There’s been a discussion over the last few days over a Microsoft employee offering to pay an Australian blogger named Rick Jelliffe to edit certain Wikipedia pages relating to Open Office standards, including this page. Jelliffe writes about the offer here.
Doug Mahugh at Microsoft freely admitted to doing this in a comment to a Slashdot article on the matter. According to another source, a Microsoft spokesperson also chimed in, saying that they believed the article were heavily written by people at IBM, a rival standard supporter, and that Microsoft had gotten nowhere flagging mistakes to Wikipedia’s volunteer editors. However, the discussion area of the Wikipedia page in question does not show any Microsoft involvement.
Microsoft clearly didn’t feel comfortable making direct changes to article about their technology, and frankly they can’t really be blamed for that. Editing an article about yourself is considered a conflict of interest by many in the Wikipedia community, and people are routinely trashed for doing so.
According to this article, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said “We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach.” In email correspondence with Wales this evening, his only comment was that he has “seen no evidence” that Microsoft tried first to work this out in the discussion area.
It’s clear that the only way to safely clear the record on Wikipedia when you are involved party is in the discussion area of a page. Paying others to make direct changes isn’t smart, even if you tell them they are free to write their unbiased opinions (as happened in this case). And making direct changes yourself is likely to get you in hot water, too.
Update: A Microsoft employee, who took issue with this blog post, vandalized the TechCrunch Wikipedia entry and wrote about it on his blog.
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Wikipedia has become kind of a slippery slope when it comes to this kind of thing. It’s not only frowned upon for a company to edit their own page, I’ve seen several instances where they were even attacked for editing the discussion page.
I think that one of the unfortunate things about wikipedia is that it’s quick to remove biased content placed by an employee, but if a non-employee places negative biased comments, they are usually just flagged as uncited and left on the page. In many ways, wikipedia is great, but in some cases people or companies are openly defamed and can do little more than wait until a more sympathetic user fixes it.
Getting nasty over there…
>> A Microsoft employee, who took issue with this blog post, vandalized
>> the TechCrunch Wikipedia entry
I read that section. I wouldn’t call it vandalism. I felt it was accurate and only stating that some people don’t share your opinion about what’s worthy of covering. You cannot expect everyone to agree with you, and we (your readers) don’t always agree with you either. If I were you, I wouldn’t make accusations so hastily. It reflects badly on the accuser.
Ha ha ha ha. Gotta love it the Enron-esque techniques of Wikipedia. Control the market I say.
Sami - you’re an idiot. He didn’t vandalize the techcrunch entry because he believed what he wrote, he did it to stir up anti-techcrunch comments exactly like what you wrote as payback. Microsoft just did a hit job on techcrunch and you fell right into it.
Of all people, Jimmy Wales edited his own bio on Wikipedia, removed reference to his co-founder Sanger.
Why is this such a big deal? Sites pay for links, reviews, press releases, and all other sorts of media.
Dave R -
That was his point! If someone does a WP hit job on you, what’s are your avenues of response? Write a whitepaper?
No, quux. Arrington already made that point in his original post. This was done maliciously to attack techcrunch becasue Microsoft didn’t like his post. try not to let your hate for techcrunch get in the way of basic logic.
microsoft should just buy wikipedia
Yeah I don’t see why this is a big deal.
The only thing I’ve come to is that I’ve lost some respect for Microsoft and even more so for TechCrunch with your response…to the point that I’m actually wondering if I’m better off spending time reading the TheSuperficial.com. Way to claim you’re a journalist and then call a guy an ass…that’s what I would call savvy.
Dave R:
Seriously, no TC hatin’ here; your assumption is wrong. Now, Dare also says his ‘experiment’ wasn’t hate or hit-job motivated. At best this is arguable. Interesting that you claim to know my intentions, and his and Microsofts, better than we ourselves do.
I say have a duel and fight it out! At the next TC meeting Michael and whoever wants to represent Microsoft from the Mountain View office should duel each other with waterballoon bombs. Oh and maybe someone from Wikipedia wants to join in as well!
When did everybody and everything become so damn important? Lately it seems that any kind of change on any website or blog is always analyzed and dissected into pieces smaller than atoms to get to the bottom and meaning of everything. A deleted post on some completely unimportant blog suddenly turns into an industry-wide conspiracy, companies use CIA-like techniques to lobby their wanna-be-standards etc. The only thing missing here is pretexting!
Does anyone seriously believe that the content of a Wikipedia article is important enough to change anybody’s opinion about a (Microsoft) standard or format? Yes, I use Wikipedia as a reference or source of information, but I always (ALWAYS!) keep in mind that I am reading user-contributed text and I would never go off and tell someone something “because Wikipedia said so”.
