In a YouTube video, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales opines about foreign policy. We love how the video producer added in visuals for every "err." We wonder: Is Wales stumbling over his words because he doesn't really believe what he's saying?Wales has long been an Objectivist, a follower of the writings and political philosophy of Ayn Rand, who thoroughly rejected altruism. Wales's statements in the video thoroughly contradict Objectivist thinking on foreign policy, which boils down to "an eye for an eye" and "screw the United Nations." He also contradicts his own privately expressed political views. But that just makes him a clever capitalist: He knows he can get more speaking gigs overseas by feigning Euroliberalism.

Money is a commodity. What venture capitalists really bank is their reputation. And Jeremy Levine of Bessemer Venture Partners has just signaled that he's willing to cash in his reputation to protect a piddling $4 million investment. Levine is not amused by our report of how Levine got Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales fired from his job as CEO of Wikia, calling it a lie. The report is accurate, Wikia insiders confirm; Levine's denial is the lie. The only mystery here: Why is Levine willing to dissemble for Wales?The answer is pure self-interest. $4 million is nothing to a 97-year-old venture capital firm like Bessemer. It could easily write off its investment in Wikia, an attempt to capitalize on the anyone-can-edit wiki concept popularized by Wikipedia. But Levine has invested his reputational capital in Wikia. Admitting he made a mistake in backing Wales means Levine would lose face with Bessemer's partners, who will be more likely to question his subsequent investments. (That he has also invested in Yelp and Diapers.com surely does not burnish his record.) Levine would have us be impressed by the fact that Wales "volunteered to forgo his Wikia salary." This would be more impressive if Wales had not long ago forgone any pretense of doing any work to earn that salary. When Levine first invested in Wikia, Wales promised to spend 90 percent of his time on Wikia and 10 percent on Wikipedia. In fact, he spent nowhere near that proportion of time on either, focusing instead on an increasingly lucrative speaking career. I'm inclined to feel sorry for Levine, who was clearly deceived by Wales, but is stuck defending him, lest he admit to the con. We will give Levine this much. In a recent blog post, he wrote, "Valleywag reported some nonsense about Jimmy getting fired because of a bogus expense report. Nothing could be farther from the truth." What is uncontestably true: Levine was enraged when he learned that Wales tried to get Wikia to reimburse him for a $1,300 dinner with a private-equity investor, at which he primarily discuss ways to profit off of Wikipedia, not Wikia. But it is quite possible that Wales's attempted expense-account flim-flam was the least of his sins as CEO of Wikia, and that Levine actually fired him over more serious matters. If so, why doesn't Levine wash his hands of Wales, write off the investment, and tells us what Wales did? Otherwise, he'll find that he's only just begun his career of lying on Wales's behalf.

Why did Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, an online compendium which includes the world's most detailed article on flim-flams, step down as CEO of Wikia, the for-profit website host which recently laid off some of its employees? The way Wales likes to tell the story, years later, he realized he was a free-flying entrepreneur, not an earthbound bureaucrat. So he hired Gil Penchina, a former eBay executive, to mind the shop. That's not what really happened. Wales was fired from his job as CEO by the company's investors.The cause? The same kind of expense-account hijinks that landed him in trouble at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit parent of Wikipedia. In 2006, Wales was courting Marc Bodnick, a cofounder of Silicon Valley private-equity firm Elevation Partners, in an effort to find a way to profit from Wikipedia, despite its nonprofit status and volunteer contributors. Bodnick and an assistant had traveled to St. Petersburg, Fla., where Wikimedia was then based. The talks went nowhere, but Wales, his wife, Bodnick, and Bodnick's assistant had a $1,300 meal at one of the city's finest restaurants. ($600 of the bill was spent on wine.) At that point, the Wikimedia Foundation had confiscated Wales's corporate card, so he paid for the meal himself. But he then sought to have it reimbursed by Wikia. Michael Davis, Wikia's chief operating officer, became enraged and reported the expense to Jeremy Levine, a Wikia board member and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, which had invested $4 million into the company only a month before. Levine then told Wales he was fired as CEO, and found Penchina, who had already made a fortune at eBay. Wales must hate that: Every time he sees Penchina, he must ask himself, "Why is this guy rich and I'm not?" Penchina, meanwhile, must be asking why Wikia is still paying Wales a salary.

