Wikipedia community to interact in a personal way. Wikipedia has been subject to several kinds of criticism. For example, the Seigenthaler and Essjay incidents caused criticism of Wikipedia's reliability and usefulness as a reference. The complaints related to the community include the effects of users' anonymity, the attitudes towards newcomers, the abuse of privileges by administrators, biases in the social structure of the community, in particular, gender bias and lack of female contributors, and the role of the project's co-founder Jimmy Wales, in the community. Sue Gardner, former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, described Wikipedians as being like a "crusty old
Jimmy Wales away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past". Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation,