Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Jimbo Wales and Lucy Nolan and Wikipedia

It looks like I made Jimbo Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, mad today. I have always respected him, and I am a top contributor to Wikipedia. But I noticed the Jimbo Wales was nominating the article on Lucy Nolan, the TV reporter, in Wikipedia for deletion. In 2008 he was involved in edits in the article of a woman he was dating, Rachel Marsden, of Fox TV. He announced the end of their relationship on his Wikipedia page. In retaliation, she put his t-shirt and sweater he had left at her place up for sale on eBay. I wrote on the discussion page for the Lucy Nolan article: "Does this presage more underwear on Ebay? Just wondering." Giving it some thought, I deleted it. Wales noticed anyway and he emailed me: "That's disgusting. For the record, I do not know Lucy Nolan and have had no contact or communication with her about this issue. You should be ashamed of yourself, really."