He pointed to a supportive statement from Sue Gardner, who recently joined Wikimedia as executive director: “Jimmy has never used Wikimedia money to subsidise his personal expenditures. Indeed, he has consistently put the foundation’s interests ahead of his own.”

Brad Patrick, the lawyer cited by Wool, said Wool had been “irresponsibly erroneous”. “Danny seems interested in blogging his way straight to a lawsuit,” Patrick, who is no longer with Wikimedia, wrote in an e-mail.

Behind the public face, however, Wales was taking heat. In an interview with The Associated Press, Florence Devouard, who chairs the Wikimedia Foundation, defended Wales and said he had simply been “slow in submitting receipts”. She pointed out that the foundation rejected the steakhouse expense.

A short time later, in an e-mail exchange with her fellow board members, Devouard reported that she had persuaded the AP that “the money story was a no story”. Yet she proceeded to indicate the opposite, upbraiding Wales for having asked the foundation to pay the steakhouse tab.