Conflicting opinions are among issues community-run sites must grapple with
January 24, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- The debate over the revelation that Microsoft Corp. offered to pay a developer to make changes to Wikipedia pages points to problems that can arise when a major Web site is managed by a community of people.
On Monday, Australian software engineer and author Rick Jelliffe wrote in a blog posting that Microsoft had offered to pay him as an independent source to make changes to certain Wikipedia entries. The offer, which Jelliffe doesn't appear to have accepted yet, set off a heated discussion about the ethics of such a move.
Responses from Wikipedia volunteers, which include conflicting opinions and indicate possible miscommunication, show the types of challenges a community-run online organization can face.
Microsoft said that before approaching Jelliffe, it tried to contact Wikipedia with concerns about some entries.
"But Microsoft couldn't get a reply -- hence why they decided it was important to enlist someone's help to actually address the inaccuracies in the posting so it would be fixed," said Catherine Brooker, a spokeswoman at Microsoft's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide Inc., in an e-mail.
FULL STORY - PG 6 <--- just joking
1 comment:
Here's an interesting article on the ongoing Microsoft/Wikipedia Neutral Point of View Debate
http://microsoftisawesome.blogspot.com/2007/01/microsoft-pays-editors-to-improve.html
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