At an offshoot of Wikipedia, the users are revolting. Administrators of Wikinews, a site where volunteers collaboratively write news articles have voted to strip Jimmy Wales of his administrative privileges. He has protested the decision: "Due to recent developments, I am here more often and anticipate being here more often." Wales is not just a Wikinews user, however; he is a board member of the site's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, with a guaranteed seat, thanks to a recent reshuffling of the board. As such, his participation on the site may put it at legal risk.

Jimmy Wales, the so-called founder of Wikipedia, is in Egypt's Red Sea resort hobnobbing with heads of state as chairman of the World Economic Forum's Middle East summit, popularly known as "Davos in the Desert." The message he delivered in a press event: "Too often when people around the world reflect on the situation in the Middle East they focus on extremism and the different problems." With Internet adoption exploding in the region, "we're going to start hearing from ordinary people," Wales added. What Wales did not get into: How those "ordinary" people will react when they encounter his online encylopedia for the first time, and find that articles on child sexuality are edited by ardent defenders of pedophilia. Perhaps sharia will prove more effective than current management at enforcing Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" standard.

Jimmy Wales's clandestine editing of a girlfriend's Wikipedia entry has done more than just bring the online encyclopedia into disrepute. It may well put the site's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, in legal jeopardy. Wikipedia has thrived in part thanks to a protection granted by the Communications Decency Act, which spares websites which merely host users' content from liability for what they say. But what if one of the website's officials moves to have that content edited? Then the protection vanishes. That is the legal argument advanced by Wales's ex, Rachel Marsden, in a series of emails with Mike Godwin, Wikimedia's general counsel, that she has posted to Valleywag.

Since a controversial record cover led to charges of Wikipedia hosting child porn, Jimmy Wales, the creator of the world's most democratically assembled list of anarcho-punk bands, has kept his silence. Until Sunday, that is, when Wales logged onto an IRC channel to discuss the issue. Wikipedia Review posted a transcript of the chat. The essential points: Wales denied that there was an FBI investigation, "as far as I am aware." (Note the hedge: As a board member of Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales has no day-to-day role in the site's operations.) On the image in question, a cover of the 1976 Scorpions album Virgin Killer, Wales equivocated. "I think people should be able to debate it with mutual respect," said Wales. There you have Wales's position on child pornography, in a nutshell: Let's talk about it! Excerpts from the transcript below:

Mike Godwin does not practice what he preaches. The general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, once told the New York Times that "the best answer for bad speech is more speech." But in the face of a groundswell of criticism of Wikipedia — that its frontman, Jimmy Wales, is corrupt; that its executive director, Sue Gardner, is power-mad; and that its deputy director, Erik Möller, is dangerously out of touch with potential donors' views — Godwin has remained silent. That will not change anytime soon, it seems. Godwin was due to speak this Thursday at Santa Clara University on "The World that Wikipedia Made: The Ethics and Values of Public Knowledge." But Valleywag has learned that Godwin today backed out of the talk, with two days' notice, and that the foundation has refused to supply another Wikipedia official in his place. Could it be that in this case, the voluble Godwin really has nothing worth saying? So much for advancing the sum of all human knowledge. (Photo by Alice Lipowicz)

Despite not making the cut for this year's Time 100, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales showed up at the magazine's party anyway. (Past honorees are reinvited to the party automatically.) Even more surprising: On his arm was Andrea Weckerle, the freelance public-relations professional long rumored to have been smitten with Wales. If this photo is an indication, her affections are less unrequited than has been said.

"Yesterday we went to see Jimmy Wales speak at the Nobel Peace Prize Center during the seminar 'How Free is the Internet.' Jimbo was less controversial than his wikipedia page and his jokes were not funny." — Aeron Bergman and Alejandra Salinas, on a visit by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to Norway

This Saturday, the Castilleja School, an all-girls' college-prep academy in Palo Alto, has invited Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd, Google fashionista Marissa Mayer, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to a symposium on leadership. What, exactly, does Wales propose to teach, I wonder?

Safe to say that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's plan to take Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden to the Time 100 party are definitely off. Not only have Wales and Marsden broken up, but Time has, as we predicted, declined to return Wales to its list of the most influential people. Think he'll shrug this off? Check out this video from last year where he complained to Stephen Colbert about getting bumped for the likes of Tyra Banks:

Sue Gardner, the power-hungry executive director of Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, has carried out the first phase of her master plan. She's orchestrated a reorganization of Wikipedia's board. The chief changes to the rulers of the world's most complete list of people affected by bipolar disorder: Only 30 percent of the board is now elected. Two board members will be appointed by Wikipedia's "chapters," country-specific nonprofits which wield power far greater than their actual numbers would seem to warrant. Jimmy Wales has been granted an unelected "community founder" seat. The other five board seats, three of them currently empty, can be filled by board appointees with no connection to Wikipedia. Which would make it easy for Gardner to stack the board with wealthy venture capitalists interested in profiting from Wikipedia's highly-trafficked website.

