[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales in the news

Thu Mar 6 06:45:30 UTC 2008

"Keep the obvious in mind."

That's good advice, and there are obviously good people who *have* been
around since then who have spoken to his integrity. The basic point here is
that, while it would be worth talking about had any foundation money been
spent extravagantly, Jimmy funded Wikipedia out of his own pocket for a long
time, and the amount of cash we are talking about here is insignificant.
Statistically. There was clearly a period of time where the line between
what was his money and foundation money was fuzzy. Perhaps it could have
been less fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure he incurred a net loss. Probably a
significant one, although I don't have access to the books on that.  I can
already hear you saying, "But the people who donated! They didn't donate to
have their money spent on wine!" Convincing individual donors to give
$500,000 probably takes more than one bottle. There are people around here
who have recognizable names that are insinuating - without actual data -
that wrong was done. Please do as Erik has urged and consider their motives.

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:

> Philippe Beaudette wrote:
>
>  The simple fact of the matter is that Sue came onboard long after the
> alleged improprieties.  She simply doesn't know everything that happened
> before then.  In particular, WMF staff has pretty high turnover, and
> Danny's computer was even wiped of all of its data upon his departure
> from the Foundation (!!!!), including all of his records.  So I don't
> think Sue is necessarily lying, but keep in mind that there's no way for
> her to be sure that everything Jimbo did was above-board.
>