Microsoft in mud

Software giant Microsoft corp. has landed itself in trouble when it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.While Wikipedia is known as the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, founder Jimmy Wales and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definitely considered wrong.Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take 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.In a blog posting Monday, the blogger said that he was surprised to be approached by Microsoft but figured he would accept the offer to review the Wikipedia articles because he considered it important to make sure technical standards processes were accurately described.But the proper way for Microsoft would have been to write or commission a "white paper" on the subject with its interpretation of the facts, post it to an outside Web site and then link to it in the Wikipedia articles' discussion forums.
source :CNN

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