January 24th, 2007
Microsoft in Trouble over “Pay for Wikipedia Edits”
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
This is a definite no-no. Microsoft apparently was trying to commission a blogger to make some edits in articles it was “sure had technical errors”. Jimmy Wales and company are not amused.
“We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach,” Wales said Tuesday.
Spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM Corp., which is a big supporter of the open-source standard. IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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. Source: CNN
We Say: It’s still not too late to take the correct steps, as Wales suggested, Microsoft! 
I don’t know why they didn’t just edit it surreptitiously, as we’ve seen done before (not necessarily by them) … ahem.
Charles says:
Let’s not think for a moment that Microsoft was the first to think of this. They just happened to get caught.
Do you really think that the majority of bloggers are going to turn down a paycheck to post to Wikipedia? Or that most bloggers have turned down a paycheck…
January 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
OffBeatMammal says:
it’s worth reading the post from Doug on this http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/ and, more importantly, following the link to the actual guy who was asked to make te edits.
IMO this is a case of MS trying to bring some balance to a discussion that IBM are doing their level best to distort, and trying to do it in as hands-off and impartial way they can.
There are some plain wrong statements in the Wikipedia article at the moment (which reads like it’s commissioned b IBM… anyone investigated that angle?) but to avoid falling foul of the “self interest” rules in Wikipedia MS asked someone familiar with both formats and the inner workings of the ISO process to edit for factual accuracy (MS specifically didn’t want any control over what he wrote, just that it was truthful and not inflamatory)
This is another example of how Wikipedia fails to allow subject matter experts to contribute unless they happen to agree with self appointer arbiters.
Wikipedia is a great resource in many respects (need a history of Klingon or to find the origin of the “Everywhere Girl”?!) but it’s not as perfect as Jimmy Wales seems to think - the policies and process are still evolving and need to admit that rather than try and claim that it’s a perfect mass consensus
January 25th, 2007 at 11:26 am