Topic Microsoft Offers Blogger Cash for Wikipedia Editing

-HAL- · January 24th, 2007

Quote:

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.

..

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.

Spokeswoman Catherine Brooker 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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012301025.html

Shame on you Bill!!

TheDealer · May 30th, 2007

I do find it a bit odd that they simply could not pull one of their own employees out of work for a few minutes and have them modify the articles to suit.

10cents · May 31st, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDealer

I do find it a bit odd that they simply could not pull one of their own employees out of work for a few minutes and have them modify the articles to suit.

That would be a conflict of interest. Maybe they wanted it to look like the opnion came from somebody neutral to lend integrity. So who spilled the beans on M$?

svarog · June 7th, 2007

OMG, Microsoft doing something illegal. That's interesting.
Paying somebody to do what you were blocked for doing, I'm pretty sure that's against Wikipedia TOS.

Heck, I'm pretty sure it's against Wikipedia TOS to get paid for posting no matter why or what.

Topic Microsoft Offers Blogger Cash for Wikipedia Editing

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