless landed Sue Gardner, head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's…
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit which operates Wikipedia, says its mission is to give the world free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Behind the scenes, it's responsible for the mother of all power struggles. Jimmy Wales is supposedly a figurehead — just one of many board members. Sue Gardner, the…
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has been backed into a corner by the slew of charges against the nonprofit and its founder, Jimmy Wales. She's retreating from her initial line that it was all the fault of a disgruntled ex-employee, as she did with CNET. Now, in a …
What is it about Jimmy Wales? The founder of Wikipedia has a thing for brainy women, and a penchant for mixing business and pleasure. But the latest rumor I've heard is mind-blowing: That Wales had a brief affair with Sue Gardner, the executive director of the nonprofit which runs Wikipedia. Gardner has always been …
In a simpering interview on CNET — "Let's just get this out of the way," the host actually says — Sue Gardner, executive director of the foundation which runs Wikipedia, used the classic disgruntled-employee line to dismiss charges that Wales had abused his position there. But that's not the only way she made a fool…
You're bored with the whole thing, but watch and learn, people. This is media training at its finest. "What's happening here is we have a disgruntled former employee. This guy has a blog, and he's used that blog as a platform to spread a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip. It's hard for us to even respond to…
