"Planning a quieter life," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales Twittered on Sunday. Good luck with that, Jimbo! Even Wales realized that was impossible: He later backpedaled on the request.

According to a review of John Broughton's new book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, the first rule to govern Wikipedia — written by its first editor, Larry Sanger, and signed by Jimmy Wales — appeared on the site on October 1, 2001. It was:

A tipster reports overhearing Jimmy Wales at SFO the morning of Saturday, February 23, pleading with a girlfriend — presumably Rachel Marsden — to keep the relationship alive. His eyewitness report of the conversation:

What's the worst thing Jimmy Wales could talk about with a girlfriend? Get your mind out of the gutter, and down into the sewer. Before his Wikipedia-posted breakup with Rachel Marsden, Wales plotted with the Canadian journalist on exactly how he was going to get her Wikipedia entry cleaned up. To avoid his foes at Wikipedia Review, he told Marsden he'd work through proxies. In a statement, he claimed he was not acting "inappropriately." Here are the transcripts which will let you judge for yourself. (Marsden is the "me" in this chat; Wales's moniker is "jimbo.wales.")

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.

Michael Arrington, a fragile soul, imagines the rest of the Valley is as weak-willed as he is. Without mentioning Jimmy Wales by name, Arrington distraughtly lays out his fears that Valleywag will drive him to kill himself. How little you know, Michael. For Wales, Valleywag induces not the big death but the little one. In his sex chats with Rachel Marsden, Wales fantasized about taking the Canadian TV commentator to a public event like this spring's Time 100 party, and wondered why Valleywag hadn't previously outed him. The transcripts, below:

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Fox News personality Rachel Marsden have broken up — and Jimmy is learning a harsh lesson: hell has no fury like a woman scorned. Here's the goodbye email from Rachel to Jimmy and an IM conversation that strongly suggests Wales violated Wikipedia's rules to encourage favorable changes to Marsden's Wikipedia profile.

How to describe His Holiness Jimbo Wales? The pugnacious entrepreneur Jason Calacanis can't stand dealing with Wales, because the Wikipedia founder is so humble, so calm, so staid that, unlike Calacanis's other would-be competitors, he takes no bait and is above reproach. So Jason must be pleased to see Wales revealed as human, and in fact as a dude who picks up chicks using his own online encyclopedia. The nerds have already heard this story in, like, fifty volumes on Valleywag, but here's a quicker version. The point: Jimmy Wales is an Internet Christ figure, this was his Last Temptation, and even though he failed he's still the Son of God.

Breaking up stinks. Never more so than when your ex is Jimmy Wales, the unhygienic founder of Wikipedia, right-wing TV commentator Rachel Marsden has learned. Before Wales dumped her via Wikipedia, he left two reeking articles of clothing at her New York apartment. She's now selling them on eBay Canada. Today's contribution to the sum of all human knowledge: Jimmy Wales shops at Men's Wearhouse. Screenshots of the eBay listings:

This is surely a first: Breaking up with a girlfriend via Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales, the creator of the world's best collection of Outkast lyrics, has announced in a statement on the website that he's no longer seeing Rachel Marsden, the saucy Canadian right-winger who started chatting him up after her Wikipedia profile came under attack. (See Valleywag's exclusive transcripts of their secret love IMs.) One hopes Marsden didn't learn about the split by reading Jimmy's love note online. As late as last night, she told a friend that she and Wales had patched things up.

In which Wikipedia's chief non-expert Jimmy Wales worries that Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be able to read their instant messages, talks dirty about broadband infrastructure, and says his "Google killer" startup Wikia needs to make him enough money so he can buy a jet where he and Canadian girlfriend Rachel Marsden can have even more sex. Friends claim that Wales, worried Marsden would leak the chats, threatened her with blackmail charges over the transcripts, and talked about jail time and deportation back to Canada for her. That got her so upset she sent copies to one or more friends. They've landed in our inbox. Good job, Jimbo. The best bits:

Why did Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales suggest Wikipedia move from Florida to New York last fall? His for-profit startup, Wikia, is based on the Peninsula; siting Wikipedia's nonprofit foundation across the country made little sense. In light of his fling with cantankerous Canadian Rachel Marsden, the New York-based TV commentator, Wales's Big Apple urges now seem clearer. We now hear he's told Marsden he intends to move to New York in April, after his lease on a San Francisco apartment expires.

