[WikiEN-l] a response to Erik
daniwo59 at aol.com
daniwo59 at aol.com
Wed Mar 5 02:09:59 UTC 2008
Hello,
I was pretty amused by Erik's comment in response to Thomas Dalton.
On 3/4/08, Thomas Dalton <_thomas.dalton at gmail.com_
(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l) > wrote:
> Any idea where Danny got that idea from? Is it purely imagination, or
> was there some wine incident?
As geni pointed out, he did not actually make that claim. His blog
entry is carefully constructed to do the maximum damage to the
reputation of the Foundation and to Jimmy Wales personally, without
making many (any?) actionable, specific claims. (Not that legal action
against trash blogs would actually be a good idea -- it only gives
them the attention that they seek.)
Generally speaking, at the time when Jimmy was essentially still
running the Foundation, the organization was tiny (first employee in
2005) and didn't have the kinds of reimbursement procedures and
controls you'd expect, so what'd happen is that Jimmy would scribble
"Wikia" on a receipt, or maybe lose it entirely. Then there would be
some back and forth about what it meant, etc. When anything was in
doubt, Jimmy would write the Foundation a check later to make sure
everything was fully covered. In fact, he hasn't claimed many expenses
which would be perfectly reasonable.
Actually, Erik, if you had been there at the time you would know that there
were very stringent controls in place regarding all expenses. Every receipt
was matched to a credit card item, numbered, photocopied, scanned and filed in
two separate locations: paper and electronic. Each item was also entered into
an accounting program (Quickbooks) and maintained on Excel spread sheets.
This was well established when I (the second employee and the first to work in
the office) began a month after the first employee, and only began to fall
apart when Brad took over the accounting, since he was not as scrupulous in his
record keeping. Should you still have the old hard drives in the office, I
am sure you will find them in the directory named Barbara. I also hope that
you moved the paper files with you to San Francisco so you can verify that they
match. While scanning endless receipts was a real pain, the intersection of
Quickbooks, paper, and electronic copies made it easy to locate.
As for professionalism, the person who designed and managed this system was
an MBA CPA who also happened to employ Jimmy as a trader.
But then again, you weren't there so you wouldn't know.
Danny
**************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money &
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