Wales "Disappointed" with Microsoft

Saturday, January 27. 2007

The ever-scrutinized Microsoft got a stern talking-at in the press from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, after their attempt to pay a blogger to update Wikipedia entries.

From CNN.com "Microsoft Corp. has landed in the Wikipedia doghouse after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site." The article goes on to say that Microsoft suspected that sources at IBM had made the offending additions to the wikipedia entry and were frustrated by "numerous" attempts to work with wikipedia editors to get the entry changed.

It's easy to pick apart MS's approach here. They have admitted that it was an inappropriate thing to do. The question I have is this: If the content of Wikipedia is owned by the community of users at large, and Microsoft is part of that community, shouldn't they be able to legitimately participate in the conversation... if the conversation, in this case is the wikipedia entry? To be fair, Wales did say that the "correct" approach would have been to discuss the entry via the Wikipedia forums.

Posted by Bill Johnston in News at 17:47 | Comment (1) | Trackback (1)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I think microsoft could've changed the information without having to pay anybody else to do it. The whole buy-off aspect of the issue is pretty low and pathetic in my estimation.

#1 Jeff Preston on 2007-01-29 08:37 (Reply)

In Microsoft's defense, they didn't try to hide anything. In their note to the blogger, they said he should feel free to blog about his comment and that nothing need be approved by Microsoft. See http://tinyurl.com/29mm5k . True, maybe Wales prefers they write a white paper and then notify the editors, but their approach, while not perfect, was certainly more transparent than many other organizations.

#2 Jim Cashel on 2007-01-29 18:25 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry
Submitted comments will be subject to moderation before being displayed.