[tt] NYT: Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World

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Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/technology/17wikipedia.html

By NOAM COHEN

Since he helped create Wikipedia in 2001, Jimmy Wales has been
called many things: benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch,
digital evangelist and spiritual leader of the tens of thousands of
volunteers who have made the online encyclopedia one of the top 10
most visited Web sites.

Sue Gardner, the new executive director of the Wikimedia
Foundation, which runs the various Wikipedia projects, said that
when she first met Mr. Wales, "he made a joke that he saw himself
as the queen of England, waving to the crowd."

Unfortunately for him, the news media love a good royalty scandal
and, in the last few weeks, he has been getting the royal
treatment.

Last month, Mr. Wales was accused of intervening to protect the
Wikipedia page of a TV news commentator with whom he had a romantic
relationship. The accusations were fueled by text messages, said to
be between Mr. Wales and the commentator, Rachel Marsden, that were
published on a gossip Web site.

He added to the online fuss on March 1 by addressing the issue on
his own page, and announcing that the relationship was over. (Ms.
Marsden put up a T-shirt and sweater he had left in her apartment
on eBay. A bid of $500 for the T-shirt came up short.)

And there have been persistent questions, chiefly raised by a
former employee, that Mr. Wales has abused his expense account,
including filing for a $1,300 dinner for four at a Florida
steakhouse that was ultimately denied and lacking receipts for
$30,000 in expenses.

In some ways, these allegations -- trivial and personal as they
might seem -- illustrate the growing pains Wikipedia is now
experiencing. The populist impetus for Wikipedia -- building an
open-source encyclopedia -- has been spectacularly fulfilled with
more than 2.2 million separate articles in English, 52 million
unique visitors in December in the United States, according to
comScore Media Metrix and brand recognition that puts it in the
upper echelon with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Until recently, however, Wikipedia was run more like a storefront
community center than a digital-age powerhouse. What was a
nine-person operation -- a top 10 Web site had a paid staff of less
than 10 -- has just recently grown to a 15-person operation. Last
year's $2.2 million budget grew to $4.6 million this year.

"A surprising number of people don't even know it is a nonprofit,"
Ms. Gardner said. "They say, `How do they make their money,
anyway?' They assumed there were ads or some other way." In fact,
the project relies on fund-raisers, and its latest one, Ms. Gardner
said, received donations from 45,000 individuals, with a $30
average contribution.

Mr. Wales and the board of the Wikimedia Foundation have tried to
professionalize the project, moving its offices from St.
Petersburg, Fla., to San Francisco, to be near the talent,
entrepreneurial spirit and wealth of Silicon Valley. The board of
seven trustees, made up of appointed and elected members including
Mr. Wales, has brought in new administrators, beginning with Ms.
Gardner, a former journalist who had run the Canadian Broadcasting
Company's Web site.

But members of the Wikipedia community -- scattered around the
globe, writing in more than 200 languages -- remain consistent in
their belief in a decentralized power structure and noncommercial
principles. And they aren't sure what to make of the move to the
big city, with its reputation as the home of irresistible
temptations.

The persistent arguments about whether to accept any kind
advertising, no matter how indirect, to increase revenue --
something Mr. Wales and Ms. Gardner among others say they oppose --
have recently flared up again.

And there have been questions raised about the foundation's close
relationship with Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, a venture
capital firm in Silicon Valley, and who has helped arrange two
sizable donations to Wikipedia.

Some members further wonder if Mr. Wales, who has created a
company, Wikia, to make money from wikis and to implement a
volunteer-created search engine, will reduce his role within
Wikipedia.

But Mr. Wales said he was adamant.

"Dialing down is not an option for me," he said. "Not to be too
dramatic about it, but, `to create and distribute a free
encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person
on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what
I am doing. That's my life goal."

Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University who
studies organizations, said a visionary leader is crucial at the
beginning. But, he said, "what these people do is, they are
determined and focused," he said, keeping the vision pure, "not
mixing it up."

It is natural that over time a visionary leader's role is
diminished and that is good thing, he said, quoting Bertolt Brecht,
"unhappy is the land that has no heroes -- no, unhappy is the land
that needs heroes." Despite some of the attacks on Mr. Wales, he is
still largely a hero within the Wikipedia community -- walking
through the annual conventions with assistants in tow, greeting the
most enthusiastic Wikipedia contributors from across the globe,
receiving invitations to the World Economic Forum in Davos,
attending George Soros's birthday party.