I was assume any intelligent reader would do the same. But maybe my initial assumption is already wrong.
Wikipedia is getting powerful, so powerful that not even big mighty Microsoft’s able to change the info they publish
@Dave R:
Insulting me does not help make your point stronger. But, thanks anyway.
TechCrunch is an excellent blog that I read everyday. I love it. But, despite what you might think, it’s not perfect. In fact, — and you might want to sit now– Mike does make mistakes, and he does favor companies against others. TechCrunch is biased. But, it’s okay. I know it, other readers know, and Mike acknowledges it publicly.
What I didn’t like about Mike’s response was the bad attitude in replying to Dare’s changing his Wikipedia page and calling it vandalism. You can feel the hard feelings on Mike’s side. It’s okay to feel bad, but don’t call it vandalism because he only added facts that were missing from the page. It doesn’t matter what his intentions were; facts are facts.
I was curious as to what all the hubub was about so I checked out Dare’s post…. For god sakes, the guy makes a completely reasonable point that I can’t see how anyone (except someone who is is either completely paranoid or hyper-sensitive) would take issue with. Flat out the guy just says that the wikipedia editing format is problematic and gives a quick example.
Yes, he could have added his comment to the article about Zamfir but who would care. He obviously chose a topic that would get some attention and the silly claim of “vandalism” on here and crunchnotes only drives his point further.
Yesterday, I’m quite sure that I had comment #2 on this page, pointing out that the Microsoftie who approached Jelliffe had, in fact, been active on the Talk page for the Wikipedia article and citing the Wikipedia conflict of interest guidelines. Today, my comment is gone.
What gives TechCrunch mods? Feel free to email me at the address associated with this comment with an apology and to restore my comment. Thanks.
Sorry this happened to you, Mike. I think that you should demand an apology from the MS guy who did it…
Brian - this entire post and all of the comments self deleted sometime earlier today. This has never happened before. Either someone with creds for the site did it without realizing it or some major bug came out. I reposted, but all comments were lost.
Hey Mike. Although Dare chose you to be his “experiment” and not everyone appreciate this kind of pranks (since he did it without your knowledge), he apologized for his actions and I think to be impartial (in the spirit of the wikipedia which we are defending), at least post his apology comment link besides the Update so that people are presented with a complete view of the picture.
ah, no. Dare didn’t apologize. He did the classic “I’m sorry you’re upset” routine. He thinks the whole thing is great.
And the “spirit of wikipedia” can kiss my ass. I wasn’t defending wikipedia in the post. I was defending Microsoft. No one seems to have bothered to read it, least of all Dare. Just scroll up and read it. You’ll see what I mean.
Mike,
Calm down … I checked out Dare’s blog … he openly says what he did, which as he puts it is more of an experiment. I think you’re out of line for calling it vandalism. You’re taking this way too personal. Chill and present the facts.
Mike, I am staying out of the who was right/wrong here as it pertains to the TechCrunch Wikipedia entry. I think you have every right to be mad, but on the other hand it shows how impossible this Wikipedia situation can be, especially if you aren’t a high profile company. Both you and Microsoft now have a reasonable chance you entries will be changed.
However, my main reason for commenting is that I want to correct a factual error. You say that “the discussion area of the Wikipedia page in question does not show any Microsoft involvement.” That isn’t true. If you look through the discussion pages, Doug Mahugh DID in fact join into the discussion on the entry on 15 August 2005. A Wikipedia named HAl agrees with him and even says, go ahead and make the changes, give secondary sources, and then we will check them out. But no one makes any changes, certainly not Microsoft. Someone later even says that Doug would probably like to make changes but they would be instantly rejected. Then there is a lot of talk but no action. I can see why Microsoft stepped up to find someone to look at the article and make changes and I applaud them for being willing to let someone make changes without any editorial control. In the end it didn’t work out for them anyway, and everyone is flamed. The price of transparency on Wikipedia I guess.
I don’t really think that “vandalized” is the appropriate word to use here. I strongly urge readers of this post to follow the link to Dare’s site and read the original post describing the intent of what, I feel, can justifiably be called an experiment (and one that seems ethical in it’s intent and execution).
If only wikipedia had some sort of section for discussion of each article where people who think an article about them is incorrect could post and explain why they think it was incorrect. They could call this discussion page “The Page of Discussion” or something catchy like that….
jccalhoun: They have this, just no one does anything about it.
Here we are introduced the Hedge fund please invest
The Wikipedia system for resolving these situations is called Mediation. Jon was actually part of this process for the TechCrunch article and has blogged about it.
http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007.....wikipedia/
I use Wikipedia as a reference or source of information, but I always (ALWAYS!) keep in mind that I am reading user-contributed text and I would never go off and tell someone something “because Wikipedia said so”.