Online encyclopedia Wikipedia will begin paying for "key illustrations" on the site, overturning the site's all-volunteer tradition. The funding for these illustrations comes from a donation by a man who feels that while Wikipedia is more up to date, Britannica, the traditional encyclopedic benchmark, has better illustrations. A list of 50 articles in need of better illustrations will be issued and contributors will be paid $40 if their illustration is chosen. With expenses weighing on Wikipedia's bottom line, could Jimmy Wales be cooking up schemes to fill out the top line?

It was an odd venue for a tech party — a greasy diner by day, the Grill sits on a corner near the ballpark, neighborhing Border's, McDonald's, and dozens of men in Giants windbreakers asking passerbys if they need a ticket. They say open source is about software that's free as in "free speech," not "free beer," but the open bar featured plenty of the latter.

Not even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales can escape Facebook fever. He showed off a few screenshots from Wikia's open-source search project while addressing a small gathering in South Africa. What have we here? A Jimmy Wales profile page that looks alarmingly like Facebook. Who knew you could make Facebook's minimalist design even more minimal, and yet somehow render it ugly? The current rumor is Wikia is developing a hybrid of search and social networking that will simultaneously gun down Google and Facebook. Good luck with that, Jimmy. If it doesn't work out for you, you can always change the Wikipedia entry and say it did.

Alexandria, Egypt, will be the host of next year's Wikimania 2008 conference, a gathering of Wikimedia volunteers and the open-source fanatics who create the wiki software. Why Egypt? According to a Wikimedia spokesperson, Alexandria was nominated by volunteers and chosen over other considered cities Toronto and Atlanta. Why? No doubt the chance to associate the Wikipedia brand with the legendary Library of Alexandria, once the largest repository of knowledge in the civilized world. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will be on hand to provide the Keynote address, which the spokeswoman claimed would be "a dynamic event" and very "passionate and involved." Jimmy, we hope, you'll be dressed to impress. You would look fabulous with scarab amulets and kohl-lined eyes. Way better, at least, than those old kimonos.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tells us our tipster got it wrong when suggesting the Wikipedia foundation moved to San Francisco in order to snuggle up to Roger McNamee, one of the moneymen at Elevation Partners. Our anonymous source also suggested Wales was working to find a way to profit from Wikipedia. Wales denies that: "I am 100 percent fully supportive of Wikipedia remaining just as it is: a charitable project. Period." The real scoop? Wales tells us he didn't want to move Wikipedia to San Francisco in the first place. He voted for New York instead. He wouldn't elaborate on why. Our theory? So he could expense cross-continent trips between San Francisco, where his for-profit Wikia startup is based, and New York.

A tipster is telling us we got it right on why founder Jimmy Wales is moving Wikipedia to San Francisco: dollar bills. Tall stacks of them. Specifically, Wales is looking to tap the deep pockets of Wikipedia benefactor Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, our source believes. You know, the firm U2 frontman Bono shills for. Our tipster writes that McNamee and Wales have plans to profit from Wikipedia. Curious, since Wikipedia's run by a nonprofit. The tip, after the jump.

No, really, why did Wikipedia's parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, announce a move to San Francisco? We joked about founder Jimmy Wales's kimono collection, but on reflection, we realized that Wikipedia's line about moving closer to Asia is utter B.S. Wales is moving the nonprofit from Florida to California so he can spend less time shuttling back and forth between Wikipedia and his for-profit startup Wikia, which is located in San Mateo and has close ties to the online encyclopedia. The Bay Area's wealthy geeks, too, make natural fundraising targets for the nonprofit foundation. Any way you cut it, this move is all about the money.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, San Francisco's next celebrigeek resident, has a remote chance of beating dreamy god-mayor Gavin Newsom in November's election, the San Francisco Examiner speculates, on the strength of his presumably crowdsourced stump speeches. But the paper pegs his odds at a remote 2000:1, putting him behind Eric Schmidt (850:1), Steve Jobs, Larry Page or George Lucas (600:1 each), Craig Newmark (400:1), Terry Semel (350:1), Sergey Brin (250:1) and Larry Ellison (200:1). For context, local novelist Dave Eggers gets a better 150:1 handicap.

