Wikipedia scandals

Wikipedia scandals that have arisen in February and March 2007 appear to be having an adverse impact on daily financial donations to the Wikimedia Foundation. The downward slide closely mirrors a number of ethically questionable decisions by key administrators of Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Foundation donations are dropping substantially

Background

The current problems began with a decision by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, when he hired a 24-year-old college dropout named Ryan Jordan to work at Wales' for-profit corporation Wikia, Inc. The hiring decision was made, even though Wales apparently knew Jordan had been passing himself off to the Wikipedia community (and to The New Yorker magazine's Pulitzer Prize winning Stacy Schiff) as a tenured professor holding multiple advanced degrees.

Further aggravating the issue, Jordan (whose Wikipedia screen name was "Essjay") was soon appointed by Wales to the highest volunteer adjudicating body within Wikipedia -- the Arbitration Committee.

When The New Yorker outted Ryan Jordan's academic fraud, their editors contacted Jimmy Wales for comment. Wales was quoted with the now infamous, "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it." This set off a firestorm of criticism, both within Wikipedia and external to the world's largest encyclopedia community. Especially damaging seemed to be the numerous administrative cover-ups that attempted to hide the historical wiki record of Essjay's actions and the community debates that followed.

The financial consequences

The Wikimedia Foundation enjoyed a total of $3,477 in donations on February 23rd, the day Essjay was elevated to ArbCom status. Contrast this with a total of only $739 made on March 18th, less than one month later. This represents a 79% drop in daily contributions! As the details and implications of these scandals continue to be disseminated, nobody can say if donations will continue to flag or whether they will eventually rebound.

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