Cola and baby birds ahoy!

[reddragdiva]

Sit down, camera rolls.
"Okay. What was Microsoft's crime?"
"Well, I wouldn't call it a crime ..."

Talked about how it was a conflict of interest and that's bad, that "I said this can only damage their good name and then it damaged their good name." What OOXML is (the Office 2007 file format) and why it's greatly contentious (competition from OpenDocument and OpenOffice.org). How Doug Mahugh is on the talk page now and that's good and Rick Jelliffe will hopefully contribute his expertise and that's good. So that's the current problem pretty much dealt with.

They have no idea how much will be used tonight, "between five seconds and five minutes." It depends whether e.g. John Reid said something particularly stupid in the few hours before broadcast.

The issue now, the real problem, is how Wikipedia deals with this sort of thing in the future. We have procedures for actual legal problems, but not yet for this sort of editorial problem. Something where companies with issues with content can say so, and where the regular volunteers will actually take an interest and look into improving articles based on that.

We don't have that yet. I said, to television, that we'd probably work out something over the weekend. So we're committed now ...

Comments

[misterfallen.livejournal.com]

Meh. Looks like Reid said something stupid then, because I didn't see you. :(

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Denied l-(

[hestia.livejournal.com]

not a crime, but a misdemeanor.

[sinibar.livejournal.com]

Didn't see you I'm afraid.

I'm guessing they were looking for you to say something controversial or to start sounding off about the evil empire (or both). Something that would have boosted ratings. Coming acroos as fair minded doesn't tend to do that :)

Do you know if they might use it over the next few days if there nothing something more commercially viable newsworthy happens?

[sinibar.livejournal.com]

I should learn to write. Delete "there" and "something" from that last sentance.

[reddragdiva]

Heh. Having them think "bah, non-story" is fine by me!

Could be on lunchtime news, to entertain the students, unemployables and bored housewives. They'll hold the tape on file and C4 or ITN could use it any time.