Microsoft Violates Wikipedia's Sacred Rule
Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.
While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.
"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wales said.
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.
Catherine Brooker, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, 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.
Brooker said 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. Brooker said Microsoft believed that having an independent source would be key in getting the changes to stick - that is, to not have them just overruled by other Wikipedia writers.
Brooker said Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe, had not determined a price and no money had changed hands - but they had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing before submission. Brooker said Microsoft had never previously hired someone to influence a Wikipedia article.
Jelliffe, who is chief technical officer of a computing company based in Australia, did not return an e-mail seeking comment.
In a blog posting Monday, he described himself as a technical standards aficionado and not a Microsoft partisan. He said he was surprised to be approached by Microsoft but figured he'd accept the offer to review the Wikipedia articles because he considered it important to make sure technical standards processes were accurately described.
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.
By Brian Bergstein
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.
"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wales said.
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.
Catherine Brooker, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, 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.
Brooker said 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. Brooker said Microsoft believed that having an independent source would be key in getting the changes to stick - that is, to not have them just overruled by other Wikipedia writers.
Brooker said Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe, had not determined a price and no money had changed hands - but they had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing before submission. Brooker said Microsoft had never previously hired someone to influence a Wikipedia article.
Jelliffe, who is chief technical officer of a computing company based in Australia, did not return an e-mail seeking comment.
In a blog posting Monday, he described himself as a technical standards aficionado and not a Microsoft partisan. He said he was surprised to be approached by Microsoft but figured he'd accept the offer to review the Wikipedia articles because he considered it important to make sure technical standards processes were accurately described.
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.
By Brian Bergstein
Popular in SciTech
- Watch: NASA captures Okla. tornado from space Play Video
- Microsoft announces Xbox One
- The 7 weirdest things made by 3D printing
- Microsoft announces Xbox One 16 Photos
- Weird pirate ant comes with an "eye patch"
- Storms that spawned deadly Oklahoma tornadoes seen from space (video)
- Amazon proposes a colossal biospherelike Seattle campus
- Power of Okla. tornado surpassed Hiroshima bomb
My internet explorer 7 crashes too.
VIRUS NAME: Microsoft Windows
VIRUS TYPE: Operating system, executable
Quarantine and Remove Y/N ?
YYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sometimes I am surprised by how even-handed articles are in Wikipedia (especially about current political figures), but often I find things that I know just aren't so. But what should we expect from an encyclopedia written by committee?
I still use Wikipedia a lot to get general information about interesting topics. But I wouldn't make a business decision based upon the information I got there.
So, now we have the biggest, richest software company in the world using its money to try to taint an article about open standards on an open-content encyclopedia.
But really, where is the threat? MS Office will still be purchased by all the Fortune 500 companies that have purchased it from day one. MS Windows will still be the operating system of choice, as all the big companies simply can't fire/rehire or retrain their IT divisions and expect it to be cost-effective. The one place where open source operating systems such as GNU/Linux and BSD already have the advantage over Microsoft (the server market) has absolutely nothing to do with open document standards.
With this goof, Microsoft has proven that it is no more moral and just than the Mafia and the CIA. It is using the same tactics, but is doing a terrible job of covering its tracks. I will cheer the day this company goes out of business because of its rotten foundation.
MS fonder Gates and CEO Ballmer believe they create their own ethical sphere through their intellect, daring and a certain weird light that follows them everywhere.
Microsoft's secret practice of funding proxies for acts it is ashamed to perform under its own name is nothing new. MS funded Daryl ("The Dark Side") McBride of Caldera to threaten every corporation which dared to use Linux, claiming "copyright infringement". McBride's only problem was he could not come up with proof, and the mystery man from Microsoft no longer sent him any money to pursue the matter further.
Microsoft remains the playground bully. MS never has played fair when it did not have to. Put another way, MS indicated its own ethics quotient hasn't changed since the day it began-- zero.