Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has the best job ever: Flying around the world on other people's dime, getting drunk with worshipful fanboys, and bedding women who want their online-encyclopedia entries edited. His latest globetrotting gig: cochair of a World Economic Forum event in the Middle East. ("Has Jimmy been asked to attend because of his deep understanding of the cultures and economics of the Middle East, or is it because the organizers think that like Wikipedia, they can edit the history and change things at a whim, without anyone being accountable?" asks former Wikipedia administrator Danny Wool.) How can he afford to pursue such sidelines?

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has been backed into a corner by the slew of charges against the nonprofit and its founder, Jimmy Wales. She's retreating from her initial line that it was all the fault of a disgruntled ex-employee, as she did with CNET. Now, in a recorded interview with Not the Wikipedia Weekly, she's switched to a new defense: What about the children?

You're bored with the whole thing, but watch and learn, people. This is media training at its finest. "What's happening here is we have a disgruntled former employee. This guy has a blog, and he's used that blog as a platform to spread a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip. It's hard for us to even respond to — I don't know if you've read it, but it's not entirely even clear necessarily always what's being alleged." — Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner on CNET. She praises ex-chair Jimmy Wales's saintly, parsimonious behavior all the way back to last summer.

It's not the sex. It's the money. So contends Danny Wool, a former top administrator at the nonprofit which runs Wikipedia. Wool reports on how Wales ran up $30,000 in expenses on trips abroad, many of which allowed him to pick up speaking fees which he kept personally. Florence Devouard, chair of the nonprofit, confronted Wales about this. "I don't make any money, and my wife needs a washing machine," Wales reportedly told her. Her reply, according to Wool: "A gold-plated washing machine?" Wool is right.