What's New York's biggest internet site? AOL, no longer. Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia which is my some measures the seventh most popular site on the web, has no central office. But Jimmy Wales, the site's pundit-loving leader, is moving to the city.

For a province of California, Silicon Valley can be strangely puritan at times. That made it an uncomfortable locale for libertine Libertarian Jimmy Wales, the less-than-saintly founder of Wikipedia. Wales told ex-lover Rachel Marsden, the Canadian controversialist, that he wanted to move to New York to be closer to her. Their affair is over — ended, fittingly, via a posting on Wikipedia — but Wales has relocated to New York all the same. The likely reason has to do with work, or the appearance of work. Although Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, is located in San Francisco, and his ostensible employer, for-profit wiki venture Wikia, has itsheadquarters in a suburb to the south of the city, Wales is charged with running a search-engine project for Wikia which is based in New York.

Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, occasionally says something clever. Why doesn't his magazine cover politics? "We're not working on an election story," he told MarketWatch. "This comes from my own sense that politics today is being driven by the institutional structure of the past 20 years." Too bad Jimmy Wales hasn't figured this out. Proclaimed the founder of Wikipedia on July 4, 2006:

Invited to speak about "the future of the Internet" at New York University, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales instead spent the session dwelling on his smartphone's inbox. Why was the muse for the world's most exhaustive list of Simpsons episodes so distracted? Likely for the same reason he hired a personal security guard for the event: would-be paramour Andrea Weckerle. We're told that Weckerle, a PR consultant previously linked to Wales, has such a crush on Wales — unrequited — that she flew cross-country for the event, and told friends she was sharing a hotel room with Wales for a supposed tryst.

Last year, Wikipedia hired an executive-search firm to find someone to run its nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation. Thousands of dollars later, it concluded that Wikipedia was "too immature" as an organization to hire a boss. It nonetheless landed Sue Gardner, head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website, as executive director. Her primary qualification, insiders say, was a lip-locking session with WIkipedia founder Jimmy Wales in Amsterdam. That's perhaps unkind. Gardner, after all, graduated from Ryerson with a degree in journalism, specializing in pop culture. With such a keen understanding of the ways of reporters, Gardner tried to get Wikipedia's restive board members to sign a nondisparagement and nondisclosure agreement.

We now know the kind of woman Jimmy Wales goes for: brunettes who appear on Fox News and have conveniently troubled Wikipedia entries. In January, the founder of the world's greatest online list of unusually shaped vegetables was courting Canadian controversialist Rachel Marsden with sex-fantasy-laden IM chats. But at the same time, Wales was also playing the gallant on Star editor-at-large and former Fox News late-night pundit Julia Allison's Wikipedia page.

Who founded Wikipedia? Jimmy Wales likes to tell third-world denizens he did. Here's a clip from IJsbrand van Veelen's new documentary The Truth According To Wikipedia featuring Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger. Among Wikipedians, it's an old debate, but to Wales's worldwide audience, Sanger's existence might come as a surprise.

Ever since Andrew Keen wrote his polemic The Cult of the Amateur, we've all had to deal with pretentious debates on Web 2.0's effects on culture. Enough. To settle the matter, filmmaker IJsbrand van Veelen debuted a 45-minute documentary called The Truth According To Wikipedia at the Next Web conference last week. We've pared it down to a watchable 1 minute and 30 seconds — the length of most YouTube videos you like to watch.

For MarketWatch readers, American Express wants to brand itself as company that understands how to "drive growth through technology." And so the the credit card company presents the Open forum, featuring Internet visionary Jimbo Wales and his faroff gaze. Who better to explain the "nature of direct marketing" or demonstrate the value of "reaching customers?" Besides, Wales has shown he's very comfortable using his card.

In an instant-message chat with then-lover Rachel Marsden, Jimmy Wales dreamed about taking her to a public event — "like the Time 100 party or something" — just to stir up talk. The Wikipedia founder clearly assumed he was a shoe-in to make the list again. Perhaps not, if Time's editors have anything to say about it.