BBC reports that Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, took a donation in exchange for making an edit to a protected page that was requested by the subject of the page.
Jeff Merkey’s page is not locked to outside editing right now as Wales removed the protection once the story broke, and there is an edit by Wales on record favorable to Merkey during that protection. So the verifiable facts can be verified, but the actual payoff of course would be harder to find and prove.
True or not, Wikipedia’s reputation just took another hit today. Personally I stick to this rule: they’re useful for looking up useless things (such as Caramelldansen), but not anything important in the real world.