Is somebody out to get Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales? Just a few weeks after being embroiled in an accounting scandal, Wales has been accused of modifying Wikipedia entries in return for donations to the site.
Jeff Merkey, a former computer scientist at Novell, has said that, in return for US$5000 in donations in 2006, Wales agreed to modify Merkey’s Wikipedia entry to make it more flattering. Investigations have revelealed that Merkey did indeed make the donations and that Wales did modify the entry, but Wales is saying that the two things aren’t related.
In any case, $5000 seems like a lot of money to get a Wikipedia entry modified, given that anybody (including Merkey himself) could have made those modifications. We’re pretty sure we could find a few people willing to change an entry for considerably less money (we reckon $50 and a subscription to Playboy Online could probably get it done). [SMH]