Rachel speaks:, Embarassing details about life dating Jimbo Options

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman...ticle914989.ece

Text and the City
BEING dumped is never a pleasant experience.

But most spurned lovers at least get the news in person.

So spare a thought for Rachel Marsden, who only realised her fella had given her the elbow when she read it on website Wikipedia.

Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales is a co-founder of the web encyclopedia but took his pledge to provide up-to-date information too far when he used Wikipedia to axe his romance with Rachel, 33, – allegedly without telling her first.

Last week Jimmy, 41, posted this statement on his Wikipedia page: “I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden.”

Rachel, a political commentator who lives in New York and had been seeing Jimmy for two months, was stunned.

She said: “The first I knew of it was when I started receiving emails on my Blackberry from people saying ‘have you seen Wikipedia? I think Jimmy’s just broken up with you.’ I don’t think I realised at first that he was actually ending the relationship.

“I tried to call him but he didn’t answer his phone. Hours later he got back to me on an online instant messaging service.

“I wrote, ‘I think we need to talk, is that right, you just dumped me on Wikipedia?’

And he replied, ‘Yeah, I want to end it, I hope that’s fine.’

“To follow a dumping on Wikipedia with an online instant message is unbelievable. So I followed it with an email calling him a slime bag and a sleaze. What kind of man does that?”

But Rachel didn’t stop there. She hit back at Jimmy’s public airing of their dirty laundry by airing HIS dirty laundry in public. She dug out a T-shirt and jumper her former lover had left at her home and put them up for sale on internet auction site eBay.

The accompanying message read: “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 said: “When Jimmy finished with me I was pretty hurt. I really liked this guy and thought the relationship had some longevity.

“However, the manner in which he dumped me suggests that maybe I am better off without him.

“It was all pretty embarrassing so I thought I would make the best of it by trying to have a laugh. After all, he was the one who made it public in the first place.”

The details of Jimmy and Rachel’s liaison offer a fascinating insight into the high-tech world of modern dating.

Rachel revealed that a hefty proportion of her two-month relationship with Florida-based Jimmy was conducted via the web.

She said: “Jimmy is obsessed with instant messaging services which allow you to chat ‘live’ online. On his insistence I ended up joining two.

“Jimmy also insisted I get a service called Skype which allows you to make phone calls over the internet and speak via webcam.

“I wasn’t sure at first as it all sounded kind of sleazy to me.

“But he insisted it was a good way to keep in touch because he was constantly travelling. In the end we talked every night.

“But as I suspected, inevitably there were times when he was lying naked in bed with the laptop and you can imagine what happened. He encouraged that kind of thing but I really wasn’t into it.”

However, Rachel said conducting a love affair online wasn’t all bad.

She said: “Really our first date was over Skype and it was actually really good.

“Sure you are speaking over a webcam but in many ways there are a lot fewer distractions than when you are on a normal date. And the first time we used the webcam we laughed till we cried.

“So in some senses I think the internet can be good for modern relationships, especially if it is long-distance.

“But Jimmy was just so obsessed with that stuff that it went too far.

“He wanted to be in contact all the time through technology and I personally don’t believe that can ever be a substitute for real face-to-face contact.

“I basically found I was dating a giant computer.

“Jimmy would continually be on this website called Twitter where you write one-sentence updates on what you are doing at that moment, even small things like ‘I’m making a sandwich’. I couldn’t understand it.

“Once his daughter called him because she was upset and he told her to instant-message him about it, which seemed very weird.

“He is a personable guy but it is like he is incapable of verbal communication.” But instant messages between the two leaked to a California weblog show that online loving could get Rachel cyber-sizzling.

When Jimmy wrote about South Korea’s broadband infrastructure, an excited Rachel replied: “When you talk about megabits and broadband you have no idea what it does to me. lol.”

Rachel and Jimmy’s relationship was never what you would call conventional. They got to know each other, more than two years ago, when Rachel threatened to sue Jimmy over her Wikipedia biography.

They corresponded over the issue then, months later, stumbled across each other again on Facebook.

Embarrassingly for Jimmy, his public spat with Rachel raised questions over whether his editing of her biog broke Wikipedia’s guiding principals – the site demands that all content should be written from a “neutral point of view”.

Rachel suspects that it was Jimmy’s fears that his involvement with her page would be seen as a conflict of interest that prompted him to dump her so abruptly.

She said: “He was paranoid about it coming out that we were dating. He never explained why he was so secretive so I can only speculate that he feared people would accuse him of a conflict of interests.

