Has no one heard of the classic bitch-slap? To get on with our story; it was a boy meets girl story for the web 2.0 generation. But when it all turned sour the recriminations resounded through the blogosphere while the dirty laundry was put up for sale on eBay.
She was Rachel Marsden, 33, the Canadian right-wing political pundit used to airing the tangles of her personal life online. He was Jimmy Wales, 41, the co-founder of Wikipedia, the web encyclopaedia that aims to provide up-to-date “user-generated” information.
On Saturday Ms Marsden logged on to discover that her own particular affair had also been updated. She had been dumped on Wikipedia.
Mr Wales posted a statement on the site noting that: “I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden.”
In response Ms Marsden did what any self-respecting scorned cyber-pundit would do. She dug out the shirt and jumper that her former lover had worn during what was apparently their only night together and put them up for sale on eBay. “Hi, my name is Rachel and my (now ex) boyfriend, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, just broke up with me via an announcement on Wikipedia,” she wrote.
By last night bidding on the T-shirt, complete with stubborn stains, had reached more than £150 while bids on the jumper had climbed past £200.
She also sent a transcript of their passionate conversations on an instant messenger service to a California technology blog, fuelling a debate on whether Mr Wales had broken his own website’s principles. Among them is the policy that all of Wikipedia’s “user-facing” content “should be written from a neutral point of view” and may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas . . . that, in the words of Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a “novel narrative or historical interpretation”.
There was some uncertainty as to whether Mr Wales could write about his past romance from a “neutral point of view”; equally, it was unclear whether his statement that the affair was ended constituted a “novel narrative or historical interpretation”.
What Mr Wales acknowledged was a “far more important” issue was the allegation that, as he became involved with Ms Marsden, he intervened to redraft her Wikipedia biography.
“Rachel Marsden first approached me via e-mail two years ago with complaints about her bio,” he wrote. It already contained plenty of points of controversy. In the late 1990s, as a college swimming star, she had accused the team coach of sexual harassment. The coach, who was fired and then reinstated, claimed that she had harassed him. In 2004 she had been given a conditional discharge for harassing a radio host.
What concerned Ms Marsden, however, was an account of her entanglement with a Canadian counter-terrorism officer with whom she had a two-year affair. On her blog she accused him of passing her secret documents; he accused her of harassment.
Mr Wales said that he reviewed the entry on Ms Marsden and discovered it was not up to standard. “We had never met,” he added. They did meet in February. An apparent transcript of their conversations before that meeting suggests that, although Mr Wales had withdrawn from the editing process, he was still influencing the editors.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3475722.ece
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