Microsoft shoot own foot off AGAIN.

[reddragdiva]

Seen this? Press has been running hot. Here's to journalists who want replies by email!

Update: Edited version, per the draft press link below. I've been exchanging (or, at my end, Gmailing) mail back and forth with the guys at Microsoft who thought this was a good idea. It's been fascinating. I think the OOXML article will suck much less henceforth, which is something at least. I also explained conflict of interest.

Statement on Microsoft offering payment for Wikipedia editing

XML blogger Rick Jelliffe said on his blog on Monday 22 January (http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/01/an_interesting_offer.html) that Microsoft had offered to pay him to edit the English Wikipedia articles on Microsoft Office Open XML (ECMA standard 376, the new file format for Office 2007), as they felt the articles were biased.

We are disappointed that a prominent company such as Microsoft feels that public relations without self-identification is a workable way to do things. Doing this can only hurt their good name. We are currently in communication with Microsoft on the issue.

The proper way to raise editorial issues for people with a conflict of interest is on the article talk page. For prominent subjects (such as almost anything to do with Microsoft), this will be noticed. In the case of OOXML, this is happening now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecma_Office_Open_XML

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ecma_Office_Open_XML

(This of course would not apply in the case of legally questionable article content, an entirely different matter, which we deal with in a much more expedited fashion should an article subject raise a concern.)

Paying people to push a point of view on Wikipedia is regarded as an obvious conflict of interest. Most people don't need to be told that conflict of interest is a bad idea. But it's hard to make people understand that if their income depends on not understanding it.

Wikipedia has tremendous ongoing problems with publicists, marketers, search optimisers and spammers who think their message is so important that conflict of interest doesn't matter. Publicists who press on regardless tend to get blocked from editing. If something is notable, a third party editor should decide its editorial relevance.

If a company has money to spend on Wikipedia, then a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation (a tax-deductible 501 (c)(3) charity) will do more to bring them public goodwill - it helps us keep working, and has historically tended to make people interested in checking the quality of articles about a donor and making the articles as good, high-quality and useful to the reader as possible.

We're here to write an encyclopedia. We welcome all help towards this goal.

About Wikipedia

Started in January 2001, Wikipedia is currently the world's fastest-growing, most current, and largest encyclopedia, with nearly 6 million articles under active development in over 200 languages. It is created entirely by volunteers who contribute, update, and revise articles in a collaborative process. The English-language edition contains more than 1.5 million articles and 30 million internal links. Wikipedias in twelve languages each have more than one hundred thousand articles.

Wikipedia's content is written for a general audience, and is continually being revised for clarity, readability, and accuracy. Original text contributed to Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL), which lets users copy and modify each other's work based on a principle known as "copyleft". The entire database is freely downloadable.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a US-registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. It runs the websites for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

I say "disappointed" because I know lotsa people who work for Microsoft and don't pull dumb shit like this.

Note the INCREDIBLY SUBTLE begging for cash to, er, do whatever the hell we like with. ("Pay us directly for neutral well-referenced articles!") The recent fundraiser netted $1 million, not the $1.5 million we needed. If you want to know how that much money can be a serious shortfall, you try running a top-10 site with no ads that pumps out 150 megabytes each and every second. Argh.

The above is being shaped into a Wikimedia press release as well. Draft. Ideas welcomed.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Yeah. It's an editorial issue now, and if Doug Mahugh makes himself available on the tech page and Rick Jelliffe edits as he wishes, it'll be fine.

The main thing is that this isn't actually good for Wikipedia, because we don't want companies scared one mistake will result in bad press around the world. So now I'm (a) downplaying the conflict (b) seeing what we can put into place.

[greap.livejournal.com]

I disagree it was a mistake doing what they did (the article on OOXML is missing key points as to why they need their own standard and the business case for doing so) but preventing future blowups is probably the best idea at this point :-)

Good luck tonight btw :-)

[reddragdiva]

I think doing something that led to bad mainstream press around the world can reasonably be termed a "mistake" ...