Earlier this week, Tim Bray wrote a blog post entitled On Linking where he pointed out that it has become quite common place for him to link to the Wikipedia entry for a subject even if there is an official site. He also realizes this is a problem when he writes

Why Not Wikipedia? · But this makes me nervous. I feel like I’m breaking the rules; being able to link to original content, without benefit of intermediaries, is one of the things that defines the Web. More practically, when I and a lot of other people start linking to Wikipedia by default, we boost its search-engine mojo and thus drive a positive-feedback loop, to some extent creating a single point of failure; another of the things that the Web isn’t supposed to have.

I’d be astonished if the Wikipedia suddenly went away. But I wouldn’t be very surprised if it went off the rails somehow: Commercial rapacity, legal issues, or (especially) bad community dynamics, we’ve seen that happen to a whole bunch of once-wonderful Internet resources. If and when it did, all those Wikipedia links I’ve used (396 so far, starting in June 2004) become part of a big problem.

As if on cue, a little bit of hubbub broke out on the Web after Rick Jellife blogged that he'd been approached by Microsoft to help keep some articles about its technology neutral. Lots of folks in the press have jumped all over this and called it an attempt by Microsoft to "astroturf" Wikipedia from the usual suspects on Slashdot to more mainstream news sources like USA Today.

Let's dig a little deeper into the issue and look at the facts as opposed to the sensational headlines. Mike Arrington over at TechCrunch has a good collection of links to the relevant online occurences in his post entitled Battleground Wikipedia which contains the following excerpts

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.
...
In the words of Deep Jive Interests “if you’re going to astroturf [Wikipedia], do it right!”

I'm trying to figure out how we go from Microsoft having problems flagging mistakes to Wikipedia editors and trying to get the relevant entry updated while not violating Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules to Microsoft is trying to astroturf Wikipedia.

Given that the Wikipedia entry is the first or second result on Google searches for "ooxml" and Office Open XML yet has contained misinformation and outright fabrications about the technology, shouldn't Microsoft be trying to get the article corrected while staying within the rules of Wikipedia?

As an experiment I've updated the Wikipedia entry for TechCrunch with a mention of some of the claims about Mike Arrington's conflicts of interest on the site and references to negative  blog posts but no link to his side of the story. TechCrunch is big enough for Mike not to care about this but what should be his course of action? According to Jimmy Wales and the pundits it seems (i) he can't edit the entry  himself nor (ii) can he solicit others to do so. Instead he needs to write a white paper about his position on conflicts of AND then link to it from the talkback page for his entry.Yeah, I'm sure that's going to get read as much as the Wikipedia entry.

It's sad that if Microsoft had just done what other companies do and had a bunch of employees policing its brand on Wikipedia (see the Forbes article Shillipedia), this would never have made the news. It's unfortunate that this is the reward Microsoft gets for being transparent and open instead of taking the low road. 


 

Categories: Social Software
Tracked by:
http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=344 [Pingback]
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/24/battleground-wikipedia/ [Pingback]
http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/2007/01/24/jimmy-wales-cnn-punkd/ [Pingback]
http://maol.ch/2007/01/25/microsoft-vs-wikipedia-vs-techcrunch/ [Pingback]
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Wednesday, 24 January 2007 16:40:05 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Nice analysis. Yes, the Wikipedia approach to controversial topics has some bad leakage.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 17:05:19 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Wikipedia article fixed :)
BradC
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 17:50:16 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I've been dealing with the press (as a Wikimedia volunteer press contact) for the past 36 hours, and exchanging mail with Rick Jelliffe and Doug Mchugh. Basically the way MS approached this is obviously a conflict of interest, but stemming from not being sure about what to do about perceived problems. I think sensible communication has been established in this case :-)

I think at this stage it's an editorial problem, i.e. normal article work. As such, I invited Rick to contribute to the OOXML and OpenDocument articles using his subject area expertise, and reassured Doug that speaking in his Microsoft role on the talk page of the OOXML article would be entirely appropriate and welcome. I've also put out a call for Wikipedia editors experienced in dealing with disputed articles to come in and lend their editorial sense to the articles and get proceedings moving calmly. So the articles should be a lot better in a reasonable time!