Ms. Gardner said there will always be a need for what Mr. Wales
provides.

"People want to reach out to someone, and they know his name -- it
could be a famous person, a celebrity, or not -- if they have a
problem with their entry they will contact him."

It was in this capacity that Ms. Marsden, a columnist and a former
commentator on Fox News, said she had reached out to Mr. Wales,
after her article page was being vandalized. She wrote via e-mail
that "Jimmy volunteered to make changes to my Wikipedia page after
we became involved personally and romantically. Before that, he
really couldn't have cared less."

Mr. Wales wrote on his user page that he would not interfere before
meeting Ms. Marsden, and summed up, "My involvement in cases like
this is completely routine, and I am proud of it." However, the
incident did pry open his personal life to Silicon Valley gossip
sites (he said that he had been separated from his wife when he met
Ms. Marsden) and has created the embarrassing spectacle of having
his old laundry put up for auction on eBay.

At the same time, a former foundation employee, Danny Wool, has
created a blog where he has been detailing what he says were Mr.
Wales's abuses of expense reimbursements, twisting Mr. Wales
down-home nickname "Jimbo" to "Jimbeau."

While the allegations involve a time before Ms. Gardner arrived,
she said: "I have done my own conversations with people, and I am
satisfied that Jimmy hasn't used the Wikimedia Foundation money to
subsidize his own personal expenses. I believe he has consistently
put the foundation's interests ahead of his own."

Beyond the personal questions, many Wikipedia members have
expressed reservations about the project's relationship with
Elevation Partners.

Mr. Wales said in an interview that Elevation Partners had
expressed interest initially in business opportunities with
Wikipedia, but "it took one meeting for them to realize it was off
the table." He added: "Certainly there can be no investment in
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a nonprofit and always will be." He said he
also has had inquiries from other venture-capital firms, who
likewise were told to look elsewhere.

But the initial meeting with Elevation, Mr. Wales said, led to a
relationship with one of its partners, Roger McNamee, who stresses
that he is acting as a volunteer entirely separately from his
business. Mr. Wales describes him as "a bit of a mentor in doing
fund-raising."

Ms. Gardner said that Mr. McNamee in the past had lined up a
$500,000 donation, and arranged another $500,000 donation that came
through last week.

Mr. McNamee would not confirm this, but did say, "I am a Wikipedia
volunteer -- I help with strategy, fund-raising and business
development -- it has nothing to do with Elevation Partners. And no
on should be confused about that."

Florence Nibart-Devouard, the chairwoman of the Wikimedia board,
who has never met Mr. McNamee, did not sound enthusiastic.

"It's not a huge concern right now, but I am not comfortable with
the concept," she said, of venture capitalists consistently making
donations to the foundation. "I would much prefer a varied diverse
base of donors, some could be large, some could be long-term
friends, who help in finding new friends. I hope the foundation
won't rely on these relationships."

She said that she had proposed a resolution, passed recently, to
require that any donation larger than 2 percent of revenues be
approved by the board. And she said she would "make some noise" if
a venture capitalist were to try to become a board member.

While Ms. Nibart-Devouard worries about the provenance of
donations, Mr. Wales and Ms. Gardner say they must worry also about
sustainability. "A big piece of my day is thinking about money,"
she said.

Mr. Wales said that "existing on donations keeps us on a shoestring
budget" adding that he was not opposed to leveraging Wikipedia's
brand, consistent with its free-culture values, of course.

"There are some kinds of ways of using our brand name -- a trivia
game, a branded home-edition trivia game, that kind of thing seems
to fit," he said. Perhaps a Wikipedia documentary TV show. He said
that Elevation Partners "are flexible -- they could be involved in
that kind of stuff."

"We do not want to touch the core," he added. "The core of
Wikipedia is something people really believe in. That is too
valuable for the world to screw it up."

As long as he is involved with Wikipedia, however, Mr. Wales will
continue to be a guiding light for its many contributors -- as well
as a lighting rod for its critics.

"Recently, I was in Thailand and I was giving a speech there and
spoke about opposition to censorship of the Internet in Thailand,
how this was bad for their economy, and this made the newspapers,"
he said. "That's really important, that I have the ability to do
this."

But he conceded that along with "my being some kind of celebrity --
not a real celebrity," comes scrutiny that "isn't a welcome part of
the job."

He added: "People who have achieved a public voice find it a mixed
bag."