“Given his paranoia, however, it seems weird that he broke up with me in such a public way.”

Rachel says she will steer away from “techies” in future.

She said: “I will try to find someone who is comfortable talking face to face.

“I’ve had break-ups before that have been weird – but nothing like this.”

This post has been edited by Heat:

The Sun: Rupert Murdoch's original baby and flagship enterprise.

There's certainly something fishy about the whole Marsden / Murdoch onslaught against Wales. All the Murdoch papers made a deal out of it. And it can't be just because she's a Fox reporter?

Can someone explain to me, just why - if her understanding of the situation was that they still had a relationship - why she leaked those chat logs? Because at the time when the story first broke, my understanding was that she was dumping him

This post has been edited by Random832:

The Sun: Rupert Murdoch's original baby and flagship enterprise.

There's certainly something fishy about the whole Marsden / Murdoch onslaught against Wales. All the Murdoch papers made a deal out of it. And it can't be just because she's a Fox reporter?

Actually, this article, sleazy bits aside, is quite helpful for explaining why it did not add up. Basically there was no relationship to break up over aside from some rather dubious sounding web chats using various technologies. I go with the couple of comments:

Do not understand what the gripe is. Two months is hardly a relationship and online is even less of one.

and the more to the point, in true Sun Reader style:

He is minging luv, you can do way better

Can someone explain to me, just why - if her understanding of the situation was that they still had a relationship - why she leaked those chat logs? Because at the time when the story first broke, my understanding was that she was dumping him

There was no real "relationship" - Jimbo didn't dump her on WP - - she leaked chat logs in a desperate attempt at publicity before Jimbo made any statements - and she's now getting spreads in international newspapers so it worked.

It's simply media manipulation to raise her profile. The Sun know that reciprocal game better than anyone else on the planet. They get readers, she gets a higher profile, we get a good story of Jimbo falling flat on his arse. Everyone's happy. (Except Jimbo. But as he unleashed the world's most powerful defamation machine against everyone else, who cares about him, eh? )

It's simply media manipulation to raise her profile. The Sun know that reciprocal game better than anyone else on the planet. They get readers, she gets a higher profile, we get a good story of Jimbo falling flat on his arse. Everyone's happy. (Except Jimbo. But as he unleashed the world's most powerful defamation machine against everyone else, who cares about him, eh? )

This whole thing may be a publicity stunt, but if it is, I'd guess both of them are in on it. Wales needed just this kind of comedic distraction to divert attention from the much more serious allegations that he has accepted bribes to fix articles and is basically running Wikipedia as some kind of protection racket.

This whole thing may be a publicity stunt, but if it is, I'd guess both of them are in on it. Wales needed just this kind of comedic distraction to divert attention from the much more serious allegations that he has accepted bribes to fix articles and is basically running Wikipedia as some kind of protection racket.

Those allegations didn't come out until after this, though... Unless you're suggesting they knew in advance that it would.

<moderator note>thread moved to the News Worth Discussing forum from Articles

Those allegations didn't come out until after this, though... Unless you're suggesting they knew in advance that it would.

I'm not saying any of this is likely either, but it's always possible that the threat of the allegations being made public could have been received a while before the allegations were, in fact, made public. Why he would have chosen a sex scandal as a distraction technique is anyone's guess, but my own guess would be because sex scandals are a really, really effective distraction technique.

Can someone explain to me, just why - if her understanding of the situation was that they still had a relationship - why she leaked those chat logs? Because at the time when the story first broke, my understanding was that she was dumping him

Because she's insane. Marsden is not a rational person, particularly when it comes to relationships.

Those allegations didn't come out until after this, though... Unless you're suggesting they knew in advance that it would.

I'm not saying any of this is likely either, but it's always possible that the threat of the allegations being made public could have been received a while before the allegations were, in fact, made public. Why he would have chosen a sex scandal as a distraction technique is anyone's guess, but my own guess would be because sex scandals are a really, really effective distraction technique.

I don't think Jimbo's that clever - not that I think deliberately humiliating yourself and undermining your credibility among your followers is very clever either. The only way it would be deliberate is if Jimbo had some sort of deep psychological problem that made him secretly desire punishment and humiliation.

