After being dumped by Jimmy Wales on his own website, Rachel Marsden put his clothes up for auction on eBay
Posted on 03/03/2008 6:37:42 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
March 3, 2008
Jilted lover uses eBay to hit back at Wikipedia guru
After being dumped by Jimmy Wales on his own website, Rachel Marsden put his clothes up for auction on eBay |
Philippe Naughton
As of midday today, $102.50 could buy you a little piece of internet history: the T-shirt that Jimmy Wales was wearing when he met Rachel Marsden for what he insists was their one and only night of passion.
There's nothing special about the T-shirt, except for a couple of stubborn stains that even Tide extra-strength could not remove. But it's not every day that a guru of the worldwide web uses his own site to dump his girlfriend and she responds by putting his old clothes on eBay.
Mr Wales, universally known as "Jimbo", is the 41-year-old co-founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written and edited by its users that now contains 9 million articles in 253 languages. Ms Marsden is a Canadian columnist and right-wing TV pundit for whom the word controversial could have been invented.
The two met, online at least, a couple of years ago when Ms Marsden contacted Mr Wales to complain about her Wikipedia biography, with which she disagreed. Mr Wales says that they have only met in the flesh one time, on February 9 this year, by which point they appeared to have developed something of a cyber-lust.
The precise details of their meeting are still unclear. A San Francisco weblog has published transcripts of instant messaging (IM) conversations in which the pair planned a romantic getaway at a hotel in Washington DC. Ms Ramsden, on the other hand, said that Mr Wales left his T-shirt at her flat in New York City.
Either way, they clearly hit it off. In one IM message after their meeting, Mr Wales reportedly tells her: "btw, i am recovered from 24 hours of marathon sex. lol."
In another exchange carried on the Valleywag blog the pair compare broadband services around the world and Mr Wales complains at the miserly download speed offered in America. "When you talk about megabits and broadband, you have no idea what that does to me," she replies provocatively.
For some reason, however, the relationship soured - possibly because Mr Wales realised that Ms Marsden was keeping a copy of all their "hot" instant messaging on her Google e-mail account.
Citing "friends" of the Wikipedia founder, Valleywag reported that Mr Wales had become fearful that Ms Marsden would use the transcripts to blackmail him and threatened to have her deported back to Canada.
The transcripts were duly leaked last week and on Saturday Mr Wales, ignoring the Wikipedia protocol he has so carefully developed, posted a personal statement on the site to insist that he had only met Rachel Marsden one time and was "no longer involved" with her.
Mr Wales also denied having intervened "inappropriately" to redraft her Wikipedia biography, a far more serious charge given the politics of Wikipedia. The IM transcripts suggest, however, that he did offer her advice and even quoted Bill Clinton's line from his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky that it "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is".
Ms Marsden first came to public attention in Canada in the late 1990s when, as a college swimming star, she accused her team coach of sexual harrassment. The coach, who was fired and reinstated, claimed that she had in fact harassed him.
In 2004, she was given a conditional discharge with one year's probation for criminally harassing a Vancouver radio host following their break-up. Last September she was again accused of harassment after she used her blog to accuse a Canadian counter-terrorism officer, with whom she had had a two-year affair, of passing her secret documents.
After Mr Wales posted his Wikipedia statement on Saturday, Ms Marsden was quick to take her revenge, taking the T-shirt and sweater out of the closet, washing them and posting them for sale on eBay - modelling them herself.
"It was such a classy move [by Mr Wales] that I was inspired to do something equally classy myself, so I'm selling a couple of items of clothing he left behind, here in my NYC apartment, on eBay," she explained to buyers.
"Jimbo was supposed to come visit me in a couple of weeks and pick up some of his stuff, but obviously that won't be happening now," she wrote.
"Both of these items have been washed, twice, with Tide extra-strength liquid detergent. Otherwise, they would not be in salable condition. I took them out of GitMo style isolation from a plastic bag in my closet (where they were placed to prevent the ongoing terrorism of my olfactory senses) and washed them out for the purposes of this auction.
