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Jimmy Wales

Wednesday, 18 February 2009

In our article 'Wikiworld' (3 February 2009) we repeated several claims about Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder: that he had a company that dealt in "soft porn" and was short-lived: that he had had to defend himself against "allegations from former colleagues that he used Wikipedia as a personal piggybank": that he faced controversy over his age and "doctored his own Wikipedia entry to knock it down a couple of years: and that there had been speculation and board in-fighting about Wales's relationship with the organisation. Jimmy Wales has pointed out that we repeated allegations which have no truth and we apologise to him for this.

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Which claims had "no truth"?
[info]thekohser wrote:
Wednesday, 18 February 2009 at 05:46 pm (UTC)
Which of the allegations had no truth?

Jimmy Wales did have a company, Bomis, that dealt in soft pornography, as many might define close-up lesbian tongue-kissing. Are any of these images proper for a sixth-grader to view?

http://tinyurl.com/bomis-babes-images

I agree that Bomis was not "short-lived".

Is it not true that he "defended himself against allegations from former colleagues"? Sue Gardner put herself in front of CNET news to defend allegations. She shut down the alleged whistle-blower by proclaiming, "Jimmy has never done anything wrong".

http://news.cnet.com/1606-2-6233396.html

There is a quite well-documented issue surrounding not Wales' age, but his specific date of birth.

http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/archives/2007/08/08/my-birthdate/

http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Jimbo%27s_birthday

There has indeed been Board-related in-fighting about Wales' relationship with the organization, but as far as I know, much of that is documented only in private dispatches and on blogs and list-servers, which probably don't count as reliable sources.
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A few more relevant links
[info]laralove23 wrote:
Thursday, 19 February 2009 at 02:20 am (UTC)
Why, exactly, are you apologizing? For messing up the wording a bit?

"... one of the projects Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal Bomis" ... that, according to The Atlantic Monthly, 'found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Chicago_Options_Associates_and_Bomis

Bomis "was founded by Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell... On the Bomis.com site, Bomis creates and hosts web rings around popular search terms. The rings are currently categorized broadly as "Babe", "Entertainment", "Sports", "Adult", "Science fiction", and "Other".[2] The "Adult", "Babe", and "Entertainment" categories are the most frequently updated and the most popular."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis

I think Danny Wool's blog and Sue Gardner's comments on CNET pretty much confirm that there were accusations that needed to be, or at least were, defended.

As far as his birthday, he didn't trim years off, he changed the date by one day. It's all in his bio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Wikipedia_biography_and_date_of_birth

Be wary of what Wales claims to be truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Biographical_and_Wikipedia_issues



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