We're also working on ideas to deal with organisations that dispute their entries, probably something to do with the [[Wikipedia:External peer review]] pages and subpages. We'd have to work it out in such a way that English Wikipedia editors would look over these on a regular basis. We'd like this sort of problem not to happen again (and certainly not to hit the AP and hence 100+ newspapers), particularly as we are conscious of our responsibility as a top-10 website. We're far from perfect (and are much more conscious of our glaring defects than those not inside the process are), but we are doing our best to approximate "better and better" with time :-)
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 18:03:25 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
David: This is actually a good example that Wikipedia is not the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If the people who have the right information can't edit an article because of a conflict of interest (one of the lamest rule that Wikipedia has IMO) then who will?

Wikipedia contains fantastic articles but the "top-level executives" of its community have lost my faith in the objectivity of the project.

People guards some articles as if they were holy pages from an ancient book. Where is the openness in all this?
Sylvain
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 19:23:47 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
"We're also working on ideas to deal with organisations that dispute their entries...."

Cool, thanks for following up on it, David!

jd/adobe
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 20:09:55 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I was surprised that Doug described as "lies" what was utterly factual. And I actually ddidn't care one way or the other beforehand.
pwb
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:02:27 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
'This is actually a good example that Wikipedia is not the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If the people who have the right information can't edit an article because of a conflict of interest (one of the lamest rule that Wikipedia has IMO) then who will?'

I'm sure one can edit with a conflict of interest, providing they adhere to the Wikipedia's policy. Your edit was not only a conflict of interest, but it was point of view and in breach of a guideline called ''Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point''
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:20:58 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
The problem, as I see it, is that many of the things that they complained about are TRUE. Their promises not to sue do not cover all that one needs to fully implement their "open standard," so anyone that implements the full spec is asking to be sued. The spec is full of unspecified "do this the way we did in 1995" compatibility sections. Then, their own product implements the spec and also the spec plus binary blobs to hold scripts. The company has a lot riding on keeping its monopoly market share, so they are resorting to all sorts of things to try to maintain it. Trying to RAM this half-baked standard through ISO is just one example.

As a user and technician, I would love to see Microsoft sit down with OASIS and say, we need ODF/ISO 26300 to support these things, and we promise that anyone that wants to can do whatever they need to implement it forever. This would result in ONE standard that meets everyone's needs, including those of users and those that support them (like me).
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:23:18 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
The Wikipedia, for the record, is not about the truth.

It's about what is sourced, reliably, notable and in a NPOV.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:24:39 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Thanks for shooting the messenger, Dare. You are not an individual, you are a representative of one of the largest companies on earth. What you did was inexcusable. I expect an apology.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:51:51 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
"It's unfortunate that this is the reward Microsoft gets for being transparent and open instead of taking the low road."

Microsoft didn't mention or suggest disclosure in the original email (and similarly with the laptops). How is that transparent and open?
Tomer Chachamu
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:56:44 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
John Paczkowski at GMSV has a great take on all of this:

The company seems to have been honest and open about its intentions. It offered to hire an independent expert to suggest corrections in his area of expertise. Jelliffe obviously isn't a Microsoft apologist. And ultimately any changes he might make to the entries at issue will be reviewed by Wikipedia's editors and removed if they're inaccurate. Given Microsoft's position, what else was it supposed to do? Have Waggener Edstrom make the corrections?

There's more. Definitely worth a read. Great headline too.

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2007/01/people_shouldnt.html
Dave Lewis
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:04:29 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Tomer Chachamu,
Doug's mail to Rick Jellife is excerpted at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=218248&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=17724650 and in it he encouraged Rick to "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".

It's funny to see people claiming otherwise when the facts are freely available online.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:20:19 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Disclaimer: (I am not, by any stretch, a pro-Microsoft partisan. I'm a Linux/BSD developer by trade and preference.)

If the comments are blatant falsehoods and source can be cited, consider this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

That having been said, as Microsoft employee, I would hypothetically comment an awful lot on the Talk page about how various things are false and can't be authoritatively cited. Blogs aren't authoritative.

