[tlug] Microsoft Wikipedia Snag

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Charles Muller writes:

 > I suppose some of you may have already heard about Microsoft's attempt 
 > to shift Wikipedia article more in favor of themselves (coming out in 
 > today's news, apparently).

Yeah, and the slashdaughters had a field day.  For shame!  Most of the
Wikipedia articles I've read that mention Microsoft are obviously by
authors biased against Microsoft,[1] and rarely come up to Wikipedia's
NPOV and verifiability standards.

I have to compliment Hughes (the Microsoft employee who contacted
Jeliffe allegedly on his own initiative) and Jeliffe on their handling
of the issue.  Microsoft has done more than its share of underhanded
things over the years (getting ECMA and the ISO to standardize OOXML[2]
being a case in point ;-), but on the Wikipedia editing issue it seems
they're pure as Kaguyahime.


Footnotes: 
[1]  I'm probably reading a rather biased selection.  At least one of
the Wikipedia editors with a strong interest in Microsoft claimed in
the /. thread to have worked on some 1000 articles related to
Microsoft or its products.  I suspect those are more balanced.

[2]  For those who haven't read /. or Jeliffe's blog, Jeliffe was
specifically asked to remove anti-OOXML FUD from the articles on ODF
and OOXML.