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Are you an investigative journalist? Here's a cheat sheet, with sources: The single worst charge against Wikipedia chair emeritus Jimmy Wales is that he erased a $5,000 donor's embarrassing page history, an act akin to shredding a dossier or spiking a feature story. This allegation allegedly (pardon my reporter-speak) comes from the donor himself, former Novell chief scientist Jeff V. Merkey. Wikipedia's own records show that Merkey donated, and that Wikipedia editors complained when Wales scrubbed Merkey's page completely. Why is this worse than Wales editing his girlfriend's page? If you're a gumshoe reporter, you get it already.

If true, Wales's act makes all donors suspect. It also implies there may be other off-the-record "donors" who've paid to whitewash their Wikipedia pages. $5,000 or even $500,000 is nothing to a multinational corporation or wealthy politician with a checkered past. For all we know, the millions of kids who use Wikipedia for their homework are cribbing from entries that aren't group editorial, but paid advertorial.

Need a source with an opposing view? I suggest Toronto Globe and Mail technology journalist Mathew Ingram. He wrote Wednesday that if Wales really did take $5,000 for Wikipedia in exchange for deleting Merkey's page, it "is of no interest to me, nor do I think it's particularly relevant to what matters about Wikipedia." Ask Ingram the newspaper journalist to explain how paying to have your public record erased from the world's biggest and most-read encyclopedia doesn't matter. That would be interesting to read.