Even if that's the case

“But as I suspected, inevitably there were times when he was lying naked in bed with the laptop and you can imagine what happened. He encouraged that kind of thing but I really wasn’t into it.”

let's hope for our own sakes that Rachel lacks the technical savvy to record these webcam sessions and release them to a world that is not ready for the sight of Jimbo gratifying himself. Besides, Jimbo already uses Wikipedia to wank off publicly - that's more than enough.

let's hope for our own sakes that Rachel lacks the technical savvy to record these webcam sessions and release them to a world that is not ready for the sight of Jimbo gratifying himself. Besides, Jimbo already uses Wikipedia to wank off publicly - that's more than enough.

That article should be deleted for all our sakes. I made the mistake of looking at his Twitter site, and then that lead to Jimbo's photo-journal. I nearly said "I can't believe" again, but it tells a story of why such a shallow man would not have a problem with an encyclopedia that anyone can bugger up.

I don't think Jimbo's that clever - not that I think deliberately humiliating yourself and undermining your credibility among your followers is very clever either. The only way it would be deliberate is if Jimbo had some sort of deep psychological problem that made him secretly desire punishment and humiliation.

I don't think he needs a deep psychological problem, he just needs to be the sort of guy who likes telling everyone the intricate details of his sex life, which according to Danny Wool he is.

But as he unleashed the world's most powerful defamation machine against everyone else, who cares about him, eh?

WORD.

I don't think it bothers him all that much though. What probably irks him is that it brought all the "is Wales an embezzler" articles to page one of all the top U.S. rags his Hi-tech donors read.

Sex sells.

Normally, no one gives a damn if he buys his wife (what was it, Florence called it?) a gold plated washing machine.

But when he's doing the dirty with RM, and maybe paying for hookers on WP nickle, suddenly, they CARE.

This post has been edited by Disillusioned Lackey:

It looks like certain forms of human knowledge are not allowed on Wikipedia.

So people keep going on about BLP and the need to remove stuff from BLP articles, but when somebody does so, you complain? Is the suggestion that Jimbo is in some sense subhuman hence not entitled to the same rights as you would grant to others?

And I strongly suspect it was a copyvio.

This post has been edited by Happy drinker:

So people keep going on about BLP and the need to remove stuff from BLP articles, but when somebody does so, you complain? Is the suggestion that Jimbo is in some sense subhuman hence not entitled to the same rights as you would grant to others?

Jimbo has waived his right to complain about his own Wikipedia article by his devil-may-care attitude toward other people's articles. If you go about setting up defamation engines, you really don't get to complain when that engine is turned on yourself.

So people keep going on about BLP and the need to remove stuff from BLP articles, but when somebody does so, you complain? Is the suggestion that Jimbo is in some sense subhuman hence not entitled to the same rights as you would grant to others?

In the sense, maybe, that his chat-up lines are puerile in the extreme (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yak.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif)

There are currently 885 editors watching Jimmy's BLP. Just how many do you think are watching the average Joe's (or Jo's? Melissa McEwan's BLP had lain vandalized for over two months before being reverted). So yeah - he's superhuman, more like (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

And I strongly suspect it was a copyvio.

How so, if Rachel released it publicly, and it was her conversation, too?

So people keep going on about BLP and the need to remove stuff from BLP articles, but when somebody does so, you complain? Is the suggestion that Jimbo is in some sense subhuman hence not entitled to the same rights as you would grant to others?

In the sense, maybe, that his chat-up lines are puerile in the extreme (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yak.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif)

There are currently 885 editors watching Jimmy's BLP. Just how many do you think are watching the average Joe's (or Jo's? Melissa McEwan's BLP had lain vandalized for over two months before being reverted). So yeah - he's superhuman, more like (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

And I strongly suspect it was a copyvio.

How so, if Rachel released it publicly, and it was her conversation, too?

Next mafia bosses will say wiretaps or at least text messages are copyvios, too. Everything that is imputed on a keyboard is not a creative work.

It looks like certain forms of human knowledge are not allowed on Wikipedia.

Sharing this particular type of human knowledge is also a blockable offense, even if you've been an editor since March 2006, with thousands of edits.

This post has been edited by thekohser:

It looks like certain forms of human knowledge are not allowed on Wikipedia.

Sharing this particular type of human knowledge is also a blockable offense.

Ah, yes. The encyclopedia that anybody can edit, so long as it's text-editing. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) All of the arguments for why we can't just sprotect nearly everything, all apply just as well to images, too. If these arguments that IPs should be freeeeeeee are valid arguments, what happened?

Logic failed, apparently. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif)

Also, it appears that adding anything derogatory to Jimbo's BLP, no matter if well-sourced or not, is "trolling." And a BLP violation, too, if it's Jimbo.