" really want me to go on? Now put all this in a pair of scales, weigh these things up against what Wales has achieved, the Wikipedia success story etc., and you want to bring him down for that? If the accountants audit the books, and pass them then there is no irregularity. People demanding that he explain to them personally every bill, is just a cringe making attempt to humiliate him,and it's vile to read. If you want to humiliate him go and bid for his T shirt on ebay, put your money where your mouths are. The only thing this story has proved, is that the higher you climb, the more people love to see you fall all the way down. People are crawling over him at the moment like maggots in wound - and some of the above is shameful to read.    
 :Has it occurred to you that no one is accusing him of illegal behaviour that could be reported to authorities? It is about his ethics and character. And the bonking is just a distraction here; if that was all there was, I don't think it should be anyone's concern and I would feel sorry for him if it were exploited by tabloids. But as things are, it's good if it helps to bring the real issues to the fore. Man uses charitable foundation as personal piggy bank - that is a front page story, and if such an allegation is made by an ex-employee who's not known as a kook, it's not something to be dismissed as ""no story"". And as to the scales - maybe you can explain exactly what Wales has achieved. In other words, what do you think would be different if Wales had never existed? Do you seriously want to suggest there would be no wiki encyclopedia project today? The idea is trivial. His lucky stumbling into a first-mover position deserves about as much praise as someone making a ""first post"" on some Internet forum. And, once in that position, how did he handle it? You speak of a success story, well if you measure success by creating a hyped website which is ultimately more comparable to Myspace than to Britannica, then it's a success. As an encyclopedia, it clearly isn't, seeing how its use is banned in many places of learning. (And here yet again can be seen Wales' dishonest evasiveness: he invariably replies to this that such bans are fine because students should not use any encyclopedia - even though one rarely hears of a university banning Britannica, or encyclopedias in general.)    

 ::Jimbo's founding of Wikipedia is very far from a lucky ""being there at the right time."" The concept of a wiki encyclopedia, open to contribution from all, with content and behavior filtered by evolved community policies, was and is revolutionary. There is no equivalent effort in breadth and scope anywhere. That some people, including educators, issue an outright ban on its use as a resource, reflects on their lack of understanding. Wikipedia's strength is in presenting  relevant reliable sources for each topic, along with some descriptive text, in a reasonably neutral fashion. We are the librarian at a library, providing a client with a suggested reading list and a hopefully neutral overview of the topic. When used properly, this is a powerful resource, complementing Google or other search engines. Jimbo had the vision to bring this forward, and the personality to push it along, to where people have voted it as the ninth most popular site on the Internet, and number one general informational site. This is an accomplishment that nothing and no one can take away from Jimbo, and the world owes him its gratitude.    
 :::You may consider it revolutionary in terms of its impact, but it was still an obvious idea whose time simply had come (it wasn't technically feasible much earlier) and which, if it weren't for him, someone else would have picked up not much later. And he didn't even have that obvious idea. He admitted as much. Originally he only came up with the non-starter Nupedia. He was told about wikis (1) by Larry and (2), so he claims, by some Jeremy Rosenfeld. That there is now no equivalent effort in addition to Wikipedia has to do with the prime-mover advantage I mentioned, since this is a natural monopoly with network effect. To compete against such a thing is like competing against Windows or Ebay. And by God everyone knows Windows is not in its dominant position because it's so good. Now if you want to argue that Wikipedia is mainly providing reading lists, then that's not what an encyclopedia is. An encyclopedia is supposed to provide directly reliable information. Others have suggested before that Wikipedia should just call itself ""Jimbo's Big Bag o' Trivia"", then no one would be misled. Because guess what, websites where anyone could write about anything have existed befor