Men, if you want to win over a girl, don't post ads on Craigslist. Instead, help her clean up her Wikipedia page! It sure worked for Jimmy Wales. The twice-married, now-divorcing Internet stud met his current girlfriend Rachel Marsden through the site. Here's a brief recap of the Web courtship:

Jimmy Wales loves to talk about "transparency" and "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." Unless it's about his scandal-prone girlfriend. Wales, who is divorcing his second wife Christine, has been secretly seeing conservative TV commentator Rachel Marsden since last fall, friends say. Wales apparently took notice of Marsden when Wikipedia users started an edit war over her page. Marsden, known as "Canada's Ann Coulter," has quite a history: She's been accused of stalking. She plead guilty to charges of criminal harassment in 2004. Most recently, she was escorted out of the Fox News building in New York after an alleged contretemps.

Jimmy Wales has read Susan Jacoby's essay, "The Dumbing of America," which argues that America has become particularly anti-intellectual, and the Wikipedia founder's counterargument in the Washington Post is he's very very smart and so are the people on his web site. Which maybe he is! But that's not what he promised to talk about! For example, he compares Wikipedia's German edition to the leading German encyclopedia, which has nothing to do with Jacoby's point in the essay or in the book she's promoting. Wales also wants us to know everyone loves him: "[Peek in] on one of my public lectures at a high school or university. Who is this person getting the reception of a rock star? Is he a musician? Perhaps some crude comic? No, he's ... the founder of an ... encyclopedia?" Seriously, his entire argument, which Jacoby probably wouldn't even disagree with, is "Wikipedia is awesome." I can't wait to see his upcoming reviews:

A professed goal of Jimmy Wales's for-profit venture, Wikia, is to eliminate spam from search results. But it's reputation on Wikipedia may not help. Users of Wales's online encyclopedia have deemed the entry on his new startup as spam: "This article reads like a news release, or is otherwise written in an overly promotional tone." With Wikia and Wikipedia so closely linked, it's no surprise that volunteer editors would be optimistic about the new search engine. One wonders how long the "Criticism" section for the entry on Wikia will go empty.

Jimmy Wales declares "transparency" a central pillar of his new startup Wikia. But the entrepreneur has quickly obscured discussion of his business's operations. Guardian journalist Seth Finkelstein says he was "moderated," or restricted from posting, for posing questions about how Wikia runs on a Wikia-controlled mailing list. Finkelstein would like to know exactly how Wikia is being funded and operated, which is not entirely clear currently. And we may never know, based on Wales's definition of transparency. The irascible Wales states, "I will allow through his posts if he wants to contribute positively to our work." That's certainly transparent enough.

Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales has opened the curtain on an early version of his for-profit search engine, Wikia. The quality of search results is low, say reviewers — very low. That's because Wales want you, the user, to build the search engine for him. That strategy may have worked with Wikipedia. But building the complex algorithms that power a search engine is not the kind of service I want performed by volunteers.

Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales's for-profit search engine, Wikia Search, will go into a public beta on January 7, according to reports. (Good luck emailing Wales for access to the private beta going on now — he doesn't even answer messages from Bono.) The site — we hear it looks a lot like Facebook — will face competition from Google's Knol. It's also likely to be mentioned in the same breath as Jason Calacanis's people-powered search engine, Mahalo. Which means a lot of heavy breathing will be forthcoming from L.A.

Five years ago, blogger Rogers Cadenhead recalls, blogging sorta-evangelist and RSS king Dave Winer made a long bet with Martin Nisenholtz, the senior VP for digital operations at the New York Times. The proposition was this: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site." The best part is, their arguments at the time both pro and con are pretty hilarious—because they've been rendered obsolete. Though technically one of them won, there was another real winner, Cadenhead points out.