The Wikimedia Foundation, parent company of the volunteer-written encyclopedia Wikipedia, announced that it is moving its headquarters from retiree haven St. Petersburg, Fla., to San Francisco. Why San Francisco? Because, as the press release states, "its proximity to Asia in particular is expected to enable the Foundation to form closer ties with volunteers and potential partners in that part of the world." And, we're suspecting, to help founder Jimmy Wales keep his kimono collection updated.

Despite Wikipedia's growing sophistication and greater scrutiny placed on content manipulation, individuals and organizations are still tempted to edit Jimmy Wales's online encyclopedia for personal gain by posting under the veil of anonymity. But that veil just became a little more tattered. Virgil Griffith, a Cal Tech graduate student, has an eye on you, Wikipedia tinkerers. He's developed Wikipedia Scanner, a database that correlates the IP address of anonymous posters with the owners of the associated block of IP addresses. That data does not identify individuals, but it's usually good enough to pinpoint organizations from which they make the edits.

So Brad Fitzpatrick, Jay Adelson, and Jimmy Wales walk into a bar ... sorry, the only joke here is how the creators of LiveJournal, Digg, and Wikipedia — three top experts on social networks — wasted their weekend. If they walked into a bar, I'd hope it was to drink away their sorrows after discovering they flew out to Austin, Texas for a whole lot of nothing. That's the word I've gotten, anyway, from attendees at last weekend's "We Are All Actors" conference, organized by the League of Technical Voters, a group campaigning to make the Federal budget less obscure. "The meeting sucked, actually (didn't stay on topic, more or less skipped important agenda items, stupid shakespeare/actors theme, etc)," read one passed-along report. Typical, if disappointing. And telling.

Craig Newmark of Craigslist has high praise for friend Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. "What Jimmy has done through Wikipedia is change the way people write history. Before, it was guys with guns, now it's anyone." Well, to be accurate, Craig, now it's guys with lightsabers. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Here's what's new on the Valleywag Calendar:

James "Jimmy" Wales, founder of the non-profit, online encyclopedia Wikipedia and not yet developed, commercial search engine Wikia, exchanged barbs with Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc. and the recent human search engine Mahalo, over the holiday on the Wikia mailing lists. Wales says that, since it isn't free, Calacanis' Mahalo "is just not that interesting. I mean, I am sure it is lovely and all, but I really don't care about it." Calacanis, not one to shy from a fight, questions Wales' accuracy, memory, ability to hold his liquor, and apparent ambivalence. Calacanis, a constant self-promoter in need of publicity for Mahalo, and Wales, an idealist who can dismiss commercial concerns in favor of an academic debate, both benefit.

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue is a not-very-critical critic — except, possibly, when it comes to his own biography. Pogue, or someone claiming to be him, is in fact editing his own Wikipedia entry. And every sign points to it, in fact, being Pogue: The poster's IP address, 67.86.88.246, has been removing anything negative about Pogue and making other curiously detailed revisions to the entry since June 30. Here are the details that suggest it really is Pogue.A search on IP2location.com reveals that the IP address belongs to Optimum Online, a broadband ISP, and is located in Norwalk, Conn. That's suspiciously close to the Stamford, Conn. address where Pogue has his domain name registered. And the Wikipedia user at that IP address has noted information about Pogue that's not easily verified, like the fact that he studied computer science at Yale. It's a major no-no to put information that can't be attributed to other sources on Wikipedia, whose users insist on linking only to publicly available information. It's also a major faux pas to edit your own Wikipedia entry; even Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales has gotten in trouble over such a move. The only remaining question: Could the thin-skinned Pogue really have made such a dunderheaded move?

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, explains the good and bad of the online encyclopedia's non-profit status in a conversation with WallStrip's Lindsey Campbell. The bad: he's missing out on a business "worth billions of dollars"; the good: he doesn't have to explain how Wikipedia would merit such a valuation without contradicting his strict ideals of free (including ad-free) and open to all.

Bono was complaining that I wasn't returning his e-mails. It turns out, they were in my spam folder.

In the Business 2.0 article referenced earlier regarding Bubble 2.0, we only skimmed the gallery of 25 startups to watch. Fortunately, a return unearthed the entry on Wikia, which features hot Jimmy Wales kimono action! Co-founder Angela Beesley wonders where her kimono is. So sad.

Q: Wikipedia is such a huge source of information and many articles are open to vandalism and abuse, therefore they can display people's racial or cultural beliefs. Is it hard to keep this offensive material under control?

A: No, it's pretty easy.

I love Google, but I have the increasing feeling that they are watching everything I'm doing.