Cindy Adams, the endearingly batty New York Post gossipeuse, is mad at Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. Her beef: She complained about her Wikipedia entry to him two months ago, and he has done nothing. She's so mad, she has found words that rhyme with wiki, like "sticky" and "icky." She has also done investigative reporting about Barack Obama's Wikipedia entry, discovering it that it is now "14 pages long." We think that means she had one of her assistants print it out. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. That is not how you get your Wikipedia entry edited.Here are your options: You can spend thousands of hours editing Wikipedia entries to boost your credibility in the online community, and then pursue a tortuous quasi-legal process for months to change a single word in the entry. Petty-minded volunteer bureaucrats will oppose you at every turn. Or, if you want to make it simpler, you can just bribe Wales with money or sex. But anyone who thinks merely whining will do the trick is deluded. (Photo by David Shankbone)

Have you heard about a little site called Wikipedia? Aged gossip Cindy Adams has, and she doesn't like what she sees. It seems her Wikipedia page is filled with all sorts of "inaccuracies," which were placed there by "a ragtag assortment of contributors." So she did what most people do when they spot mistakes on Wikipedia: She dialed up company founder Jimmy Wales to demand that he edit her page. Unfortunately, Cindy reports today, Jimmy has thus far failed to correct the mistake. "He ultimately agreed to a re-edit. That was two months ago. He did nothing. So much for the truth." And so much for teaching 78-year-olds how to use the Internet.

Bid goodnight to Jimmy Wales's dream of cashing out on Wikipedia, the world's largest collection of infrequently asked questions. The vehicle for his scheme, a derivative for-profit startup called Wikia, is imploding. A tipster tells us that the 43-person company has laid off 30 percent of its staff. (Update: The company now says it has only laid off 10 percent of its employees.) Wikia lets users build their own anyone-can-edit wiki pages. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia sometimes runs advertising on the wikis; its most popular sites have to do with videogames. So why the layoffs?A source who has seen Wikia's numbers says the company is experiencing "a hemorrhaging of cash circa 1999" — losses, in other words, like the first generation of dotcoms. No surprise there, since it has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Poland, and many of its products, like Wikia Search, are staggeringly unpopular. Wikia raised $14 million in venture capital from Bessemer Venture Partners and Amazon.com, the last of which came in December 2006; without a new infusion, it must surely be running low on cash.

On Friday, the cofounder of the world's most comprehensive directory of socialites, Jimmy Wales, was one of the recipients of the $138,000 Quadriga prize for philanthropy in Berlin. Wales is a committed follower of Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism and noted loather of altruism — but he got handsomely paid for his do-gooding, so it must be okay! And that's not the only way Wales was rewarded in Berlin.The previous evening, the Berliner Kurier reports, Wales dined with Celia von Bismarck, shown here, a dilettante magazine editor and think-tanker. (She hates "boring society ladies," according to Vanity Fair, so she and Wales must have self-loathing in common.) No mention of Wales's current fling, Andrea Weckerle, who's said to be on the outs with him after rumors circulated that he sent around racy photos of Weckerle without her knowledge.

The Wikipedia entries of U.S. senators, after having false information or gibberish edited into them by users, typically remained uncorrected for a full 24 hours, according to a study. An assertion that Senator John McCain was born "in Florida in the then American-controlled Panama Canal Zone" was viewed by 93,000 people before it was removed. The study seems to contradict Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's claim that volunteer editors swiftly fix important pages. [The Wikipedia Review]

Jimmy Wales, cofounder of the world's most comprehensive history of C-Pop, recently sat for propaganda pictures with China's top censor Cai Mingzhao. The pair also spoke a little bit, but not about "the fact that a few politically sensitive pages are blocked," according to an interview Wales gave to Rebecca MacKinnon, an advisory board member at Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation. "Since I wasn't sure of the exact details, and just due to the way the conversation went (more high level than about specific details), I didn't raise this question," Wales said. "But, I am not cool with any censorship of Wikipedia." Maybe he'll tell Mingzhao the next time they meet for pictures.

Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales sat for an interview with ad agency exec Liz Ross in front of an Advertising Week audience here in New York yesterday. Which is odd, because Wales's very popular Wikipedia is a nonprofit which doesn't carry advertising, and Wales's for-profit venture, Wikia, isn't very popular. So who cares what he has to say?Wales himself, obviously. He can't resist a chance to burnish his image as a font of wisdom regarding all things Internet, no matter how irrelevant his experience might actually be. AdWeek's Brian Morrissey reports Wales used the word "authenticity" more than a dozen times while on stage.

A recent appearance by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was bookended by quotes from Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism. And tech glitches: "You'd think that a threat to Google could easily menace a laptop into submission, but apparently Jimmy just doesn't do his own tech work." Much like his latest project, Wikia Search, a for-profit venture which relies on volunteer contributions to its algorithms. [Bostonist]

Thank you, Julia Allison! The Internet's best self-promoter has uncovered evidence that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is still girlfriended by Andrea Weckerle, a social-media PR rep he turned to after the messy breakup of his affair with maple-leaf-waving right-wing punditrix Rachel Marsden. We'd heard they'd call things off, but they seem very much the couple here. Allison generously offered not to post the photo, to spare the couple the "recent ... um ... media attention they've endured." Instead, they jumped at the chance for more publicity. We're delighted to hear Wales is not wanting for female companionship, but Weckerle should watch her back around Allison.Wales has edited Julia Allison's Wikipedia entry — and we all know what that can lead to. Can you add to the sum of all human knowledge with a clever, yet printable, caption? If so, leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Friday's winner: theodp for the "$100 million flipper." (Photo via NonSociety)

A green version of Wikia, Jimmy Wale's for-profit followup to Wikipedia? On this subject, our featured commenter of the day, dannyisme, explains how Jimmy is really helping:

People who know Jimmy Wales well can't stop snickering about the launch of Wikia Green, his new anyone-can-edit environmental site. In his private life, Wales is about as green as Dick Cheney, from what they say. He's been known to toss styrofoam coffee cups out the window as he drives — something we imagine might give his enviroprecious celebrity pals paroxysms. Even green-cheerleading site Earth2Tech is on to Wales's insincerity:

Eternal dilettante Jimmy Wales, the playboy founder of Wikipedia, has a new girlfriend-of-the-moment: Mother Nature. His for-profit offshoot wiki startup, Wikia, has launched Wikia Green, an edit-it-yourself guide to all things environmental. Like his past launched-and-abandoned efforts — anyone remember Campaigns Wikia, Wales's political supersite? — Wikia Green likely won't go far.But it will give Wales something to chatter about the next time he runs into Bono or Sir Richard Branson at a party. We'd bet his celebrity friends are too polite to ask the notoriously cheap Wales if he's actually springing for carbon offsets to make up for all of the emissions he generates through his nonstop round-the-world jet travel. Oh, and should we get into the contribution to global warming he makes through all the hot air that issues from his lips?

Sue Gardner, the Canadian ex-journalist hired to run Wikipedia last year, has treated Jimmy Wales, the site's cofounder, with kid gloves. Until now. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Gardner vehemently defends the nonprofit status of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's owner:

From Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia entry, one learns that the online encyclopedia's founder grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and that his father, Jimmy, worked as a grocery-store manager, and his mother, Doris, ran a private school. From sources less public but more reliably accurate, I've heard that he's visiting his parents this weekend, with daughter Kira in tow. Ah, a touching family get-together. But a person familiar with Wales's plans believes that he is actually heading back to Alabama to bully his ex-wife Pam over statements she made to W magazine, which appeared in a profile that he found frustratingly unflattering.Because W is a print magazine — the kind of source Wikipedia's fussy editors favor — Pam's characterization of Wales has made it into his Wikipedia entry. "His whole ‘Mr. Save the World’ is so contrary to what he said every day for seven years," Pam told W. She also said that Wales, a follower of Ayn Rand, discouraged her from pursuing a nursing career; his Objectivist beliefs, she suggested, made him look down on anyone pursuing work that smacked of altruism. The opinions Wales expressed to Pam then are not fashionable among his recently acquired limousine-liberal friends. Pam, who has since remarried, had stayed close to Wales for some time after their divorce. (Shades of Sweet Home Alabama: We've learned that Wales didn't bother to finalize their divorce until shortly after Pam told him she was planning to marry someone else.) A friend says Pam only fell out with her ex-husband over his treatment of Christine, his current wife, from whom he is separated. Most disturbingly, he has called her three times since the W article came out, announcing his plans to visit her, uninvited, while he's in Alabama. Wales even had his sister email Pam to let her know he wanted to speak to her. Obviously, there are some things in Wales's life that can't be resolved with an old-fashioned edit war. (Photoillustration by Jackson West)

Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales is committed to bringing the sum of all human knowledge to everybody on the planet. Except, that is, his Twitter updates, which he has just made "protected," so that only his 2,862 "friends" on the microblogging service can read them. We're sure that among that crowd, there are some Valleywag readers who will want to keep Wales adding to the sum of all human knowledge. Do share some Wales updates, won't you?

Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, has popularized the notion that "naked shorts" are ruining Wall Street. In the process, though, he also popularized the notion that he was a paranoid nutjob — a reputation that he's hardly shed since the SEC issued new regulations governing the shady stock-trading practice. Byrne may have won the battle on Capitol Hill, but he has yet to win the thoroughly bureaucratic, endlessly argumentative hearts and minds of Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia.A refresher on naked shorts: In a regular short sale, a trader borrows shares and sells them, profiting if the stock drops in price; a "naked" short skips the step of borrowing shares. How can you sell something you don't own? A loophole in stock-trading rules that gives traders three days to settle up. "Naked shorts" is also possibly the most hilariously homoerotic term for a trading scheme yet invented. Byrne loudly insists that investigative reporter Gary Weiss, formerly of BusinessWeek, edited the Wikipedia entry on naked shorting. Asked by The Register, a U.K. tech publication, Weiss denied this charge. Byrne's undocumented conspiracy theories have won him few friends on Wikipedia, where editors punctiliously insist on mainstream-media verification of all charges, unless an unproved assertion happens to suit their agendas. And that's where Jimmy Wales comes in. One has to think Wales, a former stock trader himself — though not a very successful one — has got his former colleagues' back. Wales has not visibly weighed into the Byrne argument. But he rarely does so publicly, preferring to use private mailing lists to direct Wikipedia editors, as he did when his then-girlfriend Rachel Marsden prevailed on him to brighten up her entry. So, Patrick, there's your solution: Stop whining on Wikipedia about how ill-treated you are. It's become clear that the only way to get a speedy revision to your WIkipedia entry is a personal appeal to Wales himself. So ring up Jimmy directly. Tell him how much you admire the cheerful cynicism behind his supposedly altruistic work. Brush up on your Ayn Rand quotes. Offer a "donation." Or how about a very graphic, in-person demonstration of "naked shorts," if that's what it takes? Just remember: Wikipedia isn't about the sum of all human knowledge. It's about what humanity can do for Jimmy. (Photo by markjhandel, photoillustration by Jackson West)

The world's most respected business newspaper and an elite fashion industry magazine disagree on this most basic of facts: Is Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales pudgy or not? James Gleick, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that Wales is "a trim 42-year-old who favors black shirts and a slightly Mephistophelian beard." W Magazine described him as "a nondescript man with thinning brown hair and a slight paunch." Which is it? His Wikipedia entry is absolutely no use on the subject.