mdoneil writes “IDG News Service via Linuxworld has this story about Microsoft paying people to edit Wikipedia entries about its products as well as competing applications.
The paid author has a blog on O’Reilley and noted in in that blog that he was offered payment for editing Wikipedia. That of course began a firestorm of debate.
I’ll give you five bucks to edit the LISNews entry.”
A tough situation
So let’s say Wikipedia does an entry on *you* or the people you work for.
Let’s say the entry is full of errors and wildly misleading interpretations.
What do you do?
Wikipedia’s internal guidelines say you can’t edit it because you have a “conflict of interest”–you actually know the topic. (Not only doesn’t Wikipedia demand expertise, it appears to deny the possibility…)
Jimbo’s suggestion was truly bizarre: Microsoft should publish a white paper, and maybe somebody else–NOT Microsoft, and not anybody they pay–would use that white paper as a citation to change the articles.
I don’t know whether Microsoft’s right about the articles in question. I do know that this illustrates the twilight-zone quality of some of Wikipedia’s processes.