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More Wales goofs, gaffes, and blunders.
[[Wikipedia]] co-founder '''Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales has often been criticized''' for his authoritarian style in his direction of the online encyclopedia community and for his mismanagement of the [[Directory:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] that is responsible for running it.
[[Wikipedia]] co-founder '''Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales has often been criticized''' for his sometimes authoritarian, sometimes unaccountable, and sometimes inept style in his direction of the online encyclopedia community and for his mismanagement of the [[Directory:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] that is responsible for running it.
As a [[Directory:The New York Times|New York Times]] writer commented in a column once:
As a [[Directory:The New York Times|New York Times]] writer commented in a column once:
[[Keyword:=critique]]
[[Keyword:=critique]]
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==Openserving==
In December 2006, Jimmy Wales launched a spin-off from Wikia called [http://openserving.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Openserving]. Wales was attempting to copy another business model that had been floated by Centiare.com (which is currently regenerated at [[Directory:MyWikiBiz|MyWikiBiz]]) and Helium.com, where the unpaid labor who create new content would have the opportunity to earn advertising revenue as a reward for their authorship. Although Wales claimed that "thousands" of interested queries were made of Openserving, the project never got a single new forum off the ground. It was a failure.
Wikia.com is perhaps Wales' most successful project financially, although it has been speculated that it won't be able to turn a profit, as meager ad revenues can't possibly support the staffing needs. Wikia Search, the last-gasp effort of Wales to achieve Internet success was on a miserable fail trajectory from the outset, especially in terms of edits being made to the site. Finally, in April 2009, Wales has shut down Wikia Search, only a few days after telling a reporter that he and his team were "cranking away" at it.
==Spanking Art Wikia==
Jimmy Wales' privately-held Wikia company as recently as January 2008 hosted online a web menagerie of freely-licensed images of innocent children juxtaposed with depraved images of children being mercilessly spanked until purple, along with photos of various sexual-enhancement toys. A critic of the site led an urgent campaign that challenged this '''[http://web.archive.org/web/20071214201347rn_1/spankingart.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Spanking Art Wikia]''' wiki. Wales became quite ruffled under the collar, irritated that the agitator had not "made a complaint through the proper channels". Imagine, sexually-charged images of deviant abuse against children, and the man hosting it on his company's servers was more upset that the complaints against his site weren't filed properly.
==Wikia Search==
Jimbo's venture into the search engine market was much-ballyhooed by the tech media, but after only an 18-month effort, Wales pulled the plug on the failure that was Wikia Search. Evidence was clear early on that it would [http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2008/10/the.html not be a success]. But even as late as March 2009, Wales [http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/22475.asp deceived reporter Susan Kuchinskas] with the assurance, "''I have my team focused on the front end, working on the user experience, and making sure we have all the wiki-like tools people need to work on the site. We're just cranking away.''" Merely days later, Wales would face reality, fire the people he'd employed to try make this pig fly, and shut down the site.
==References==
==References==