That being said, I think OOXML is a shitty document and doesn't belong in any real standards body's ratification queue. Microsoft can publish it as a white paper but it's not an independent standard.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:21:35 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare, I will assume since you are responding to other comments but not mine that I should not be expecting an apology. I don't believe you actually even read my original post, where I largely defended Microsoft. This is atrocious behavior.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:26:15 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
michael,
I have responded on your CrunchNotes blog.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 23:47:54 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
"he'd been approached by Microsoft to help keep some articles about its technology neutral"

Neutral? hehe, that's funny.
I suspect Microsoft's definition of "neutral" isn't what we'd see in the dictionary.
John
Thursday, 25 January 2007 01:47:49 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
pwb says: "I was surprised that Doug described as 'lies' what was utterly factual. And I actually ddidn't care one way or the other beforehand."

The only thing that I saw Doug describe as lies is the opener of the thread on Slashdot. Is that the claim you're disputing? It strikes me that there is almost no factual content in the posting by Scuttlemonkey of the contribution from Unpaid Schill. I also notice that two of the tags on the article are "astroturf" and "astroturfing." There's no need to discuss the follow-on posts by the utterly credulous.

How can that be "utterly factual" when neither of those players have any idea what the exact discussion with Jeliffe was and Doug is testifying as an actual participant about facts in his possession, such as his e-mail to Jeliffe? Doug might be lying, but how can the initiators of the Slashdot thread be telling the truth? My money's on Doug.
Thursday, 25 January 2007 07:44:22 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Joe: That's precisely where the problem lies, don'you think? You can easily spot and talk pages in Wikipedia that editors disregard changes after a "a quick Google search". How is this reliable?

If Wikipedia is not about the truth then it really is 1984 happenning. This is rather sad. What is even sadder is that smart people can't step back and question the Wikipedia community by themselves.
Sylvain
Thursday, 25 January 2007 14:18:16 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Before Microsoft took the unusual step of hiring a person to make Wikipedia edits, it should have pursued the more accepted manner of correcting an entry on a subject of personal involvement: Identify the factually incorrect material on the entry's talk page and suggest corrections.

Corrections sitting on a talk page will be noticed on any entry that gets attention, and there's usually a few thoughtful and neutral people with the entry on their watchlist.

Though it's not perfect, it's better than hiring somebody, because that editor's actions will never be accepted as neutral.
Thursday, 25 January 2007 16:18:49 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
'Tomer Chachamu,
Doug's mail to Rick Jellife is excerpted at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=218248&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=17724650 and in it he encouraged Rick to "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".

It's funny to see people claiming otherwise when the facts are freely available online. '

Because obviously I read the Slashdot discussion. No, I merely read the original blog post.

I'de hardly call it "encouragement" - more of an "allowance".
Tomer Chachamu
Wednesday, 14 February 2007 14:15:41 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
To the blog author:

Why is it a shame that M$ gets treated this way?

Would it be a shame if a rapist got raped himself?

What goes around, comes around, baby!!!!!!!!!!!

TIME TO PAY FOR YOUR SINS!

Feel free to ignore and keep dissing religion, but when your time comes these lines will quickly come to mind! Clarification: I don't know better than most if "religion" as we've all been taught is "fact" or "right" (vs wrong), but what IS certain is that if you follow some of the simple axioms (like not being evil or harm others), evil would diminish and life and human beings would be better off.
Saturday, 03 March 2007 03:40:22 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I have initiated a "Mediation Cabal" case under Wikipedia's mediation rule to deal with the question of whether the new "criticism" of TechCrunch should or should not be deleted. You (Dare, but all interesting parties) are invited to participate in the discussion and, one hopes, reach an appropriate resolution.

Please keep in mind that the truth of a statement is not the sole criterion for whether the statement belongs in a Wikipedia article or anywhere else. Wikipedia has various mechanisms for dealing with controversies, all of which (other than directly editing the article in question) are open to the subject of the article. One hopes that by acting in good faith and honoring Wikipedia policy, the result is a fair treatment of the subject at hand.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/TechCrunch for the mediation case.
Cruella
Comments are closed.