Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales dumps ‘online flame’ with a statement on his site, she puts his T-shirt for sale on eBay
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales dumps ‘online flame’ with a statement on his site, she puts his T-shirt for sale on eBayNEW YORK: As of Monday, $265 was the bid for a little piece of internet history: the T-shirt that Jimmy Wales was wearing when he met Rachel Marsden for their one and only night of passion.
There’s nothing special about the T-shirt, 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.
Wales, known as “Jimbo”, is the 41-year-old co-founder of Wikipedia. Marsden is a Canadian columnist and TV pundit.
The two met online a couple of years ago when Marsden contacted Wales to complain about her Wikipedia biography, with which she disagreed. 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 details of their meeting are still unclear. A San Francisco weblog has published transcripts of web conversations in which the pair planned a romantic getaway at a hotel in Washington. Ramsden, on the other hand, said Wales left his T-shirt at her flat in New York.
Either way, they clearly hit it off. For some reason, however, the relationship soured — possibly because Wales realised Marsden was keeping a copy of all their “hot” instant messaging in her e-mail account.
Citing “friends” of the Wikipedia founder, Valleywag reported that Wales had become fearful that Marsden would use the transcripts to blackmail him and threatened to have her deported back to Canada.
The transcripts were leaked and on Saturday, 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.
Wales also denied having intervened “inappropriately” to redraft her Wikipedia biography, a 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”.
After Wales posted his Wikipedia statement, 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 on hew eBay auction page.
She continued: “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.”
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