"PS: Sorry that my hair is such a mess -- I'm in breakup mode right now and really couldn't be bothered."
1.
Ms Marsden first came to public attention in Canada in the late 1990s when, as a college swimming star, she accused her team coach of sexual harrassment. The coach, who was fired and reinstated, claimed that she had in fact harassed him.
2.
In 2004, she was given a conditional discharge with one year's probation for criminally harassing a Vancouver radio host following their break-up.
3.
Last September she was again accused of harassment after she used her blog to accuse a Canadian counter-terrorism officer, with whom she had had a two-year affair, of passing her secret documents.
And the Wikipedia guy makes #4.
Forget the scarlet "A", give her a scarlet "N" - for nutjob.
Thanks for the ping.I’ll check it out.
Thanks for the ping!
So Jimmy Wales boffs this pig Rachel Marsden and it’s international news? Good. Apparently it couldn’t happen to more deserving fellow than this asshat Jimmy Wales.
Anyone know if Eschoir still lives at his old place?
So quit treating these claims as legitimate.
You missed my point: who cares one way or another!!!
Great Jumpin' Jehosophat! Now there's a name I haven't seen ( or really wanted to see.. ) in quite a while.
Jim, is this true? Can we sign on to Wikipedia and correct any mistakes, or is it like trying to stop the waves from coming in at the seashore?
RD
It would be like trying to hold back the tide. I couldn’t care less about what the liberals have to say about FR. Wikipedia is simply another Marxist attempt to control free speech by not only rewriting history, but by rewriting the present.
Jim, Eschoir is violating the federal injunction. There’s another left-wing editor from Democratic Underground (Ben Burch, who has been ridiculed by PJ-Comix in his “Dummie Funnies” feature) working in concert with him. Burch has been posting personal information of Freepers on Wikipedia where anyone can read it. This is clearly a violation of the federal injunction, but it’s not right there in the Free Republic article, so most Freepers won’t spot it.
For his part, Eschoir has relentlessly removed anything positive about Free Republic from the article, and added anything he can find that’s negative, even if it’s really not relevant.
I think that since Burch is working in concert with him, we could nail Eschoir for violating the injunction. Maybe we could use this as leverage against Wikipedia management to ensure that Freepers can participate in editing the Free Republic article without being banned on flimsy excuses, and get them to ban Eschoir and Ben Burch instead.
By the way, the current bids on Jimbo’s stuff are $405.00 for the sweater and $301.00 for the T-shirt.
Wales statement did say Citation needed
Good luck with all that.
You’d make a POOR Mormon!
"Look me in the eyes," said O'Brien. "What country is Oceania at war with?"
He knew what was meant by Oceania and that he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also remembered Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did not know. In fact he had not been aware that there was any war.
"I don't remember."
"Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?"
"Yes."
"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war. Do you remember that?"
"Yes."
1984 has long been the first book to which we have turned for a vivid picture of a government that has used war to justify infringement on freedom; that has used speech codes to limit everyone's ability to understand higher concepts or concepts that favour human individuality; that uses powerful media to build unwarranted consensus and rewrite history; and that has used technology to nip political opposition and individualistic or eccentric practices in the bud. Far from being a caricature, it insightfully and skillfully characterizes the tendencies and motivations of unlimited government power, and the horrifying, hopeless result of such government: humanity denied its freedom to think, to be rational, and to dissent...its freedom to be human.
If, after finishing 1984, you find yourself nervous and paranoid, then: good. You have just taken a step closer to respecting the importance of human freedom and dignity, and the dangers in allowing governments to usurp your freedom to dissent or be different. All that remains is to fight to maintain or regain your ownlife (read the book, you'll know what we mean).
http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm
Snippets...
One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning. Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.
.
.
.
He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true when you were actually in their hands.
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