Microsoft Pays for Wikipedia Edit

The mob is displeased

Published on January 24, 2007 By Zoomba In WinCustomize News

In the world of Web 2.0, the mob is where the power and intelligence is. At least that's the theory behind sites like social bookmarking site Digg.com and crowd-written encyclopedia Wikipedia. The idea is that given enough eyes looking at something, the real value and truth will float to the top. This works great so long as you're on the good side of the mob. Microsoft, as a rule, tends to be on the wrong side of the mob, the one where the pitchforks and torches are pointed.

Well, this week it gave the mob a little bit more fuel and probably hurt its ability to be fairly represented in the online encyclopedia. What was its crime? It tried to pay a blogger to edit technical articles on the site. To correct what the company felt were inaccuracies present in various articles related to an open source document standard and a rival format made by Microsoft.

Read more on this latest PR gaffe by Microsoft at the Washington Post tech news section.

Comments

ZubaZ

on Jan 24, 2007

From the article:

Microsoft had gotten nowhere in trying to flag the purported mistakes to Wikipedia's volunteer editors, so it sought an independent expert who could determine whether changes were necessary and enter them on Wikipedia

Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe, had not determined a price and no money had changed hands

they had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing before submission.

Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.

I don't see a problem with what MS did. They tried going through channels themselves; then hired someone to go through channels for them when blocked.

Wales said the proper course would have been for Microsoft to write or commission a "white paper" on the subject with its interpretation of the facts, post it to an outside Web site and then link to it in the Wikipedia articles' discussion forums.

"It seems like a much better, transparent, straightforward way," Wales said.

MS can't win.

GreenReaper

on Jan 25, 2007

Well, the straightforward way would have been for them to edit the article, but Wikipedia is not really all that keen on people doing so because they quite understandably feel that most people are not qualified to write neutrally on topics that they are involved with.

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