Wales and Wikimedia said he had never misused foundation funds, and Wales posted a statement online saying that he cared deeply about Wikipedia's integrity and would never abuse it. Gardner said in a statement that Wales "has consistently put the foundation's interests ahead of his own."
In San Francisco, Gardner said that she wasn't planning wholesale changes as executive director, and that her first task was to "fix the basics and get the house in order."
Gardner, a petite woman with black hair and a tattoo of a black widow spider on her wrist, joined Wikipedia nine months ago after leaving Canadian Broadcasting Co., where she oversaw the introduction of advertising on its website. She said she didn't foresee a time when Wikipedia would go that route, though she added that she should never say never.
So far, Gardner has hired a staff lawyer, an accountant and a head of business development. She has created a travel policy, reimbursement policy and code of conduct for employees and instituted criminal background checks for potential hires (Wikimedia got unwanted publicity after a technology site revealed in December that the foundation's chief operating officer until July had been convicted of theft, drunk driving and fleeing a car accident before being hired.)
Now comes the hard part: money.
The foundation makes some -- less than 2% of its budget -- from ways other than flat out asking for it, Gardner said. For instance, it licenses the Wikipedia logo to companies such as Nokia, which used it to advertise a new phone, and it charges websites such as Answers.com for real-time feeds with page updates.
"The most difficult issue for a nonprofit is always how to raise money in ways which are consistent with the mission," Gardner said, "and don't distract too much from the mission-related work."
In the early days, funding wasn't a problem. Wales helped launched Wikipedia in 2001 with money he made through Bomis Inc., a Web portal known for directing users to pictures of women and celebrities, clothed and unclothed. By February 2004, the English-language Wikipedia had nearly 250,000 alphabetized articles. Today the English version has more than 2 million articles.
Global interest in the volume of information -- and the fact that it's free -- helped the site grow from the 100th most visited in 2005 to the ninth most visited now, according to Web-traffic tracker Alexa.
