Microsoft wanted to pay for Wikipedia edits

I like Wikipedia. Really, I do. It’s a handy gen­eral ref­er­ence, and I’ve included Wikipedia links in some of my blog post­ings, espe­cially when they involve tech­ni­cal terms and IT standards. 

I cringe when I see my grad­u­ate stu­dents cite Wikipedia arti­cles in their writ­ten assign­ments, how­ever. At best, these are sec­ondary ref­er­ences. Most of the time, a paper that includes more cites to Wikipedia and Webo­pe­dia than to the course text­book is a sign that the stu­dent hasn’t dug very deep. We expect grad­u­ate stu­dents to find and cite author­i­ta­tive sources, not ency­clo­pe­dia arti­cles or dic­tio­nary entries.

http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/01/an_interesting_offer.html

Rick Jel­liffe, an Aus­tralian CTO and an expert on XML, revealed in a blog post on Mon­day that Microsoft (MSFT) man­agers wanted to pay him to edit at least one Wikipedia article.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/microsoft-snared-in-wikigate/2007/01/24/1169594329590.html

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/brierdudley/2007/01/the_guy_behind_microsofts_wiki.html

Doug Mahugh iden­ti­fied him­self as the Microsoft man­ager who con­tacted Jelliffe.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/01/24/ap3358497.html

Microsoft spokesper­son Cather­ine Brooker claimed that arti­cle on OpenXML had sev­eral con­tri­bu­tions from IBM employ­ees and was biased against Microsoft.

No money changed hands, and Jel­liffe never edited any­thing. Of course, the mess has hit the fan.  

Pay­ing for Wikipedia edits appears to vio­late Wikipedia’s cul­ture and policies. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales sug­gested that Microsoft com­mis­sion and post a white paper that addressed the company’s con­cerns. Wikipedia users could then ref­er­ence that paper in the Wikipedia article.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/1/23/6733

Brad Patrick, a Wikipedia lawyer, stated that that Microsoft’s plan was uneth­i­cal. “This is a hot issue, and Microsoft want­ing to soften the edges on an entry raises con­cerns about the per­ceived inde­pen­dence of both Wikipedia and Microsoft.”

I’ve read that Another Wikipedia board mem­ber con­tacted Jel­lif­fee to offer sup­port and encour­age­ment. If I can find the link to that arti­cle, I’ll post it.

When com­pa­nies start pay­ing for Wikipedia edits, it’s time to ques­tion the site’s author­ity. I have a lit­tle expe­ri­ence in edit­ing Wikipedia. I do visit Wikipedia once or twice a month to edit arti­cles about my uni­ver­sity, Hon­olulu, my favorite sports teams and comic book char­ac­ters. Some­times the changes stick. Some­times my changes have been edited, improved or removed by other users. I’m fine with that.

http://hp.sodeman.com/references.htm

As I dis­cussed in my page about find­ing good ref­er­ences, peer review is a help­ful tool that aca­d­e­mics use in their writ­ing. Wikipedia’s ver­sion of peer review allows almost any­one to change an arti­cle, regard­less of their knowl­edge on that subject.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/01/24/national/a120616S70.DTL

If legions of pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als are poised to wage daily edi­to­r­ial bat­tles over Wikipedia arti­cles, then Wikipedia will have to adapt.

In the mean­time, I’m telling my stu­dents not to cite Wikipedia in their assignments.

Tagged as: authority, Microsoft, research, Wikipedia