‘Doctored’ Wikipedia storm
p2pnet.net News:- Doug Mahugh, a technical expert for Office Open XML, says he was the Microsoft employee who contacted Australian programmer and standards activist Rick Jelliffe, offering to pay him to massage Wikipedia entries Microsoft didn’t approve of.
Hiring someone to change Wikipedia entries is definitely not on, but Bill and the Boyz have admitted Microsoft wanted Jellife 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,” namely, IBM.
Now, in a slashdot comment post, Mahugh, “published what he said was an excerpt from an email to Jelliffe, detailing ‘what I asked Rick to do’,” says The Age, going on:
“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,” reads the email Mahugh apparently wrote to Jelliffe.
“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.”
The email, “also encouraged Jelliffe to disclose his deal with Microsoft in his blog at oreillynet.com, and reassured Jelliffe that Microsoft did not have to approve any of his Wikipedia edits before they were made,” says the story, adding:
“This morning Jelliffe was not at his Pyrmont office and could not be reached on his mobile for comment.
“Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM, which is a big supporter of the rival open-source standard. IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”
Also See:
massage Wikipedia entries – Microsoft Wikipedia row, January 24, 2007
The Age – Microsoft ‘tried to doctor Wikipedia’, January 24, 2007
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January 27th, 2007 at 6:07 am
During their anti-trust trial in the US, Microsoft was also being investigated in Europe for similar practices. They were writing letters to the authorities, using the names of people, who some of didn’t exist or were dead and buried, to bloster their position as a company that everyone loves.
ha ha ha ha
AND THEY GOT CAUGHT DOING IT