Wednesday, January 24, 2007

"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach..."

Microsoft tried to hire a blogger to change Wikipedia entries so they'd be more flattering to them. Is it an ethical issue?

Wikipedia is known as an online encyclopedia that almost anyone can edit, although some parties (PR firms, campaigns) are barred from changing entries. By hiring a blogger to change the entries, Microsoft was working around the Wikipedia restrictions.

But the real question is: why would they risk a scandal just to change a Wikipedia entry, which doesn't even get that much exposure? Those entries are only seen by people who purposely set out to find them, which wouldn't be their target audience anyway.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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