[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



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