Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been shot dead

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Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been shot dead, according to Wikipedia, the online, up-to-the-minute encyclopedia.

Apparently, the assassin was a "friend" of the victim of a recent controversy which ironically, smeared former Robert F Kennedy aid John Seigenthaler as a suspect in the assassination of both Kennedy brothers. That claim, which the site carried for several months, along with the assertion that Seigenthaler had lived in Russia, was eventually proved false.

"At 18:54 EST on December 12, John Seigenthaler's wife, who was infuriated at Wikipedia regarding the recent scandal regarding his role in the Kennedy Assassination, came into the house, where Jim was having dinner. Wearing a mask, he [sic] shot him three times in the head and ran," reported the online reference source.

The free-for-all, write-it-yourself website prides itself on its fact checking.

Wales made his fortune in bond trading before setting up the Bomis pornography ring. A long time devotee of Ayn Rand, Wales recently criticized the decision to grant federal funds to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, according to reports on a web discussion board.

I Duce: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales

With co-founder Larry Sanger, who has since left the project, he helped kick-start the project just as the dot com boom was collapsing, and now he's the public face of Wikipedia. Before his "death", Jimmy Wales had become a familiar sight on cable TV news, usually vowing to "tighten up" the project's editing processes in response to the public scandal that had broken that week.

His death will be mourned by many across the internet.

The news of the "shooting" even made the venerable London Times, yesterday. The Times noted that after the first Seigenthaler scandal broke, the now "deceased" Jimmy Wales had, as he has so often, promised to tighten up a few nuts and bolts in the "encyclopedia's" editorial processes.

He certainly had his work cut out.

"A cursory search today suggested that these procedures - which require contributors to register basic details before posting articles - were being defeated by a relentless wave of vandals, apparently co-ordinating their assaults from a series of chatrooms dedicated to its demise."

"The loss of credibility has caused commentators to question whether Wikipedia is destined to follow the LA Times's doomed experiment in unrestricted internet comment, Wikitorial, which had to be closed down after just two days under a bombardment of pornographic postings."

Is nothing sacred?

So is Wikipedia a source of reference, or just a great big game?

Speaking to The Register last month, former Britannica editor Bob McHenry charictarized Wikipedia as a game, one of many multiplayer shoot-em-up games that have been made popular by the spread of networked computers.

"It's got the public playing the encyclopedia game," he told us recently. "It's also like playing a game in the sense that playing it has no consequences. If something goes wrong, you just restart. No problem!" he said.

For the record, The Register must note that the ubermeister of Wikipedia appears to be alive and well

The "news" of his death consisted of a random edit to his own, particularly fulsome entry on the encyclopedia he helped create.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12...ays_wikipedia/
Wikipedia founder 'shot by friend of Siegenthaler' | The Register

Maybe this should be in tech humour ? ;)

Censorship is the answer....
And I am just the man for the job!
:cool:

More from the Register...;)

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My dead, much mourned friend: Jimmy Wales

The Inundated Comptroller Press recently hired me to write the definitive biography on Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales - the eclectic founder of Wikipedia. Now isn't that fortuitous, since I've been covertly following Wales for the last 14 years using both disguises and high-end surveillance equipment from here at my complex, at the Institute of Technological Values.

Even more fortuitous is his apparent death. Nothing helps business more than a murder, and this situation has made Wikiepedia hotter than ever. This will no doubt benefit the sale of my book. Not that it needed much help.

But let me tell you about Jimmy Wales. We drew our cigars as men, and stubbed them out like brothers. Let me tell you about Jimbo. The Sterns and the Wales go back a long way.
Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales - A 'Pedia Prophet

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales was born on August 17, 1853 in a small town behind the wall in Eastern Alabama. At just three years of age, the boy Wales developed an unhealthy interest in Diderot and a fondness for baboons. Both Diderot and baboons would go on to play an important role in his life.

By 1863, a still pre-pubescent Wales had moved to Chicago and established himself as one of the more morally and physically flexible members of the meat packing scene. Pig and cow butchering veterans would often emerge from the killing floor with blood soaked trousers and wide grins and pat Wales on the head. "You're a helluva trout mangler," was the most common refrain. These words would haunt Wales for many years but also imbue him with the self-confidence to tackle large challenges and to best large women.

Jimmy Donal "Big Jimbo" Wales - little Jimmy's father - couldn't be more proud of his boy. "Big Jimbo" had never amounted to much as a mustard master in the Alabama. This was due more to bad fortune than a lack of skill, as Alabama went through the "great mustard master boom of 1810" just as "Big Jimbo" started his career. The glut of mustard masters left "Big Jimbo" feeling small at times but did little to curb usage of his nickname due to the fact that he weighed 450 pounds - a feat many thought impossible at the time what with the high fiber, low food diets and general pomposity of the era. With a few efficient yet uninspiring mustard tastings to his credit, "Big Jimbo" was able to secure a small, ribald wife who tolerated his fetish for clouds and agreed to be impregnated when plied with two gallons whiskey and the fruits of an Alabama laudanum lab.

Jimbo spent the war years in "imports and exports" - in a stark contrast to my talents for enforcing the duties of internment with a Stern, but ultimately loving hand.

In 1947, Wales fell in love with the works of Mary Shelley and gained some praise in learned circles for placating flamingos. But by then, we'd parted.

Julio Stantore would later remark that "Wales was a real bastard!" But Stantore, however, is the world's biggest bastard. I need hardly explain.

It was then that Jimbo's infatuation with a certain Russian emigree took the better of him.

Today, Wikipedians describe "Jimbo" as an asset and a scalable pioneer. And here I must tell you, pediaphiles, in particular, have much reason to celebrate the man, his life and his times.

A similar statement can be made for pedophiles - or in the king's English paedophiles - according to the astonishingly thorough Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC).

"It has come to the attention of the Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC) that there is a underground cabal of pedophiles who edit wikipedia, trying to make wikipedia a distribution center for pedophile propaganda," the group said in a recent statement. And, in fact, you can see that the editors of the the Pedophile page on Wikipedia do seem to have a sympathetic ear for the condition.

"The term pedophile is not used legally, and is not a legal category; an act by a child molester of molesting children is not legally referred to as pedophilia," the page states at this moment in time. "However, newspapers and other news media frequently make erroneous use of the terms accused pedophile or convicted pedophile in reference to individuals accused or convicted of sexual abuse of children; other perplexing terms such as 'serial pedophilia' have also come into use."

As for berating angels, Wales has never been accused of that, and we salute him for it.

Due to an ongoing conflict between Wales and myself, it's difficult for me to maintain any objectivity whatsoever on the subject of Wales. Still, I've spent hours with a therapist and an ombudsman and am quite sure that my objectivity is fully intact. I could tell you about it for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.

Why even debate the objectivity then?

Great question.

It's only because I want this obituary, which I will submit to Wikiepedia, to be above board and stand up to the rigor of fellow Wikipedians. Jimmy looked great coming and not half bad going, and that's crucial to remember. Let's all raise Brtiannica Volume A and bash ourselves in the head with it. That's what Jimmy would have wanted.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12...les_wikipedia/
My dead, much mourned friend: Jimmy Wales | The Register

im a little confused, is he really dead or alive?

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Originally posted here by The Texan
im a little confused, is he really dead or alive?

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uhh yea He's either shot in the face or in the toe and still alive heh

The Texan: My sugestion, take whatever the wikipedia said and beleive the oppisit