The Independent has published an apology to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales over a feature article it published earlier this month.
The piece on 3 February, entitled “Wikiworld” claimed the online encyclopedia had been “plagued by endless hoaxes” and “riven by boadroom rebellion”.
In its apology today, the paper said it accepted that some of the allegations contained in the piece – which was the cover story in the Independent Life supplement – were untrue.
It read: “In our article we repeated several claims about Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder: that he had a company that dealt in ‘soft porn; and was short-lived; that he had had to defend himself against ‘allegations from former colleagues that he used Wikipedia as a personal piggybank’; that he faced controversy over his age and ‘doctored his own Wikipedia entry to knock it down a couple of years’; and that there had been speculation and board infighting about Wales’s relationship with the organisation.
“Jimmy Wales has pointed out that we repeated allegations which have no truth and we apologise to him for this.”
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