Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Jimmy Wales here Friday!

I already know what I'm doing Friday afternoon.  Jimmy Wales is talking at Georgia Tech on Friday!

1 comment:

Gregory Kohs said...

This is excellent, Jeremy!

If I were still at Emory, I would head on over there and see if I could get a few of my questions in at the end of the speech. Some things I'd ask:

(1) Is it not self-serving, or self-dealing, to use a free public lecture to further contextually tie your for-profit Wikia (which is struggling financially) to the more wildly successful non-profit Wikipedia? Even as your User page on Wikipedia strains itself to say that Wikia is a "completely separate organization"?

(2) How is Wikia "completely separate", when (at one time) 60% of the Board members of the Wikimedia Foundation were Wikia employees; you appointed a Wikia employee to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee; the co-founder of Wikia heads up the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board; the co-founder of Wikia is also married to a lead IT strategist for the Wikimedia Foundation; and the Wikimedia Foundation is paying monthly office rent to Wikia, Inc.? I'm having trouble seeing the "complete" separation through the forest of conflicts and cross-overs.

(3) Why are there over 10,000 external links from Wikipedia to Wikia, Inc. sites?

(4) Have you asked Guy Chapman to modify the Wikipedia article of anyone else that you may be dating, or was Rachel Marsden the only one?

Okay, I'm sure that the last one I'd just keep to myself, but I'd be curious to watch Jimbo answer the first three. Not so much to hear his verbal answer, but to watch his eye movements, hand gestures, beads of sweat on his brow, and other such "tells" that things are not as they always seem.