RSSMicrosoft Offers Money to Edit Wikipedia
By Ed Oswald | Published January 24, 2007, 11:37 AM
Microsoft is finding itself in hot water after it was revealed that the company offered to pay an Australian blogger to correct information on Wikipedia regarding its Office Open XML standard.
The company said it spotted several inaccuracies in articles on the standard, and decided against editing them on its own. Generally, editing your own Wikipedia articles is considered a conflict of interest, and is frowned upon by the community.
Rick Jelliffe, the man Microsoft approached, said in a Web log post that he would accept the offer on Monday. However, it seems that his task was not only to counter misinformation on Wikipedia, but on Web logs as well.
Jelliffe said a brief scan of the article brought up several errors, and he has asked others to submit errors they find so he can correct them. "FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see," he wrote.
What remains to be seen however, is if Wikipedia may let his changes stand, now that it has been revealed he is getting paid for his entries. Founder Jimmy Wales told the Associated Press that it has banned others with a paid interest such as PR firms and campaign workers from editing pages.
"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wales said.
To its defense, Microsoft has said the changes were made because it had reason to believe the article was written by employees of IBM, a staunch supporter of the Open Document Format. The company also goes on to claim it got nowhere flagging errors to Wikipedia editors, although that claims seems to be in dispute.
"Other than that comment from the MS employee from August (here on the talk page), yeah, I see no evidence that they tried to do much about it themselves," an editor named Warren wrote on the discussion page for the topic.
Either way, it appears as if Jelliffe will move forward with his work. "I'm looking forward to the next few days," he wrote.
Actually, Microsoft should be paying to get their own house in order. It is riddeled with office politics and piss poor customer service and bad marketing.
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|OMG! How are they going to let Microsoft paid someone to do this. This is outrageous. The point of the Wikipedia is not to let other companies pay people to make entries and "correct" entries in the Wikipedia.
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|You guys are totally missing the point. The fact the guy WENT OUT AND SAID MS IS PAYING HIM adds immense credibility to him, in my eyes at least. He sees NOTHING wrong correcting errors. He didn't say they paid him to say "this and that" but to CORRECT ERRORS THE WAY HE KNOWS. If the corrections are FACTUALLY WRONG, well, this is a technical matter, not a religious matter, hence it could eventually be easily proven and this type of "paid corrections" by MS will be banned IN THE FUTURE. For now..well, I say: give him/them a chance...They'll have to be VERY CAREFUL at what they say now that the world is watching "MS related Wiki entries"...
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|well... if you're going to take this approach, then it makes sense to use someone who isn't an MS troll. Putting them on the payroll is another matter entirely but the guy they are using has clearly demonstrated honesty regarding this situation and provided a ton of background about himself.
For the first time in a long while, I agree with MS on this. FUD is FUD no matter where it comes from and I'm tired of all the BS from everyone.
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|This is your beloved Microsoft, fanboys...
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|Yes, How dare they try to fix mistakes!
Note noone disputes that the information is actually incorrect.
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|It reminds me of a funny movie. A nerdy kid wanted to be cool and paid the most popular girl in school to go out with him. In the end everbody liked him and he actually was a cool guy.
But that character was a nice guy who helped people out, did work without demanding payment, and he was humble, it wasn't all about him.
Real life just isn't like the movies.
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|This just shows how bad Microsoft's new OXML format really is — they can't even defend it themselves, but instead have to pay others to make up lies about its own contradictions.
OXML hasn't even arrived and it's already in desperate shape. All the more reason to step away from Microsoft Office for good. Yet another daily embarrassment for Microsoft, and anyone who defends this behavior will probably receive a free laptop from Microsoft, too! What the heck happened to that company?
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|Um. Big deal. I work for a religious broadcasting company and they have one of their contractors update their Wikipedia page. Generally, as long as the information being updated is factual, I don't see it as a bad thing. Wikipedia has a way of self-moderating that exposes when companies are misusing the service.
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|I have no problem with this at all. It sounds as if MS tried to get the documents changed but were road-blocked in every way.
Is this issue really money or that fact that this is Microsoft? I bet if Bob's Two Man Moving company paid someone to correct/author an article, this would not be an issue.
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|FYI... here's a link to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...crosoft_Office_Open_XML
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|They could post their thoughts and arguments in discussion page for others to consider and edit the article itself. Wikipedia is neutral information source, so they oculd have achieved at least "A says 'a', while Microsoft says 'b'" form of article (if their arguments is not strong enough). There's no need to 'hire' someone, there's enough Mircosoft-fans ans Microsoft-neutrals in Wikipedia user editors community.
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|It speaks VOLUMES of the lack of faith techies have in MS that it wasn't immediately rebuffed by the fans. MS has to resort to bribing someone to do it for them. Unbelievable. If someone posted a slanted view of Apple stuff, the Apple fan crowd would have rebuffed it within seconds, even if the slant were true.
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|they didn't bribe any1, at least on face value they were gonna pay some cto to indepedantly look over the stuff and fix whatever he thought was not accurate, and they had no say on the changes. According to ms the wiki was ibm biased. and as for apple crowd, they are a bit too passionate with defending their side of the fence. Passion is directly opposite to rationalism
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|Exactly my point. Without passion, what do you have? Rationale? Rationalism equates to bean counting. Passion is far more business friendly (profit friendly). They need to pump up the passion in their customers.
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|It smells like dishonesty.
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