Wikipedia Co-Founder Found Editing For Money?
It might not live up to the Spitzer drama, but Web 2.0 can produce its own drama. The BBC reports that Wikipedia co-Founder Jimmy Wales is being accused of accepting $5,000 in exchange for editing a Wikipedia entry.
Jeffrey Merkey, a former Novell chief scientist, now states that Jimmy Wales accepted a $5,455 donation in May of 2006 in exchange for editing his entry. Merkey had a long-standing feud with the Wikipedia community over his bio, and after the donation, Jimmy Wales modified the entry and placed it under special protection to keep it from being edited by the public.
It is not unheard of for the Wikipedia staff to make edits or put articles under special protection in certain situations such as an article being libelous.
This isn't the first time Wales has been accused of modifying Wikipedia entries. In 2005, Wales edited his own entry to remove references to Larry Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.
(Image from Wikimedia Commons)
As a teacher, Wikipedia scares and fascinates me. There’s a lot of great content… but it’s often unreliable. And speaking of Copyright infringement, I’ve noticed lots of people just paste their favorite encyclopedia entry onto Wikipedia instead of creating their own content.
By the way, are the Founders of Wikipedia filthy rich? Or is there little profit in their impressive venture?
I hear you, Wade. I’ve written about the downside of wikis. Wikipedia is definitely a handy tool, but it should be used as a starting point in research, not an ending point.
As for your question about whether the founders are filthy rich — Wikipedia is a non-profit website run by the Wikimedia Foundation.
However, Jimmy Wales also founded Wikia, which is a popular wiki farm, and that venture *is* for profit. And I’m sure he’s made a fat wad of dough from it.