Microsoft came under fire when they approached Rick Jelliffe and offered to pay him for correcting the inaccuracies in Wikipedia entry for “Open Document Formatâ€. Microsoft didn’t want to correct the inaccuracies themselves because Wiki community doesn’t like such acts.
In a comment left on Slashdot, Microsoft’s technical evangelist Doug Mahugh admits that he approached Rick:
“Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we’d like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections … Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today.”
“Feel free to say anything at all on your blog about the process, about our communication with you on matters related to Open XML, or anything else. We don’t need to “approve” anything you have to say; our goal is simply to get more informed voices into the debate … feel free to state your own opinion.”
Microsoft has strong reasons to believe that the Wikipedia entries were heavily written by people at IBM. Usually when something like this happens, the inaccuracies must be discussed in the discussions page. Microsoft’s approach is completely wrong even if they asked Rick to use his own opinions.
On the other hand, TechCrunch wrote about this scenario and got their page vandalized by a Microsoft Employee. This isn’t something good for Microsoft; they can’t keep throwing stones at bloggers like Arrington. I know.. I know… Microsoft gave away free Laptops to A-List bloggers.
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